Joseph pulled into the school parking lot as Antonia looked out the window. She saw groups of teens already entering the school and got anxious. She knew she was going to be nervous but didn't really know what to expect. She saw a variation of vehicles such as huge diesel trucks, dropped Cadillacs, mustangs, and small used cars. She stepped out and was instantly hit with intense heat. She certainly missed the grey rainy days of London. She had spent the past summer buying an entire new wardrobe of clothes to survive the hot climate. "Finally! Another year of this and I'll be done for good!" Donna stepped out of the car and looked around. "I thought you wanted to go to college? And go to law school?" Nicole grabbed her water bottle and shoved it into the side pocket of her backpack. "Well… yeah I do. I've already been searching and applying for schools so I'll stress about that later." The Jeep beeped shut and the groups walked to the lot entrance of the school.

Antonia stepped through the door and saw that the elective hall was filled with students. Football players in their practice uniforms reeked of body odor and scrambled to go back to the gymnasium locker to shower before class. Choir and Band kids waited for an admin to open the doors of their safe heaven. They walked further down the hall and saw the theater and dance rooms. "Oi! I've signed up for a beginner theater design class this semester. Hopefully, they actually take my recommendations when my parents registered me for school." Antonia looked towards the auditorium doors and several teens in expressive outfits sat on the stairs. "Its honestly a 50/50 chance that you would get the classes that you want since you're new. But it would be good luck if you got everything you wanted! What else did you sign up for?" Donna turned to Antonia. "Well I signed up for Art I and Dancing. I'm confident I can get into the art class, but I wasn't sure if I had to try out for the dance class." "Umm… well Art 1 is usually the freshman and sophomore course… and I highly doubt you'll have dance unless they put you into the beginner class where freshmen and seniors take it just to get their fine arts credit out the way." Nicole looked back at the girls walking next to the blond boy. "Well, it's not my fault my specials credits never get transferred." Antonia responded in a sassy tone. Donna laughed and said, "With your parent's money, I'm surprised they decided to put you in public school anyways." Antonia ignored the girl and let out a sigh.

Donna glanced at the back-to-school posters the student council members poorly made. She noticed that Nicole kept looking up to Joseph frequently and thought that it was so obvious to the world that she had a crush on him. The two accidentally were matching as Joseph had worn a loose white linen shirt with green flowy trousers. She was grateful to have already made friends before school but couldn't help look at the other students in the hallways. She was eager to make new friends but didn't know how to approach anyone. She has always gone to private school all her life and was sure her interactions would be questioned. "So usually, they would have everyone's first period class against the cafeteria walls separated by grade level. We still have like ten minutes before the bell rings that way me and Joseph can give you a quick tour of the halls." Nicole had explained. Antonia noticed the wall was covered with many color-coded sheets. Large labels above the sections indicated what grade levels they were. Antonia looked for her name in the Junior column.

Monetti, Antonia Lousie 11 AP LANG. COMPOSITION (ENGLISH) Fadel, Asim

"I've got composition with a Mr. Fadel?" Antonia said. Nicole squealed and grabbed her hand. "OH, THAT'S GREAT. Mr. Patel is an old man, but everyone loves him! He usually helps out with CIF which is like umm… like the extracurricular sports competitions. OH! And he does tutoring during the summer. He such a sweet guy!" Antonia wasn't thrilled that she would be starting the year off writing essays first thing in the morning, but she certainly was pleased to her that her teacher was someone Nicole liked. "I wanna see what I have!" She dragged her to the next page and went all the way down. "Oh…" She said with a disgusted look. "I was put in health… which I took last year… and passed…" Joseph put his hand on her shoulder and signed, "Don't worry about it. I'll walk with you to the grade level counselor to fix this." Donna came from the senior section, "I have study hall in the library, so I'll be able to get ahead in my other classes." "That would actually be quite nice." Antonia turned to face her. "You get to start your morning quiet then you would adjust to the rest of your day." She then noticed that people would stop their conversations and stare at her. She turned around and the group went to see what Joseph had as a first period. "Dude, was she speaking British?" said a boy with chunky glasses. "Seymour you dumbass it's called an accent. You should know this already! You act like Sam doesn't exist." A girl with dark blonde hair scolded him. "Well I'm pretty sure Dominic thinks the same way." A boy with dark midnight blue hair shot him a confused look and cocked his head to the side when the blonde girl half laughed. "Ugh whatever."

Nicolebegan a tour to show Antonia around. When her friends finished their route, they dropped her off in the hallway where her class was located. "If you need anything just text me. The service here sucks but sometimes I still manage to get some bars." Donna hugged everyone and then made her way to the library. Joseph and Nicole waved goodbye, and Antonia entered the classroom. There were a few students in the classroom quietly writing down what was on the whiteboard. A balding man with large round glasses and a bushy mustache greeted her. "Hello. My name is Mr. Asim Fadel. Please, please take a seat anywhere you'd like." Antonia couldn't help but notice the strong coffee breath and his strong accent. She decided to sit on the left side of the classroom. Not too close to the front but not too close to his desk. The desks were paired she had decided to sit besides and empty desk. A girl with pink hair then walked in. She wore a lacy black shirt with a short black skirt. She had sheer black tights and large platform mary janes. She was holding hands with a boy with bright red hair. He had on red adidas jacket and baggy ripped jeans. She made eye contact with Antonia but didn't sit next to her. Even though she was near her, they didn't speak to one another and the girl with pink hair kept glancing at rest of the period was fine, and she was interested in the stories they were ready to read for the rest of the year. Before the bell rang, Mr. Fadel had passed out everyone's schedule and Antonia was headed off to her World History class.

She entered the classroom, and the boys were in hysterics. Smelly football players were gathering around the room. "COACH! COACH! COACH! COACH!" Mr. Olson was amused by the group of students that had been surrounding the teacher's desk and blocking his path to greet his other students. The other students in the classroom look totally uninterested. She noticed a teacher aid standing in the back in the class close to a group of students that had only brought either a single folder or notebook and pencil. Other students were quietly chatting with one another. Antonia saw Nicole and immediately felt relief and sat by each other once the bell rang. The class had the usual routine of going over the class expectations and general supplies they would need. The students were then called in alphabetical order to introduce themselves. A large chunk of the students were in athletic teams so they all giggled or made jokes whenone of them wascalled on. Other students were quick with sharing information about themselves. When it was Antonia's turn to share everyone was stunned. "Hi! I'm Antonia but I prefer to be called Toni. I was actually born here in the States in New Jersey, but I've moved back and forth from London and New Zealand. My favorite colors are burgundy, black, and like a plum shade type of dark purple. Some of the things I like to do ishang out with my friends and go shopping. And finally, my favorite food is sushi." Some students in the class were either looking at Antonia as if they wanted her to keep talking or snickered when she would state another fact about herself. "Thank you, Antonia. I hope your school year here is a good one." Antonia looked around the room and noticed that the group of uninterested students were heavily staring at her. She noticed that one of the boys was one named Seymour from the cafeteria hall. Next to him was a boy who walked in late smelling like cigarettes. People immediately got tense at the sight ofhim as he worebaggy denim jeans, a ripped-up cream colored shirt, a studded dog collar, and chunky boots. She first noticed his medium olive skin in contrast to his white hair done in liberty spikes. He had sharp features that stood out to her being his light-colored eyes and dark eyebrows. The Asian girl next to him looked her in a judging manner. She was very pretty, however there was a dark feeling that she emitted towards the other people in class. She had long black hair and red nails she kept admiring throughout the bell rang and she and Nicole hurried to the next class.

Antonia walked into her art class and relaxed when she saw that it was in fact filled with freshmen. That personally did not bother her as some of the girls were mesmerized by Antonia. They consistently complemented Antonia during the class and basically began to worship her. They kept telling her how much they loved her makeup and how her skirt was so cute. She thought it was amusing how quickly the young girls were desperate to make friends but honestly thought she probably would have been in the same situation if it weren't for Nicole and Donna. She was still very nice to the girls and even showed them the tags and what stores her clothes were from. Her next class was health where she wasmixed in with students from all grade levels. She saw some of the football students from her world history class and did her best to converse with them since she had seen them previously. The group of boys began to ask her questions about London that were so obvious thatshe then realized they were basically trying to flirt with her. She played along knowing that she would be entertained by how shallow and gullible the boys were when she talked about popular traits people had and wanted to replicate that. They even thought it would make Antonia "feel at home" by doing terrible of the guys even got the courage to ask if she was single and Antonia simply responded with, "Well do you want me to stay single?" The boys went feral and thought she was serious. To her extent, she maybe thought she had gone too far to egg on the boys but they kept insisting that they wanted to know everything about her. Truthfully, she was ready for the day to be over and go back home to decompress after a long morning.

At lunch, she luckily had lunch with Nicole and Donna. Some of Joseph's other friends had joined them. Karen and Mal were a couple that Joesph met in middle school. Mal played trumpet in the marching band and Karen was on the drill team. Soon Wally, the red head boy that dropped off his girlfriend in Antonia's first period joined the table. He tried to make conversation with Antonia and Nicole, but she thought he was very talkative. "Jiya! Come here!" The table looked uncomfortable when she sat down next to Wally and Karen looked especially irritated. It was the girl from her composition class. "Why didn't you wait for me like I asked you to?" the girl with pink hair said. Antonia didn't understand what was going on but could tell no one at the table was pleased with her sitting at the table. "I mean you still found me right?" said the red-haired boy. He turned to Antonia and said, "This is my beautiful girlfriend Jiya Kaur. She usually isn't this cranky." Antonia wanted to slap him. Mal then nodded and waved his arm at another guy who then came to their table. "Man, what's going on Isaiah?" He greeted him with a handshake and turned to greet the rest of the table. Antonia remembered him from the summer party her parents held at the country club and got really interested in trying to talk to him. After making his way halfway through greeting the others at the table, he stopped at her and said, "Hey, it was Antonia, right? You had the huge 16th birthday party last year? Well... we both have the same birthday, but your party was way better." He held out his hand to her and she shook it. "Yeah, it's Toni. How are you?" She thought he was so handsome. Antonia was so fixated on his eyes and smile thinking about how he smelled so good. She didn't pay attention to anything he had said and acted dumb when he asked her questions about moving to public school. Nicole gently tapped on her arm to interrupt their conversation to stay, "We have two minutes till class. We all have forensic science together so we can go early to get our seats." Isaiah said his goodbyes to her and the rest of the group and got up to walk over to the restrooms. She then noticed again the boy with white hair and took note of his friend group. There were other goths and punks sitting at that table. Seymour, the girl with blonde hair, and a boy with dark midnight blue hair sat with him. They had gotten up and walked in the same direction as Karen and the others.