Chapter One
"Out of my way, freak."
Sabrina Rosencrantz, the high society of senior high, cast Ramona Lee, the underclass of her world, a disgusted glance. Her tittering minions behind her, all miniature versions of the make-uped, Abercrombie and Fitch dictator perched in front of them, followed suit.
Holding her head up high, Ramona sent an equally disdainful (as she called it) gaze back and continued on her path through the boisterous lunchroom, stepping right in front of Sabrina. The queen sent her a shocked look. Ramona just smiled and continued.
"Jerks," she muttered to her 'comrade in non-conformism' beside her.
Clearing her throat meekly, Faith Clarky looked back to the seniors with the fierceness of a woodland doe. Already within her first month of high school, she had been classified. Faith straightened her dark-rimmed glasses and pulled back her stringy brown hair it its no-nonsense ponytail. She looked down at herself. With her green and yellow plaid Catholic schoolgirl skirt just above her ankles, oversized yellow shirt, and Mary Janes passed down from eighth-grade, one thing was for certain.
Faith needed no scarlet "G" on her cardigan for the high school masses to think "Geek."
But Faith didn't mind the way that other people thought she would. She didn't have the pressures everyone else had, or the need to wear designer clothes and laugh at jokes that ripped the different people apart and talk about guys like they were flavors of gum. (Have you tried Tom? He's great, really….) She liked books, horses, her pure moods soundtrack, philosophical conversations, trips out with her cousins in Pennsylvania, her woods, writing poems…It just made sense in her mind. It was what was for best that they didn't accept her. After all what kind of person would you be if you did….or at least that's what she always told herself. She just didn't fit in with the popular kids. She didn't fit in with the rich kids, though somehow those two categories always seemed to intertwine. She didn't fit in with the jocks, the sophomores, the juniors, the funny and outgoing kids, the skanks (who were somehow slightly different than the popular kids), or the theater/show kids.
So where else did you go when you had nowhere else to?
The geeks.
Or at least that was what she had learned in her first month of high school. Wow, she thought. Only here a month and already marked with the label that will follow me throughout my four years here…
"C'mon, c'mon, let's get going," one of the jocks behind her called, irritated. If he would have had a whip, Faith couldn't jolted forward any faster, eager to clear the way for him.
He sighed exasperated, pushing past her as she skittered to her corner of the lunchroom. "Christ, what is wrong with you people…" he muttered in a growl.
Faith looked up, crossing her arms in contempt as she plopped down in the last seat of the last row of chairs.
Four years, she thought plunking down her crumpled brown lunch bag. How would she endure it?
Ramona had gone up to buy a meatball sandwich, the specialty of the day, and the other two girls and one boy who usually sat with them were away on a science trip, the initiation of the Environmental Studies Corner returning members, which left Faith by herself in the lunchroom, exposed and alone.
Searching for Ramona in hopes she would return soon, Faith looked around as the lunchroom masses, who either cast her irked stares or none at all, looking over her like paint on the walls, taking her for granted. She was here today, so she'd be here tomorrow. Don't worry; it's just that Clarky girl, what a geek.
She frowned.
Faith hated thoughts like that.
"Excuse me," a kind voice cut through the mayhem and a large warm hand gently held her shoulder.
Surprised, Faith nearly dropped her cheese and turkey sandwich.
As she looked to see who had passed her, she found…utter beauty.
A six-foot, skinny yet muscular, shaven, brown hair, blue-eyed, tight-white shirt and perfectly-form-fitting blue slacked sophomore grinned to her as he passed.
"Chad, what're you doing over there, you pussy!"
Faith was shocked back into her world. The varsity jackets were welcoming him, and with a wider grin 'Chad' responded graciously, going over to sit with them.
Faith sighed, her shoulders slouching. And for a second, she thought she'd been accepted into someone else's world, just for a second.
"Forget it."
Faith shook herself out of her thoughts. "What?"
Ramona smirked as she placed herself across from Faith and nodded to the boy who had gripped her shoulder. "That's Chad Richardson, track and field champ and recruit of Ridgefield Middle School." Faith stared at him, joking and laughing with the multitude of good-looking and built guys huddling around one little table. "He may be a freshman, but he may as well be ten thousand miles away from you."
Faith shrugged, taking out a mass of tinfoil that was really a brownie. "He seems nice to me…"
Ramona cast an incredulous look at her. "Please…give it a week, maybe two." She bit into her sandwich, her eyes sending daggers to the group. "He'll be just like them, you'll see."
Faith nodded, not wanting to argue the point. Ramona was a sophomore…she knew more about this than Faith did. She hunched back down to enjoy her sandwich when she glanced up at him once more, magnetically attracted to his eyes.
He was staring at her.
Faith stared back and a delayed grin burst onto her face.
He grinned back.
Ramona arched an eyebrow at her, and she meekly averted her eyes as Chad did his. Their conversation turned back to the others who were missing because of the science initiation and how Faith's classes were going so far. She even mentioned something about going to church this afternoon for a welcoming mass.
Faith wasn't sure if Ramona had noticed, but her thoughts were far, far away
from science groups and tests in two weeks and mass at 2 pm. They were on Chad
Richardson, and how his touch on her shoulder lingered…
