I walk into my new school for the first time. As I walk through the doors and hear wolf whistles and catcalls. Now I'm starting to feel self conscious about the outfit I chose. I'm wearing light wash skinny jeans with a fitted black spaghetti strap tank top and black old skool vans. It's really plain, so why am I getting so much attention? I ignore the obscene comments and find my way to the office to get my schedule. They give me my schedule and my textbooks. I look for my locker so I can put my books away.

My locker is number fifty four. I walk down the hall reading the locker numbers out loud. "Forty eight, forty nine, fifty, fif—"

I walk into someone and all my books fall on the ground. One falls on his foot.

"Oops," I mumble. I look up to see a boy looking at me with a stone cold glare. I choke on air when I look into his eyes. He's really handsome, but in an intimidating way. His hazel eyes are cold and his jaw is clenched. There's something about his shaggy brown hair and those two moles on his cheeks that makes my heart flutter.

"Watch where you're going, blondie," he growls. He roughly bumps into my shoulder as he walks past me and into the sea of students walking through the halls. I shrug it off and find my locker. I put my books in, except for the ones I need for my first class: math. Then I close my locker and hook on the lock the receptionist gave me. I find my math classroom and see a teacher grading papers at her desk.

"Hi, Mrs. Proctor?" She looks up and smiles at me.

"How may I help you?"

"I'm Kim Crawford. I'm a new student. I just wanted to introduce myself before class."

She smiles and stands up to shake my hand. "That's very polite of you. It's nice to meet you, Kim."

I smile and the bells rings. Slowly students begin filling their seats and she looks at her seating chart. Okay, there's an empty seat here in the front," she points at a desk, "or there in the back." She points to a seat in a corner in the back. I take the seat in the front. I'm not a nerd, but the people who sit in front are nerds. My strategy for school is this: surround yourself with nerds. You'll get better grades because 1. They won't distract you 2. They'll explain anything you don't understand and 3. When you're partners they do all the work because they don't want you to make any mistakes and mess up their grade. A tall thin nerdy looking redhead sits next to me and turns to face me.

"Hi, I'm Milton. You must be the new student." He seems pretty friendly.

I smile and say, "I'm Kim. It's nice to meet you Milton."

The teacher begins taking attendance. I zone out until she raises her voice.

"Brewer? Jack Brewer?" She looks around the room and mumbles, "He's probably tardy again."

When she's done with attendance someone casually walks in and takes an empty seat in the back. It's the boy I bumped into earlier. Now I notice his clothes. He's wearing a black leather jacket, a dark gray hoodie underneath it, black pants, and black vans. Wow. Dark.

"Ah, Jack, I'm glad you could join us. That's your second tardy this week. You have detention after school today," She says in a disappointed tone.

He just slightly nods his head.

After the lesson we have to work on practice problems. I have to ask Milton for help and he's getting impatient with me.

"I still don't understand when to use sine and when to use cosine!" I say.

He rolls his eyes and sighs in exasperation. "I just explained it!"

I can see Mrs. Proctor walking over to us. "Kim, do you need help?"

I nod and I expect her to help me but instead she calls Jack over. "Jack is already done with the worksheet and he got everything right, so he can help you."

Jack looks at her and furrows his eyebrows. "I never said I would help her."

She looks at him and raises her eyebrows and gives him a 'you can't talk to me like that' look. He rolls his eyes and walks over to my desk. He kneels down and folds his arms on my desk.

"Are you confused about whether to use sine or cosine?" He asks, looking at the paper.

"Yeah, how did you know?"

"I don't know why, but a lot of people get confused by this. So, technically, you can use either one. But I choose based on the graph. So, for this problem, I would choose sine, so the equation would look like this." He takes my pencil and writes the equation. "If you were to use cosine everything would stay the same except variable C, since cosine starts at the minimum while sine starts at the midline. So it would be X minus two instead of X minus zero. So you can see how you choose based on what's more convenient to write. It doesn't really matter though because both of these equations are right." He talks with a monotone voice, like he's bored and tired of everyone being so stupid compared to him. He seems to think it's so simple and easy.

"Oh," I say, "That makes perfect sense. Thanks."

He doesn't respond, he just walks away and goes back to his seat. Wow, so friendly.

I walk into the cafeteria and look for a seat. Milton waves me over to his table and he introduces me to his friends. There's a Latino kid named Jerry with dark curly hair. Next to him is Eddie, a pudgy African American kid.

"Hi Kim," Eddie says dreamily.

Jerry cocks an eyebrow and smirks, saying, "What it do girl?"

I glare at him and say, "If it is me then what it do is give you a black eye if you don't stop hitting on me."

Jerry swallows, his eyes wide, and nods his head. "Lo siento, mamacita," he mumbles.

"So how do you all know each other?" I ask.

"We all do karate together," Eddie says.

"At the Bobby Wasabi Dojo," Milton adds.

"Oh, maybe I'll join," I say.

"Uhh no offense Kim, but what do you know about karate?" Jerry asks.

"I'm a black belt," I announce proudly. "Second degree."

I could literally see their eyes popping out of their sockets. "Rudy will flip out when you join the dojo!" Jerry says in excitement.

"You mean pass out," Eddie corrects.

"Who's Rudy?" I ask.

"Our sensei," Eddie responds.

"Do you guys know what this means?" Milton asks.

When nobody responds, he says, "The dojo doesn't have to close if Kim joins! And we'll finally stand a chance against the Black Dragons!" Milton explains.

"Why was the dojo going to close? And what are the Black Dragons?" I question.

"Our dojo is the worst one in the Bobby Wasabi chain. They're going to shut us down unless we earn two belts at the next tournament. But we can't participate unless we have four members." Milton explains. "The Black Dragons are our rivals. They always pick on us and cause us bodily harm."

"I thought you knew karate; why don't you fight back?" I ask.

"We're yellow belts," Eddie says sadly.

"And their whole crew is better than us so they use that against us. Except Jack—yo, he may be a Black Dragon, but he's not as messed up as the rest of them. He doesn't pick on us," Jerry says.

"Jack who?" I'm pretty sure I know which Jack, but I want to make sure.

"Jack Brewer. Most popular guy in school, long brown hair, two moles, oh, and he has a sweet motorcycle!" Jerry says, becoming enthusiastic about the bike.

"Oh, I met him today. I bumped into him in the hall and he got kind of mad."

"Yeah, he's not someone you want to mess with. He's a total bad boy," Jerry says.

Milton leans in and adds in a hushed voice, "And he's always really somber. Nobody has ever seen him smile. Not even his friends. He smirks sometimes but never laughs or smiles."

"Why?" I ask.

"Nobody knows. That's how he's always been," says Eddie, who then nods his head at a group of guys at another table. I look over and see Jack who is staring at me.

"Yo, Kim he's checking you out," Jerry whispers.

"Why are you so excited about that?" I ask.

Milton leans in and whispers, "He almost always ignores girls. When he first came to this school, girls were throwing themselves at him. But he told them he wasn't interested and now people think he might be gay."

"Or asexual," Eddie adds.

"Maybe he's not checking me out. He's probably just zoning out and his eyes happen to be looking in my direction."

"Yo, let's find out. Smile at him and see what he does," Jerry says.

I give him a friendly smile and he nods his head the way guys do when they say hi. His face is expressionless.

"Remind me again why he's the most popular guy in school?" I ask.

"Well, the Black Dragons are the popular kids and he's kind of the leader of their group." Milton explains.

"Which is weird, because he seems like he hates them. He sits with them at lunch but never talks and seems kind of miserable," Eddie says.

"Maybe it's because they're not good friends. You guys are nice though. Why don't you invite him to sit with us?" I ask.

All three boys shake their heads fervently. "We're afraid of him. You never know how he'll react. He's really unpredictable," Eddie says.

"He's so mysterious. And his leather jacket and his motorcycle…"

"Jerry, do you have a crush on him?" I ask.

"No, I don't have a crush on him!" He then quietly mumbles, "I just wanna be him."

"You know what would be a cool experiment?" Milton asks.

"Putting a spider monkey and a giant crab in a cage and making them fight," Jerry says.

"No."

"Making turtles race?" Eddie asks.

"No!"

I come up with a good idea. "A hotdog eating competition between a crocodile and a giraffe!"

"NO! First of all, giraffes don't eat meat. And second, the crocodile would eat the giraffe! What is it with you people and competitions between animals?" Milton sighs in frustration. "I'm talking about a social experiment."

"Ohhhh," we all say.

"So you know what I'm talking about?"

"No."

"Nope."

"No idea."

Milton rolls his eyes. "Okay, I'll just tell you."

"Good idea," Jerry says.

"We should see if we can make Jack smile. But not all of us, or it might be suspicious. I nominate Kim."

"Why me?" I ask.

"One: You're a happy little ray of sunshine. Two: You're new. If any of us started trying to be friendly with him out of the blue it would be suspicious. Three: You totally have a crush on him," Milton says.

"I do not have a crush on him!"

"Mmmhmmm," They all mumble sarcastically, unconvinced.

"Anyway, Kim, do you think you can do it?" Milton asks.

I smirk. "I know I can."