~ Blaire ~
I started senior year in my favorite pair of ripped jeans, purple converses, and a mustard knit cardigan that nearly swallowed me whole.
My makeup was nothing special. Some liner and lip gloss. I never went anywhere without gloss. That day I chose to wear my glasses. They were round and eclipsed nearly half of my face.
As for my hair, I had nothing but gratitude that it was on its best behavior. My curls were popping and thanks to the summer sun, my recent dye job had faded to a lovely ombré going from dark brown to burnt amber.
For a moment, I felt confident. And beautiful.
I stood before Honeybrook High and soaked up that feeling. Good vibes like this were rare for me. There was once a time when I never felt them at all. But I had made progress and these days I made a point of living in the moment whenever I felt good.
Still, feeling good wasn't the same as feeling free.
That was something I hadn't reclaimed from the evil overlords.
Speaking of which, I had to report to one of the study rooms in the library before class. That was where the student council held their meetings. And guess who made up the student council?
Yep. The overlords.
Meet Katrina Kalloway. Everyone calls her Kat. At first glance, you would think she's a tomboy with her oversized crew neck sweaters, high socks, and worn out sneakers. But her long, glossy dark hair, effortless makeup, and professionally manicured nails gave her away as the princess of perfection.
Kat was student body president, captain of the Honeybrook coed swim team, and the ringleader of the plan to ruin my life back in seventh grade.
Kat also had her henchmen. Mandy Gordon â treasurer. Hannah Yi â secretary. Luis Gomez â VP. And Will Thompson â historian.
So you're probably wondering why in the hell I decided to stain the very beginning of the first day of school by shutting myself inside a tiny conference room with this horde of greedy vultures.
Simple. In addition to being a perfectionist, Kat was also a monolithic control freak. She made it her business to oversee all of the club presidents and other school ambassadors, including peer mentors. It just so happened that I was one of these peer mentors.
Let me clarify that the student body president was not in charge of monitoring club activities until Kat got the position. No matter how hard I tried to avoid her, she always found a way to remind me that Honeybrook was her playground while I was just one among many of the slides, swings, and monkey bars â only there for her amusement.
A playground from which I could never leave.
"Blaire! Finally!"
Snap!
A flash went off. I blinked, but definitely saw Kat put down her phone afterwards.
"What was that?" I asked.
Kat's smiles always seemed so innocent. "That was nothing. Take a seat. The bell will ring soon."
Liar. That wasn't nothing. She took a picture of me. Within hours, she would send it to a group text. She and her henchmen would pick me apart from head to toe. Everything from my hair, my makeup, down to my purple shoes. They would make memes and float them around their little universe of evil.
They've been doing it since we were twelve. Thanks to them, I don't have any social media accounts. Not anymore.
Still, Kat never missed a chance to try to embarrass me. It was as if recreating the incident in seventh grade was one of her lifelong pursuits. So she never could never pass up the opportunity to torment me in some way.
I wasn't going to give her that chance today. So I kept my mind blank and took a seat between the president of the art club and the president of the robotics club.
Kat said, "Great. Now that everyone's here, let's begin."
Like a drill sergeant, Kat walked us through the agenda. About halfway through, a club president stood up and interrupted her.
"Um Kat?"
It was like time stopped. We all turned to face him.
The president started shrugging on his backpack. "Since you covered all of the chess club announcements, can I go? I need to submit some permission slips to the front office before class. If I don't leave now, I'll be late."
Those of us who knew that he was doomed did our best to silently plead with him. He had no idea what was coming.
Kat folded her arms and schooled her features into a poker face that I knew all too well. Her henchmen framed her with relaxed postures, all of them wearing identical smirks.
The poor kid looked around in confusion at the rest of us who hadn't moved from our seats. Then back at Kat.
She stared at him without blinking.
Finally, he got the message, and slowly sat down.
Only then did Kat clear her throat, flash one of her deceptive grins, and say, "No one leaves until the meeting is over. It's only fair. Wouldn't you agree, Jeremy?"
She made eye contact with the chess club president. I noticed that his adam's apple bobbed with visible effort.
"Yeah, totally fair."
We all nodded along, obedient puppets in this teen horror theater.
Kat looked around, satisfied by the cooperation and went back to going over the agenda. Her henchmen kept their eyes locked on the chess club guy to dissuade him from whispering something distasteful about Kat under his breath.
"Next on the agenda is fundraising for the swim team. Luis, where are we with that?"
Kat's vice president started to go over the profits that they made last year from the school tailgates and bake sales. I zoned out during the meeting until they got to the peer mentor affairs â the very last item on the agenda. Shocker.
"So, it appears that we have a total of six seniors who are new to Honeybrook." Kat read off their names and showed their cringeworthy high school ID cards on the projector screen. The very last picture to go up belonged to a kid named Lucas Silva Brighton. I didn't really care to look until Kat called me by my baneful nickname name.
"This last one's all yours, Blush."
Everyone else stared at me. The ones from our old middle school knew the origins of that mortifying moniker. The ones from other feeder schools still looked curiously from Kat to me.
There was some offhanded chuckling. I caught a few sympathetic gazes. It didn't matter whether the attention was negative or neutral. It all sucked.
It took every ounce of my therapeutic training to block the sting of hearing Kat Kalloway address me as such on the first day of senior year.
I looked up at the kid they had assigned to me so I could find him when the meeting was over.
There he was. His face smeared across the giant projector screen for all to see. Lucas Silva Brighton.
My first reaction was that his student ID wasn't all that bad. But that lasted less than a nanosecond when I realized who he was. His picture took me back to Yummy Joy Cafe.
Whoa. You're glowing.
I blinked in disbelief.
That was definitely the same cloudy, curly pink hair from yesterday. Same generous, pierced lips. Same strong, dark eyebrows. Same intense brown eyes.
I blinked a few more times.
Somewhere in the background, Kat stifled a giggle. "Is there something the matter, Blush? You look like you've seen a ghost."
I must have said no. I can't remember.
"Good. Just so you know, Lucas has something of a record. Mandy, if you will."
As I absorbed Lucas's apathetic expression and the spiked choker he wore in the picture, Kat's right hand listed off his past referrals.
"Let's see. Lucas Brighton. Suspended for the following: fighting, truancy, school vandalism, showing signs of aggression towards teachers, inciting food riots in the lunchroom, possession of illicit substances, more fighting..."
I tore my eyes away from the screen. I swear I saw a kid make the sign of the cross for me. No one thought any of this was fair.
"Kat, please. You can't just â"
She tossed her hair and interrupted me. "We're really counting on you to be a role model for this guy. Clearly, he needs your intervention."
My face burned. I wanted to punch that screen, right in Lucas's stupid pierced pout. But all I could do was look helplessly at my own tormentor and blush like an idiot. Again.
Satisfied that I finally lived up to her taunts, she smiled.
"Don't let me down, Blaire."
The bell rang. In that moment, it was too loud. Deafening.
A toll marking the end of my existence.
+++
Hey readers! How did you enjoy the chapter? What do you think of Kat Kalloway? Does she remind you of someone that you know personally? Let me know your thoughts.
*Did you enjoy the question at the beginning of the chapter? If you could ask Luca a question, what would it be? Leave a comment and you might see your question answered in the future! ;D
Remember to always stay true to yourself,
~ Coco