"First day of senior year, Bon! Are you ready?"

Bonnie was a million miles away. As her fingers traced the droplets of water splashing on the car's window, her mind was anywhere but here.

Senior Year hadn't even really started, but already, it could go die in a hole.

"Bonnie!"

Bonnie jolted as Elena jolted her shoulder, hard. She startled, hitting her head on the top of Elena's car, instantly snapping back to reality. Elena was grinning, as though she'd caught Bonnie doing something hilarious.

"Someone didn't get enough sleep last night," Elena teased, "Up too late stalking Kol on his Insta?"

"No," Bonnie said quickly, face turning red, not because she was caught in a lie, but because she was half-way furious Elena was even thinking that, "And I wasn't sleeping. I was just...thinking."

"'Bout?"

She hesitated. Bright and cheery Elena surely didn't want to hear about the dark thoughts that plagued her mind. Her childhood best friend seemed always so happy. Empty sometimes, but at least happy. If only Bonnie were so lucky.

The thing about Kol? Entirely untrue. It was a misplaced minor crush more than anything, and someone Bonnie hadn't even considered since Freshman year. However, Elena just couldn't seem to let it drop, even if Bonnie hadn't shown any real interest in three years.

"I just want you to have something good in your life, Bonnie. Something beautiful."

Ah, that's what she always said, wasn't it? Something beautiful.

Life wasn't though, certainly not High School. High School was hell and Bonnie was just one bad joke or another bully causing trouble away from checking out the rest of the year.

"I just…" Bonnie bit her lip, trying to decide if she was going to tell Elena or not. Elena pulled her old clunker into a parking space and Bonnie sat back, watching the streams of people converging at the front steps. Friends hugged after a long summer break, girls gossiped, football boys checked out the incoming Freshman.

"We've known most of these kids all our life, right?" Bonnie finally said.

"Yeah."

Mystic Falls wasn't very big. It wasn't even a flyover city, it was a city left off most maps. Most of the kids here had been born and would similarly die here, something that Bonnie would kill herself first if that was the case. She couldn't wait to get out of here, go on, do something. She wasn't sure if Elena understood this. Elena, who as kind as she was, always seemed complacent with her place.

"I just look around and wonder...what happened?"

Elena regarded Bonnie for a second. She grasped her bookbag, snorting lightly.

"What do you mean?"

Bonnie stared at Elena's face, unable to answer. Not truly, at least.

"Do you mean," Elena started again, "How did time go by so fast? I mean, it felt like yesterday we were like six!"

Bonnie's laugh was rough, "Yeah, E. That's it. That's it."

Elena kissed her cheeks, "Oh, Bonnie! I knew you were a mushy-hearted one somewhere. I'll see you in English."

Bonnie sighed. Better allow Elena to think that sentiment than what Bonnie really thought.

What she was really wondering is when everyone turned into such unmitigated assholes.

They'd all been young once, as Elena had so unaptly realized. Bonnie liked to imagine that everyone was good, somewhere. She held onto this belief like a life-line. If she thought everyone was unsavable, then what was the point of any of these jerks she had to spend eight hours a day with? How could any of them be redeemable people if Bonnie didn't think there was a sliver of goodness left?

As she dodged people who literally found her invisible, she kept reminding herself of this.

Elena hadn't been too far off, she supposed. They'd all been young once. Pure, unblemished, simple. The star linebacker had eaten paste like it was candy, and they'd all played stupid playground games. No one had cared who was who and the biggest issue was who was going to sleep where at nap time.

And then they'd grown up.

Most people? Into monsters.

Some may argue that it was hard to be a monster by the ripe age of eighteen. To those naysayers, Bonnie would argue they'd completely forgotten what it meant to be in high school or they'd been so fortunate to never attend.

Most people were some form of bad. Most people had changed from their care-free childhood days, and not at all for the better.

Bonnie, on the average, thought herself a good person. She knew there were some parts of her that were unsavory (the dreams of darkness that came most nights, sure, or her judgy personality…) but she considered herself higher up than the majority of these a-holes. But, try as she might, she hadn't figured out what was the big difference between her change and the entirely different change of her contemporaries.

"Just one more year and then college, just one more year and then college, just one more year…" Bonnie whispered his mantra under her breath as she shouldered her way through the halls. She kept her head down, mostly curling herself into a ball, trying to be practically unseen. Unseen was better than ridiculed.

Someone came barreling into her side. She lost her balance for a second, turning to see a kid skittering across the ground.

"Hey, you okay?" She asked, offering her hand.

"Get away, weirdo," The kid said, spitting at her offer. Which, was honestly? Not cool. If he was getting shoved to the ground, it wasn't like he was in higher standings than her.

Though, ever since they, as in 'T-H-E-Y' decided they hadn't liked Bonnie, life hadn't been easy for her.

"Whatever, sorry," Bonnie muttered.

As the kid scampered away with hopefully on some bruised ribs, Bonnie bit back a frustration. Life was so much bigger outside of these stupid four walls and wonderful things were happening every day. No, what had Elena said? Beautiful. Yes, beautiful things were a better way to describe it.

But Bonnie was stuck in here with people she feared would never, ever change.

However, the smallest part of her that was still someone who did care, hoped they may.

She managed to dig her way through the crowd of people to the locker of her best friend, Liv. While Elena may have been a friend for longer, no one understood things like Liv and her understood each other.

She was wearing what Liv always wore; something black, something fish-nety, something ripped. It was this mixture of gothic rebellion that landed her as the number one freak of Mystic High. Some kids were bullied because of their weight, or their hair. Liv was the biggest target because she was weird and dark and sharp on her sides. While lots of kids blended in, Liv stood out.

Which, to people with low-self confidence, was obviously an issue.

"Hey girl," Bonnie greeted, "Is it sad it's not even first period and I just want the school day to be over?"

"Nope," Liv said, fixing her black lipstick in her locker mirror, "Hey, we on for movie night?"

"Of course, it's a tradition," Bonnie guffawed. The best way to fix the new-school-year-blues was with a movie night. Of course, now that they were older, it was more about bitching about their classmates and drinking wine, but it was still deeply cathartic.

"I got popcorn. You got a movie?"

"The Princess Bride, of course," Liv said, pulling the DVD from her backpack. Bonnie smiled something watery at Liv.

"Even though we've seen it two million times?"

"Even then. I just like a happy ending," She said.

Sometimes, Bonnie felt like she and Liv were two sides of the same coin. While Liv portrayed this idea of a deeply dark person, she was so unflappably light inside of her. She was someone who wanted to believe in the goodness, more so than Bonnie. Perhaps she needed it.

Bonnie was someone who, she thought in general, portrayed herself as an average person. It was only in the darkest parts of her mind did she allow the truly nasty things to shake loose. The doubts, the toxic whispers, the fantasies...things she wasn't even sure she could tell Liv.

Liv closed her locker door. Her usual resting bitch face evaporated into something much softer, something deeply yearning. Bonnie didn't even have to follow her line of sight to know where it landed.

"Liv," She whined, "Seriously?"

Liv bit her lip, looking down, "What?" She bitched out, "I wasn't looking at anything."

A straight lie. She was making moon-eyes at Tyler Lockwood, star line-backer and complete dick. She'd had it bad for him since...since, basically forever. Tyler, of course, hardly gave her the time of day. Unless it was to make fun of her.

Bonnie supposed she clung to whatever it was, as weird as their interactions were. It was so obvious to Liv that she was wasting her time with this future gas station attendant, a guy who was going to peak in high school and never stop wearing his letterman jacket, but trying to convince Liv of this? Impossible.

"Oh god, he's coming over," Bonnie muttered, trying hard not to vomit, "With his little lap dog…"
Tyler was one form of hatred, but his best friend Matt was a whole other. Mostly because Bonnie knew that Matt was much smarter than he let himself act like. That, if he stopped being like this, he might actually do something with his life. They'd been friends once, in the way that everyone had been friends as children. While Bonnie had never liked Tyler, she'd hoped Matt would be different.

Her mistake.

"Hey Satan's whore, sacrificed any bodies today?" Tyler asked cruelly as he passed, slamming Bonnie into a locker as though she wasn't even worth the effort to bully.

"Eat a dick, Lockwood," Liv spat out, but she didn't mean it. Bonnie only hoped Tyler would never see through her.

"Tell me," Tyler said, closing in on her, "Is it true you bathe in blood?"

"Wouldn't you like to know. Fuel your jerk off sessions for the whole year, eh?"

Tyler snorted, "As if."

"Liv." Bonnie snapped as the bell was ringing, "We have class."

"My god, she talks," Matt crooned, "I thought you'd forgotten how."

"Shut up, Donovan," Bonnie hissed, grasping Liv firmly and pulling her through the crowd, away from Tyler and Matt who were cackling like hyenas, "God, I just...you need to get over him."

"I think if he remembered what we were like before, he'd be more interested," Liv said earnestly, "He's just acting like that for the sake of high school. We all gotta wear masks, you know?"

"Oh," Bonnie sighed, feeling sort of sorry for her, "Or, he's just a jerk."

Mystic Falls was a small enough school that Bonnie, quite unfortunately, knew every single person who attended. Even most freshmen, she had a good idea of their identities, so mostly the waves of faces felt rather monotonous. As she tugged Liv into their homeroom, she was expecting to see the same bored faces she'd seen every day since she was five.

But there was a new one.

In the sea of color and Instagram worthy first-day outfits, there was an outlier. Someone wearing all black. Someone wearing heavy things, much too heavy for the heat of Mystic Falls in early August.

He was ignoring everything. It was like he existed outside of the realm of his current sweltering classroom, like the people who were being too loud next to him were little more than flies buzzing around.

Bonnie was staring.

She couldn't help it. Maybe it was because he was a new face. Maybe it's because his attitude was intriguing. Or maybe it was something else that at this time she could not quantify, but she was inexplicably drawn to him. It was as though, on some molecular level, she recognized a similarity between the pair of them, even if at this point in time, she did not know it.

Or maybe she did. Maybe she knew it from his eyes.

She'd look back on this moment, and when she really thought about it, she'd recall how his eyes were so flat. Like two discs, but with no information on it. How they were hard, unfeeling, uncaring. At the time, she'd perhaps wrongly assumed it was a simple disdain for high school.

"He's...new…" Bonnie muttered, the words slipping out before she could stop herself.

As he turned, Bonnie felt her face flush. She was interested, and also rather, unfortunately, attracted.

It was her plan to ignore all things boys her entire time here, sans her unfortunate crush on Kol so long ago. Day one of senior year and already that was going down the drain.

"Oh, damn, right," Liv said, smacking her head, "I forgot to tell you my cousin is transferring here. Who knows how long, but my mom thought it would be good for him to have 'some stability'."

"Your...cousin?" Bonnie echoed, brain firing to make the connections as Liv talked, "Him?"

She'd heard about Liv's cousin once or twice in passing, but never more than a vague idea. She had no idea that it was a boy their age, where he'd lived previously, or even what he was called.

Instantly, she tried to shutter her desire for him.

"Yep. Offered to give him a ride today, said he'd rather walk. Weirdo. Didn't know we had the same homeroom." Liv said, completely uncaring.

Bonnie knew Liv wasn't going to offer more up. She was dying for more information, but he was cloaked in mystery for right now, or so it seemed.

Bonnie's name was always right upfront in terms of seating charts. As Mr. Tanner went through the list, Bonnie gave a wave of acknowledgment, though it wasn't needed. She'd had Tanner for History all four years.

She could feel Liv's cousin look at her. If only for a second, as he did with everyone. Or, so she thought. Maybe he was examining her longer because she was sitting next to Liv? She would likely never know.

She kept her head down, refusing to meet his gaze.

"Parker, Elizabeth?"

"Yep, here, here," Liv raised a tired hand.

"Parker…" There was a pause. Mr. Tanner was squinting at the list.

"It's pronounced Malachai," Liv's cousin said. His voice was silky, even, and dark. It sent a shiver up her back, "Pretty shitty name, wouldn't you say? Dad's been making my life miserable since day one." His laughter was the only sound in the room as everyone sat, as though transfixed by him. There was something easy-going to his tone, though Bonnie saw right through it. He was the type that made friends easily but liked none of them, "Let's not make the same mistake. You can call me Kai."