I ignore the irritating, screeching noise of some random chick insisting I sit with her, jocks calling my name and go straight to the front corner row of my Maths classroom.
I would have preferred to stay under the radar but apparently, everyone met the twins this morning. They would have gotten sick of the attention after five minutes. Mason and Maverick have never been ones for school cliques—none of us are. We prefer to stick together.
I drop my shit on the desk and slyly observe the girl beside me from the corner of my eye as I sit down. She’s reading an old and clearly loved book, not looking up when I sit down.
Good.
The new kid whispers start as soon as I give the rest of the class my back. I can barely contain my scowl when the guys behind me start talking.
"What the fuck's he doing?!"
"Way to become a social outcast!"
I rap my pencil on the desk, waiting for the teacher to get here.
I glance over in time to see her eyes flick up in annoyance. She doesn’t say anything, just leans into her hand that’s holding up her head while she reads. The cute huff she makes is enough to make me continue tapping the end of my pencil on the dirty desk.
I can almost hear the little noise Alec makes that matches his often disapproving look.
I sneak another look at her.
Her long brunette hair covers half her face but I catch a glimpse as she pushes her hair over her shoulder, never once taking her mismatched eyes off the book.
Huh, she has two different coloured eyes. Without a good look, I can see one is a light brown colour and the other is sky blue. I’ve never seen that before.
Not wanting to get caught out staring, I glance away just in time to avoid our gazes colliding.
Where the fuck is this teacher? Who the hell is this late to a class?
The girl beside me puts a bookmark in and lays the book down, sighing softly. Opening her textbook, she starts copying notes into her book. Her handwriting is neat and slanted. I notice that in her notebook there's several little drawings and maybe lyrics or poetry around her maths notes.
I look across and notice the rest of the front row doing the same at the girl beside me—opening their textbooks and writing shit down.
Everyone behind us is either on their phones or chatting.
All schools are the same. The smart kids keep their heads down and avoid the attention by sitting at the front. The rest are the 'popular' kids—usually backstabbers and troublemakers.
The rowdy back and middle rows are whispering snide comments to the girl tucked into the corner beside me, ignoring everyone and everything around her.
She either doesn’t care or can’t hear them but it infuriates me.
I turn around and glare stonily at the dickheads who suddenly lose their backbone at my scowling. The room fallssilent for all of two seconds before it grows noisy again but they're not stupid enough to start up on her again.
I know I’m probably starting shit I shouldn’t on my first day, especially without knowing the context but I just can’t help it. I have a soft spot for loners and outcasts.
She shifts in her seat in silence, creeping further back into herself.
I start rapping on the desk again out of irritation towards the lateness of my new maths teacher. It’s not like I know what the fuck I’m supposed to be doing.
The girl with mismatched eyes takes pity on me and leans over.
“He’s going to be a while,” her husky voice whispers in my ear.
“He does this often?” I raise one eyebrow and she nods.
“He doesn’t teach shit. The questions and notes are in the textbook, any other study has to be done in your own time.” She doesn’t meet my eyes when she says this.
I must still look lost because she slides her textbook over, flicking between the pages. “Notes at the front, questions at the back.”
