Warnings: (strong) Language and sexual references. This is Danny we're talking about.
Disclaimer: Wendelin Van Draanen owns all these characters. I do not.
~PERPETUAL DISASTER~
PROLOGUE
I knew that attending Santa Martina High School was not going to be much fun.
I had already been informed that people are meaner and girls are more stuck up, and boys don't care about much besides what they can get away with when it comes to the girls.
I also knew that it was going to be much worse after ending things with Casey. I mean, it's easy to avoid someone when you do not go to school with them (easy enough, anyway), but when you are trapped in the same building together for seven hours a day, five days a week, not so much. And it does not even matter that the school is huge. Somehow I always managed to run into him, and he always looked the same. Like he hated me and he wished I would just disappear.
And the horrible thing is that he has every right to think that.
Still, it sucks to feel like someone you once really cared about is fully and officially done with you, even if I was the one who ended it.
Plus, Heather was so overjoyed it made me want to vomit. And my usual nickname, "loser" had been upgraded to "whore." Excellent. As were the lovely slurs I had to listen to every time I walked past her.
"Aw, she looks sad, doesn't she? What's the matter? Still upset he found out, whore?"
They were all like that, which is stupid because she knows nothing about why Casey and I broke up. That much was obvious from the fact that she kept implying that I had cheated on him or was keeping some horrible secret, neither of which were true.
But just because something isn't true doesn't mean the entire population of the school won't believe it, and Casey sure as hell wasn't defending me much.
The point is: I needed a break.
I needed a break from Casey's glares and Marissa constantly pressuring me to tell her why we broke up. I needed a break from Holly and Dot, who were pretending like nothing ever happened and everything was still okay. I really needed a break from Heather, who had managed to get worse over the summer while simultaneously making more friends.
I wanted to get away from all of that. Just for a little bit.
I just didn't think Danny Urbanski would be the one to give me that.