1
I wore the wrong outfit. Yep, the way that girl looks at me like she wants to kick my ass definitely tells me I wore the wrong outfit.
I self-consciously smooth down my emerald green pleated skirt. I pull my wool coat tighter around me as I walk up the dilapidated front steps of Marter High.
“Stuck up, bitch,” some girl with more piercings than face says to me as she passes by.
I was already nervous—I’ve never been to public school before—but I’m getting even more nervous as I gaze upon the high school’s crumbling face. It looks like the last building left after an apocalypse. Maybe it used to be a respectable institution, it’s a tall, imposing stone structure, but now it’s crumbling.
The flag pole is bare and the front lawn is brown dirt. It looks like a building that’s given up. The world has abandoned it—just like my parents have abandoned me. It doesn’t help that it’s January and the trees are noticeably bare in the Virginia cold. The ground is dead.
I walk up the front steps and I can’t help but feel out of place when my low-heeled boots strike the concrete. Everyone else is wearing combat boots. I’m dressed to fit in at my old school, but this is clearly not my old school. Sheltered Glen was a private school that cost fifty thousand dollars a year in tuition, while this place looks like it would have to pay people to attend it.
All the students I can see walking in look like convicts—but I shouldn’t judge, it’s not like I fit in with the rich kids at my old school either. I hated that we all had to pretend that our lives were perfect when mine was a complete mess.
Olivia headed in early so I’m all on my own. My sister may only be a year younger than me, but we are very different people. She’s always been desperate to fit in—when your parents don’t give you love you try to find it in all the wrong places. While I’m someone who doesn’t give a fuck what people think about me—at least that’s what I tell myself until some girl with a blue mohawk lunges at me as I walk by and I practically fall into the dirt to avoid her.
She and her friends laugh as I scurry by. I may not care what she thinks about my outfit but I don’t want to get into a fight on my first day, and three against one, I don’t like those odds. I feel like I’m going to be the odd person out a lot this year—luckily I only have six months more until I graduate.
There’s a metal detector at the front door and we have to take off our shoes, coat and backpack to go through it. As I walk on the cracked linoleum floor in my stockinged feet, a guard with a gun waving me through the machine, I think about how far I’ve fallen. Only a few weeks ago I was walking into my fancy prep school. I was on my way to graduation and then college and then living in New York as a photographer, but now all of that is gone and my future was as unclear as the murky, never-washed glass in the windows of Marter High.
After I put on my shoes, I wander through the halls lined with lockers falling off their hinges. The girls are giving me stares like they can’t wait to kick my ass and the guys are looking at me like they can’t wait to fuck me. I sneer in disgust and try not to make eye contact with anyone. Eventually I find the door that says “Administration” and knock.
No answer.
I knock again, a little louder.
“Get in here!” I hear an angry, exasperated voice yell through the door.
“Sorry,” I say as I go in. I try to close the door behind me but it’s slightly warped and I can’t fit it back into the frame. “I didn’t know if I was allowed to just walk in.”
The lady behind the desk sighs as if I’m the biggest pain in her ass that’s ever existed. I keep trying to close the door until I get fed up and throw my body weight against it. It slams shut with a force that cracks the glass.
I turn to her. “Sorry about that.”
She gives me a stare that makes me feel about as welcome as the girls in the hallway made me feel. Whatever, I think. She needs to suck it up and do her job.
“I’m Addison Hearst. I just transferred and I need my schedule,” I say with authority—something I learned from my parents when they ordered around the help. I cringe. I never want to be like them.
She presses her mouth together in annoyance but picks up a piece of paper from the drawer next to her. She hands it to me without a word and I snatch it from her fingers and walk out. I hate rude people. Then I think about it and realize how hard it would be to work in a place like this. She has to deal with troubled students constantly so she’s probably burned out.
Back in the hall—I leave the door open behind me—I look at my schedule. The first class I have is History, and it looks like it’s on the first floor. I find it pretty easily and walk in just as the bell rings. The room is half empty and the teacher at the front barely looks up from his book, an air of defeat hangs around him.
The other students are joking around with each other and sitting on their desks. I even see one guy smoking and another carving something into his desk with a switchblade. Holy fuck, I think to myself. I’ve never been in a place like this. Here I am standing in my stupid pleated skirt and white short-sleeved blouse. I’m going to get beaten up for sure.
All eyes in the room turn to me and everyone here hates me already, I can feel it. They all know who my family is. They all know that my family is the reason why Marter was plunged even further into poverty when my grandfather closed the auto manufacturing plant here years ago. It was the main employer in town and when it closed, I’m guessing a lot of these kids’ parents and grandparents lost their jobs.
I look at the teacher for reassurance, but he doesn’t meet my gaze. I guess I’m on my own. I steel myself and walk farther into the room. The anger in the air is like a physical force, I can feel it and it makes me start to sweat—but I won’t show it. I straighten my back, like I always do when I need courage. If you look confident, you can fool people into thinking you are—even yourself. I walk into the room and under the hateful stares I take a seat at an empty desk.
I take out my notebook, place it in front of me and wait. The tension is high and I’m nervous about what will happen, but luckily after a few eternal seconds everyone starts back up their conversations and I breathe out a sigh of relief.
I keep waiting for the teacher to start the lesson, but he never looks up from his book. I quickly get bored but I don’t want to take out my phone because I’m scared these kids will jump me for it. It’s a just released, brand new eleventh generation phone and I’m making an educated guess that not many of them have it yet—unless they stole them from people like me.
With nothing to do, I look around the room, which I realize is a mistake the second my eyes meet this evil-looking dude with radioactive green hair in the corner. I quickly turn back around, but it’s too late. I feel him walk up and stand next to me. I look up to meet his eyes.
He has wide eyes that don’t seem quite sane. I’m immediately uncomfortable. I can’t pinpoint what it is, but this guy seems like he’s not altogether stable.
He leers at me and I have trouble maintaining his gaze—but I won’t look away. He has a crazy grin full of teeth that have never seen braces. He’s not altogether unattractive, but there’s something about him which is just off. Something that I can’t put my finger on. He’s massive, and I don’t like the way he’s leaning over me because it seems like he’s trying to corner me.