It was the first day of freshman year. Isaac was feeling on top of the world. Everything would be different this year, no hiding in the shadows. Isaac would be popular and all the girls would want him but Isaac only wanted one girl and that girl was Lydia Martin.
The bubbly redhead was talking to a group of giggling girls. Isaac knew he needed to get a grip but he was so nervous that he was physically shaking with the pressure of what he was about to do weighing down on him. Before he could talk himself out of it, he launched himself at her, smiling way too wildly. Isaac tried to get himself to relax but he couldn't no matter how much he pinched himself on the bruises that were beginning to form, courtesy of his father.
"Hi, Lydia," he welcomed warmly as the other girl's smiled at him. The other popular girls where kind enough. They were lucky at Beacon Hills High School to only have one mean girl. Lydia. "Can I talk to you-"
"What do you want, freak?" she said sharply, raising an immaculate eyebrow. The girls' she was with looked uncomfortably at each other. This was going to be messy.
Isaac tried to speak. The words jamming in his throat so he ended up wordlessly mouthing. His face hurt from the punch he'd received just this morning. His body ached from the tortures of Lacrosse tryouts and from previous injuries.
"Lydia Martin," he stumbled over the words, his voice trembling with anxiety. Why did he think he stood any chance with Lydia? "Will you go out with me?"
The other girls looked on with awed but sympathetic expressions. Lydia seemed to almost ponder the question and for a while, Isaac thought she was going to say yes. Then she laughed. Laughed. It was a cruel, mocking sound that echoed through him and made his blood curdle like nails being dragged across a chalkboard.
"Come back when the piece of trash you ride to school has an engine not a chain." Then the beautiful, stunning but narcissistic and cruel Lydia Martin pushed passed him and left him stood there, defeated. Isaac's temper flared. Why did he want to go out with someone with such an inflated sense of self importance as the one, and only, Lydia Martin?
Composing himself, Isaac Lahey moved off into the sea of students crowding the hallways of Beacon Hills High School with a refreshed vendetta against Lydia Martin, promising that one day he would repay the cruelty shown to him.