The first week of school was going by fast, and before she knew it, Zoey was sitting at lunch that Thursday afternoon with her mind already on the weekend ahead. When Stevie Rae had arrived at their table with her chili dog, Damien had launched into a long-winded and unfortunately detailed description of how hot dogs are processed, leaving the Twins cringing, Stevie Rae staring forlornly at her untouched food, and Zoey spacing out as she thought about what she would do when school was out for the weekend. Over the dull roar of the cafeteria around them, Zoey managed to catch a few snippets of their conversation here and there, but eventually she tuned them out.
"Please Damien, just please with your Discovery Channel crap."
"If you don't quit talking about mashed-up meat parts I'm going to reach across this table and smack you upside the head."
"Ya'll, there's no need to be mean..."
"I'm just trying to educate you on a little fun-filled trivia."
"Fun-filled it is not. Hurl-filled it is."
Their comical bickering silently faded away as Zoey got lost in her thoughts.
There's nothing to do in Broken Arrow. I think I exhausted every source of fun in this town within the first three days of moving here. Maybe Stevie Rae can suggest something to do, or hell, I could stay in and do homework all weekend.
"Zoey?"
Stevie Rae's voice shook the brunette out of her inner babble, and when she focused her attention back to the table the country girl had an expression on her face that said she was desperate to change the subject.
"How have the rest of your classes been going?" Stevie Rae asked anxiously, flicking her eyes back and forth to Damien as if to say "Please dear God Zoey, say something, anything, to keep him from talking."
"Everything's been pretty easy so far," she answered, stifling a laugh as Stevie Rae's desperation was mirrored in the Twins' faces. "But then again, it's only the fourth day of school. I've probably got a solid week before my life starts spiraling out of control."
"Speaking of," Shaunee started, "how's the Math Class from Hell?"
"Still hellish," Zoey said with a sigh, referring to her Algebra class with Aphrodite. "It's hard trying to focus when there's a rabid dog in front of you that might snap at any moment. And get this! We had this preliminary quiz on Tuesday to see how much we already know, and guess what Aphrodite got? A freaking 98! !"
"The hell? ?" Shaunee exclaimed, her face screwing up like the smell of someone's gym socks had just come wafting over.
"What was the quiz over? Asshole addition and slutty subtraction? ?" Erin blurted incredulously.
Shaunee started to laugh, and as the shock of Aphrodite's impossibly stellar scores faded away, Erin cracked up at her own joke too. Even Stevie Rae, who had started absentmindedly picking at the bun of her uneaten chili dog, let out a little giggle.
Once the laughter died down, Damien spoke up.
"It's like I told you, Zoey, she's got all the teachers eating out of the palm of her hand," he sighed.
"If you had anything resembling talent you could probably do the same thing."
Zoey groaned as the voice of her nightmares floated over to their table like a poison fog.
"What, do you have radar or something!?" Zoey snapped as Aphrodite came up and stood menacingly over them.
The blonde smiled sweetly.
"You know I can't go a day without saying hello to my favorite little Nerd Herd."
"Try," the Twins said together.
Aphrodite laughed, delighted to see how much she was able to grate on their nerves.
"See you next period, Zoey," she said in a mocking tone, as Zoey was slinking further and further down into her chair in an attempt to disappear completely.
"Yeah, see you," Zoey grumbled, already too tired to snap at her anymore.
With a fiendishly satisfied smirk and a supermodel-style twirl, Aphrodite left.
There was a long silence in the aftermath of Hurricane Bitch Queen, in which the gang stared forlornly down at the table and their various lunches.
"...It's like she just sucks the life right out of you," Zoey finally said, breaking the silence.
"Please, the Hag from Hell has a degree in sucking," Shaunee sneered.
"Various kinds of sucking," Erin added.
Not even wanting to give the horrifying mental picture Erin had just painted a chance to occupy her head, Zoey let out a sigh of relief as the bell rang to dismiss to 5th period. As they stood up from the table and started to clean up, Zoey noticed Stevie Rae's untouched lunch.
"Hey, how about you and I meet up after school and get some Damien-free food?" she offered. Damien dramatically brought the back of his hand to his forehead and pretended to be offended while Stevie Rae's eyes lit up gratefully.
"Sounds like a plan!" she agreed with a nod.
"Alright, we're out of here," the Twins said together, getting ready to leave first because their class was the farthest away.
"Zoey, good luck with the hag," Shaunee added.
Zoey gave a half-hearted smile and waved goodbye as the Twins left, then turned to Damien and Stevie Rae.
"I'd better get going, too. If I get to Algebra now I'll have a good two minutes of peace before Aphrodite arrives."
The two gave Zoey sympathetic smiles, and after more quick goodbyes they went their separate ways. Once again, Zoey found herself lost in her thoughts as she made her way down to the math hallway.
Stevie Rae said Pre-AP Algebra isn't any harder than regular Algebra, but math just isn't my thing. Maybe I can count on Damien for homework help; if the boy can blabber on about pig parts for ages then I'm sure he knows a thing or two about polynomials.
Sure enough, Zoey managed to beat the lunchtime rush and be one of the first people in the classroom, with Aphrodite nowhere in sight.
I'm sure she made a pit stop with one of the numerous boyfriends she probably has. Not that I object, anything that keeps her away from me is A-OK in my book.
Zoey took her time walking to her seat, not feeling the need to hurry out of Aphrodite's line of sight like she normally did. As she set her backpack on the floor she glanced at the whiteboard at the front of the room, letting out a groan as she looked over it.
There was a very long list of textbook pages assigned as the homework for that day, accompanied by a chart full of complicated and foreign-looking math terms that Zoey was fairly certain weren't even remotely close to English.
"I was wrong," she grumbled to herself, "my life has already started to spiral out of control."
With the school day over and the school day's homework sitting in Zoey's backpack like a lead weight, she and Stevie Rae made their way through the parking lot to Zoey's Bug.
"I dunno...you could ask him, but I think Damien is more of a facts and general knowledge kind of smart, not formulas and equations smart," Stevie Rae was saying as Zoey complained about her ever-growing math impairment and dire need for assistance.
Zoey sighed, and dug around in her jacket pocket for her car keys as they got closer to her parking space. Absentmindedly twirling the key ring around her finger, she looked out at the massive crowd of kids who were also trying to make a fast getaway off of school grounds, and far across the sea of students she managed to spot a familiar veil of blonde hair streaming towards a sleek silver Lexus.
"Hey..." the brunette started as a thought suddenly came to her. "Where're Aphrodite's friends?"
"Wha- -?" Stevie Rae blurted in confusion, before following Zoey's gaze and spotting Aphrodite as well.
The two reached the vintage Bug and piled their bags into backseat, as Zoey watched the Queen Mean Girl do the same across the parking lot with her luxury speedster.
"Her friends," she repeated. "Everytime she comes to rag on us she isn't flanked by the typical posse of freakishly perfect bottle blondes who applaud her every word. And she's part of the popular crowd, right? If the popular crowd here is anything like other schools, then statistically speaking she should have like, three high-society groupies in each of her classes."
Stevie Rae giggled.
"You're speaking statistically?" she teased. Zoey playfully elbowed her.
"You know what I mean," she retorted. "Aphrodite doesn't talk to anyone in our math class, and as much as we bump into each other in the hallway, I've never seen her with someone."
Stevie Rae just shrugged, finding it hard to care what Aphrodite did or didn't do with her social life.
"She's probably just in a transition period," she answered nonchalantly. "The girl's been known to switch out friends like she switches out Chanel handbags."
Zoey shook her head. "That's terrible."
"That's who she is. The rest of us are just trying to make it 'till graduation and the day we won't have to see her anymore."
Stevie Rae opened the passenger side door and climbed in; Zoey did the same on her driver's side. She started up the car, then navigated her way through the parking lot and onto the street.
"I guess I don't have to worry about finding something to do this weekend," Zoey grumbled. "I've got enough homework to keep me busy until Christmas. I suppose it's for the best though, because unless I'm looking in all the wrong places, Broken Arrow is not a very entertaining town."
"No, you're right," Stevie Rae nodded. "Finding fun here is like huntin' for a needle in a haystack."
The car slowed to a stop at a red light, and Zoey took the opportunity to turn up the radio a little bit, as it had been too quiet in the car without it.
"Don't you guys ever go crazy?" Zoey asked as she kept her eyes trained on the light, lest some angry driver behind her have a fit if she didn't move the second the light changed.
"Sometimes," Stevie Rae answered. "But we manage. The Twins are the party planners of the group, they always come up with something to do. 90% of the time it's shopping, but at any rate we keep ourselves busy."
When the traffic light turned green, Zoey steered the car onto a side street, making her way towards a new burger place that Stevie Rae said she had wanted to try for lunch.
"You moved here over the summer, right?" Stevie Rae asked. Zoey nodded in response.
"Broken Arrow is actually my hometown. But my dad left when I was two, so my mom moved us to Oklahoma City for a fresh start," she explained.
"Wow...from nowhere to the big city and then back to nowhere again," Stevie Rae mused. "Must've been hard leaving all your friends."
"Yeah, my best friend Kayla and my kinda-boyfriend Heath were less than thrilled...actually, I'm really not sure how Kayla felt about it. When I told her I was moving she launched into this monumental mile-an-hour monologue and I honestly sort of tuned her out after the first three minutes."
Stevie Rae laughed, then said "Kinda-boyfriend?"
"Ugh, it's complicated," Zoey groaned with a shake of her head. "He cycled between being sweet, to a jerk, to an idiot, then back to sweet again. Which is partly my fault, because I would just let him be when he went through his dirtbag phases instead of stepping up and smacking some sense into him."
She shook her head again.
"Either way, I tried to keep in touch with them over the summer, but it's different now that we don't see each other everyday. And with the new school year I haven't had a chance to talk to them at all this week."
They finally reached the diner, and Zoey smoothly pulled into a parking space and cut the engine.
"I'm glad you're here, though," Stevie Rae said with a sheepish smile as Zoey un-clicked her seatbelt. "I know it's only been four days, but we really like having you around."
Zoey smiled back, genuinely glad to hear that.
"Thanks, Stevie Rae. I like being around you guys too. You're all tons of fun, and it's nice to be around people who don't spend so much time pretending to be something they're not."
Despite the fact that they had just met, Zoey was already starting to think of Stevie Rae and the gang as good friends.
"Let's go," Zoey said as Stevie Rae tried to avoid blushing. "You must be hungry thanks to Damien and his impromptu science lecture."
"Ready to rustle up some food, that's for sure!"
The two girls laughed, and then left the car to go eat lunch together.
The second week of school had arrived. When Zoey was getting ready that Monday morning, she trudged down the stairs to find the Step-Loser lurking around the kitchen like some kind of Left 4 Dead zombie, and she promptly hightailed it back to her room to avoid a long-winded lecture on Hell or sins or rock music.
She made plans to grab some breakfast at the McDonald's drive-thru so she wouldn't have to sit through the wrath of her stepdad's Bible thumping, so with tremendous effort she attempted to tie her shoes, throw her binder into her backpack, and hunt for her wallet all at the same time.
This particular Oklahoma morning was the first that wasn't ridiculously warm, so after Zoey finally got herself situated she shrugged into a red zip-up Mickey Mouse hoodie and bolted down the stairs to the front door. There was the occasional strong gust of chilly wind as she stepped outside, and Zoey wistfully contemplated summoning fire to keep herself from shivering out of her shoes.
"I'm still not even sure where these powers came from," she said to herself after she slid into her car. "Maybe I'm not supposed to be using them as a space heater."
Her control over the elements started to manifest a few months before her family moved from Oklahoma City, and after arriving in Broken Arrow one of the first things Zoey did was drive down to visit her grandmother. Grandma Redbird was strongly connected to the ancient and mysterious ways of Zoey's Cherokee ancestors, and was Zoey's best chance of finding out just what was happening to her. Although she was raised with her grandmother's teachings of magic, she never truly believed in it until the magic suddenly became a part of her.
Of course, she couldn't confide in anyone in her own Stepford house; even the slightest mention of elemental powers and John would have her burned at the stake (although on several occasions she was tempted to set his greasy hair on fire just to see him throw a comical fit about Satan and witchcraft).
But all Zoey's grandma could offer was that some ancient force saw fit to bless her with incredible powers, and until Zoey could learn why, it was best to just tread carefully and learn to hone her skills.
Using fire to reheat my coffee technically counts as honing, right? she nervously thought.
Grandma Redbird had almost made it sound like Zoey had been chosen to fulfill some magical, movie-style destiny, but Zoey thought otherwise.
I'm just a teenage girl trying to survive high school. How important can I be?
She had arrived at the school parking lot, and eagerly scanned the area to find a spot as close to the building as possible so the wind had less of a chance to screw up her hair on the walk to the front doors. She was cutting it close; there were only about ten minutes until first period started, and her World History class was all the way on the other side of the school. Her plan to grab breakfast on the way to school backfired when it turned out that every other kid at South Intermediate High had the same idea, and the drive-thru line was practically backed up halfway out the state. So a hungry, chilly, and pressed-for-time Zoey hurriedly made her way inside the building and down to class.
"Well I'll be dipped in gravy..." Stevie Rae said in astonishment as the bell signaling the end of lunch rang. "No Hag from Hell today!"
Zoey was too busy stuffing her face with a sandwich to pay attention to anything, so when Stevie Rae spoke up, Zoey's response was to mutter a very attractive "Huh? ?" around a mouth full of turkey and lettuce.
"Hey, you're right," Shaunee said, equally astonished. Zoey was still trying to catch up.
"Wait, what are you talking about?" she asked, flustered from rushing to swallow her giant bite of sandwich so she could speak.
"We haven't seen Aphrodite all day!" Stevie Rae said again, looking like she'd just been told that Kenny Chesney was on his way to take her out to the state fair.
"She probably tripped over her Gucci heels and fell down a flight of stairs," Erin added dryly, seemingly bitter about the fact that Aphrodite still existed.
Zoey was hurrying to finish her sandwich so she could make it to Pre-AP Algebra on time and held no interest in partaking in the conversation.
"It is rather unusual. Whenever she was too busy to spend her time picking on us last year we at least saw her strutting down the halls with her Hag Pack," Damien mused. "It's strange to not see her roaming around like a psychotic cat."
Zoey finished off the last crusts of her sandwich and started to clean up.
"She's probably just absent. It happens," Zoey shrugged. Shaunee rolled her eyes and stood up from the table.
"Please. Just please. As if you're not as excited as the rest of us to finally be Hag-less for once," she said.
Truthfully, Zoey could care less. If Aphrodite wasn't at school, then great. Zoey could put her feet up during math next period. No big deal. But then again, she hadn't been facing the wrath of G.I. Barbie for as long as the rest of the gang had. By now they had probably earned a long deserved break.
"Alright guys, I'm off," Zoey said, standing up as well and slinging her backpack over one shoulder.
"I'll say," the Twins said together, unable to believe that Zoey wasn't ready to throw a parade over Aphrodite's absence.
Zoey merely shrugged and gave an apologetic smile before waving goodbye and starting off towards Algebra.
Poor guys...it's awful that Aphrodite has that effect on them...
A familiar anger started to build inside her, but she kept it under control this time.
"Someone's seriously got to knock that girl off her high horse..." she muttered to herself.
I'm not afraid of Aphrodite, but I also don't want to go starting any trouble. And at the same time, I can't stand to see my friends living their lives worrying about when she's going to pop up...
Her irritation towards the blonde started to manifest in her power over elemental fire, but as the heat started to coil around her hands she took a deep breath and made the effort to calm herself down.
One day this week, when the sheer thought of her doesn't make me want to scratch her gorgeous blue eyes out, I'm going to give her a piece of my mind.
Sure enough, confirming everyone's suspicions/hopes, Aphrodite wasn't there when Zoey stepped into the classroom. She wasn't there when Zoey grudgingly passed last week's homework forward, already anticipating the abysmal grades she would get. She wasn't there when Mrs. James put up various complicated graphs on the overhead projector, which Zoey scrambled to copy down for future reference. And finally, she wasn't there when the bell rang and jolted Zoey awake from the inadvertent nap she had taken on top of her binder.
Slipping into her backpack and stumbling into a few desks as a result of her blurry sleep vision, she drowsily rubbed her eyes like a little kid as she stepped out into the hall.
"Zoey."
Zoey almost jumped out of her shoes when someone said her name right next to her. All the remaining sleepiness was knocked out of her as she turned her head to see who was talking.
"Aphrodite! !"
The blonde was waiting outside the door, arms crossed and looking as bitchy as ever.
"Where were you? I thought you were absent, you just missed the entire math class!" Zoey's surprise at running into Aphrodite for the first time all day overrode the anger she was feeling just an hour ago.
"We need to talk," Aphrodite said, uncharacteristically serious. Her cold blue eyes (which, Zoey noticed, looked slightly bloodshot and irritated) were fixed dangerously on the brunette.
The anger was back.
"You know what, Aphrodite? No. I don't have anything to say until you learn how to get a grip and drop the constant attitude. I'm not interested," Zoey said stiffly.
Aphrodite narrowed her eyes.
"It wasn't a request," the bitter tone in her voice matched the harshness of her eyes. Zoey wasn't impressed.
"That's exactly what I'm talking about!" Zoey said in exasperation. "You think everything just runs on your schedule, but we've all got better things to do than- -"
"Zoey," Aphrodite said again through clenched teeth, looking like she was about to ninja-kick the girl down the hall.
Whether it was the glint in Aphrodite's eyes that told Zoey she was serious, or the fact that Zoey knew she wasn't about to get a moment's peace unless she listened, she slowly nodded and followed the blonde as she led Zoey down the hall and around the corner. Aphrodite gestured for her to stand close to the wall so they could talk relatively freely without being heard.
"Make this quick, I've literally got to trek to the other side of the school for 6th period," Zoey sighed.
"This is more important," Aphrodite said simply.
Zoey gritted her teeth and resisted the overwhelming urge to put the blonde in a choke hold.
"If you think it's more important than me arriving to class on time, therefore avoiding getting a tardy for the day, therefore avoiding my grades dropping, therefore avoiding- -"
"You were in one of my visions."
Zoey abruptly stopped talking. She blinked dumbly, staring at Aphrodite like she had just spun around and transformed into the pink Power Ranger.
"I was in one of your...wha-?" she sputtered. Aphrodite rolled her eyes.
"One of my visions. Pay attention."
Zoey was struggling to comprehend what she was hearing.
"You have...you have visions?" she questioned.
A look of irritation grew on Aphrodite's face, like this was an extremely simple concept and Zoey was a child that just would not grasp it.
"Yes. Things that haven't happened yet, I can see them. Various things. Accidents, crimes, everyday occurrences...shit, sometimes it's good for nothing but a weather forecast," Aphrodite explained, completely straight-faced.
Zoey was still comically wide-eyed as she looked over Aphrodite.
"So...what was this vision about?" she asked quietly.
A quick look of surprise flashed across Aphrodite's features, like she was expecting Zoey to protest the fact that she had visions some more, but she quickly composed herself and continued.
"My visions used to be crystal clear. So detailed that I could read the license plate number of a car that was going to crash. But lately..." she furrowed her eyebrows, "They've been fuzzy. Some parts clear and other parts broken and clouded."
Zoey cautiously glanced around the hall and noted the students still walking past them on the way to their next class. She lowered her voice.
"But you could tell the vision was about me, right?" she whispered. Aphrodite nodded.
"You were attacked," she said, ignoring the gasp that Zoey let out. "I couldn't tell exactly what it was."
She narrowed her eyes in concentration, searching through her memories to try and recall what she had seen.
"It looked human, but it didn't act human, it was more like a wild animal. Hunched over, snarling, and moving way too fast. I couldn't see where you were when it happened, but the thing came out of nowhere. You didn't have a chance to fight it," Aphrodite said.
Zoey said nothing, trying to process all this new information that had just blindsided her.
"I'm only telling you this because if you end up dead in a ditch somewhere I don't want the police knocking at my door. I don't care if you believe me or not," the blonde continued.
"No, I believe you!" Zoey hastily said, snapping out of her shock. Now it was Aphrodite's turn to look surprised.
Ignoring the part of her mind that was screaming that what she was about to do was a very bad idea, Zoey told Aphrodite what she thought she'd never get the chance to tell anyone but her grandma.
"If you say you have special powers, I believe you, because I...I can control the elements," she admitted quietly. Barbie Girl didn't look impressed.
"The what?" she scoffed.
"The elements," Zoey repeated. "Air, earth, water, fire, spirit...I can summon and control them."
She looked around the hall once more, checking to see if anyone was still around. Once she saw that the two of them were alone in the hallway now that the other students had cleared off to class, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. A swirling wind like the one raging outside whipped up in the middle of the hallway. Aphrodite's golden hair was tossed around haphazardly, which seemed to freak her out more than the revelation that Zoey had just made.
"Whoa, Power Freak! I get it, turn it off!" she yelled over the wind as she scrambled to smooth down her hair. Zoey opened her eyes, and the wind disappeared. Aphrodite looked livid.
"Mess up my hair again and you're in for a world of shit," she snarled.
Zoey's eyes widened.
"You mean...you're not afraid of me?" she asked timidly.
"Like I said, pull something like that again and it's you who should be afraid of me."
With one final glare, Aphrodite turned on her heels and walked away.
"And a word of advice," she called over her shoulder as she strutted out of sight, "I'd keep those oh-so-special powers at the ready the next time you go walking down a dark alley at night."