(1 year and 4 months ago)

"No… no… NO! I don't WANNA go!"

"Get out of the car little missy the bell just rang you're going to be late on your first day!"

"NOOOOOO! I don't CARE!"

A father's hands gripped around the waist of his thirteen-year-old daughter as her arms wrapped around the passenger seat of their little beat up bug.

Her father pulled on her trying to get her free and inside the school… Gotham Prep.

A high-class school that was normally reserved for the children of the most elite of the upper class. But recently they had been accepting a small percentage of low-class students who managed to either earn a small scholarship or pay the entrance fee.

Jessica Ransforth, the young girl clinging to the passenger side seat, was one of the lower-class citizens of Gotham City and couldn't understand how her father managed to obtain the money that paid for her attendance.

But Jessica didn't ask questions of how her father managed such things.

But she refused to attend the school, wishing to remain in homeschooling, yet like always, her father got his way. Which was evident as he finally dislodged his daughter from her death grip and tossed her as far as he could away from the car before leaping into the car and slamming the door closed, locking the door behind him.

Jessica stood and watched as her father rolled down the window and threw her backpack out the window before waving and blowing her a kiss. He then floored the gas pedal and sped away like a crazy person on drugs. Jessica heaved a sigh and bent down to pick up her bag and turned, seeing the other students dressed in school uniform, staring at her whispering to each other behind their hands while taking in her appearance.

She looked out of place among them and Jessica was fully aware of the fact. She did wear the school's uniform like the others, and her reddish-brown hair was a tangled mess. She wished she made more of an effort to brush it out that morning now as she touched it nervously. Her shocking green eyes stood out from the mess around her head, staring at her feet as she made her way to the main office to pick up her own uniform…

When she left the front office, she now wore the same white button-down with the neatly cut dark blue blazer and tan skirt that the girls wore. The only difference was her shoes and bag. Unlike the other students who sported well-polished dress shoes and heels and fancy leather book bags, she wore old beat-up pink high tops that she had drawn all over at one point and carried a fading purple backpack with a jester on the front. It was a bag she had gotten when she was young from a thrift store and she had loved it then… Now she felt ashamed of it and out of place.

It took her a long time to find her locker and she sat through her first few classes wishing desperately that she was home in her quiet little house reading whatever book her businessman of a father was able to get a hold of. What kind of businessman he was she didn't know.
He never talked about his work at home, but whatever he did, she always assumed he was bad at whatever it was. But no matter how much she wished she found herself still there in the halls of the school, head down and listening to the whispers of the rich snobs around her.

When lunch came, she got stares from every which way an, in the end, she sat at a far back table in a corner of the cafeteria so she could eat her brown-bagged lunch in relative peace. Though she was slightly distracted by the loud beeping, and muttering, coming from a boy sitting not far from her. He was mashing away on a laptop and only occasionally picking at his own lunch. She kept looking over at him at certain intervals of his private monolog and jumped when he finally spoke.

"I can see you looking at me." He said and she frowned as he looked at her. He was a bean pole with carrot-colored hair and brown eyes that were framed by thick glasses.
"What's your name? If I'm going to sit here and be stared at, I would like to know the name of the one doing the staring."

Jessica floundered for words for a moment before giving a forced laugh and looking down at her lunch.

"Why not guess…. Make it an enigma for a bit."

"No…. I don't much like such things…" He said as he turned to his laptop again.

"Then a trade… I get your name and you get mine." Jessica recommended with another small laugh and the boy looked at her again.

"Eddie Strait." He said flatly and looked back at his computer. Jessica noticed he hadn't stopped typing when he had looked back at her again and she raised her eyebrows at this.

"Jessica Ransforth… What are you doing? School works?" She asked and he paused in his typing before he started up again.

"I have access to the school servers through a back door and I am going to gain access to the standardized test answers…" He said as if it was obvious.

"Why not just study?"

"You won't tell any teachers about this will you?" She could hear the threat in his voice and it accrued to her that this boy could very much ruin her school career with a press of a button.

"I won't tell anyone."

The only thing that made the day somewhat worth waking up for was when she chose to try out for the school gymnastics team. She had always been flexible and thanks to her home schoolteacher's weird obsession with gymnastics and other health things, emotional mostly, Jessica was very fit.

She got in which made her a little proud of herself and she couldn't wait to tell her father all about it when he picked her up. So, after school she stood in the same spot, he had left her that morning and waited, watching as parent after parent or private chauffer's come to pick up their kid and drive away in shiny sleek black cars… And there stood Jessica, still waiting for her father's old beat up bug to pull up.

Even an hour and a half after the schools' doors were locked.

Finally, the car pulled up and she climbed in, taking note that the back bumper was stuffed into the back of the car.

"Hello sweetie! So sorry I had a lot of work to finish up but I'm here now!" He said loudly and Jessica nodded as she looked out the window. As they pulled away, she saw Eddie sitting on the school steps, staring at the sky as he waited.