They say there's no worse place than high-school.

That girls are twice as mean, boys twice as moody, school twice as hard. 

There's no greater crime than squeezing too many hormone-driven adolescants into an underfunded building. And I know all about crime.

Correction.

There's no greater crime than switching schools for your senior year.

Which I have the pleasure of doing.

***

August sixteenth will be the day I mark my calendar as the worst day I'll ever experience. The whispering starts as soon as I cross the threshold. The laughing soon follows, although I don't know how I'm already becoming the butt of everyone's joke. My head points down of its own accord as I speedwalk to where I hope the office is.

Then a girl blocks my path.

And I immediately hate everything about her existance.

Her designer purse swings as she turns on her six-inch heel to face me. She tosses her shiny blond hair over her uncovered shoulder and starts to speak.

"Hi!" Her perfect teeth glint as the fake smile spreads like a virus over her face. "You must be, like, the new girl, right?"

Five minutes into hell and this she-devil was already speaking to me.

I force my lips to crease upward. "Yeah. I'm-"

"Lydiah Kent!" she finishes while my jaw unhinges. How does she know my name?

"Y-yes... " I stutter stupidly, "How did you-"

"Oh," she interupts again. "Everyone knows who you are. You're, like, a mystery." Her giggle is so high it almost blasts my eardrums.

"Anyway," she continues, "I'm Sophie. I've gotta run. See ya later!" With a final blown kiss, she strides off, heels clicking loudly against the wood floor.

My utter confusion momentarily masks my instinctive loathing of Sophie, the girl who knows me. Well, apparently everyone knows me. Time to test the theory.

Later.

The people at the office were probably waiting for me.

Stalking of with wilting dignity, I suddenly realize that I have no clue where the office is. Well. Maybe the theory can be tested after all.

So I turn and run into a wall. Or, more accurately, a wall of a boy.

Yay, I think bitterly, another onslaught of teasing.

But when I look up, the apology I form chokes and dies in my throat.

Because bright gray eyes boar into my green ones, momentarily stopping time. I swallow  hard, brain scrambling for something witty to say, but he speaks first.

"Are you the new girl?" He asks quietly.

"Yeah." I respond numbly, taking a step back. Real smooth, Lydiah. 

He looks at me for a second longer and says, "Well, what's your name?"

"Lydiah," I stammer, searching for some shred of confidence and apparently finding it.

"That's a nice name," he murmurs, probably to himself. But it makes me feel like a puddle either way. "I'm Cayden."

Are you kidding me? A super hot name to go with a super hot face.

"Nice to meet you," I volunteer.

 "You too." He says, then strides away to a group of boys who give off major jock vibes.

They laugh and slip fives in his hand.

I feel my blood run cold. So I'm just a dare to be accomplished? Just a mean of income?

No.

So I waited until I caught his gorgeous eyes again, grinned widely, and made a very rude hand gesture.

The easy smiles slid off of his friends faces as the hooted their fair share of "ooh"s and "ahh"s.

Cayden certainly wasn't smiling anymore.

Neither was the principal standing in the hallway.