Before I can even take a step in her direction, I hear someone shout in my direction, and my day instantly sours.
I’ve gone to enough new schools to know how to keep under the radar. Being the new kid has taught me that. But it doesn’t matter. There’s always that one guy.
And apparently, he’s already found me.
I chance a look over in the girl’s direction, and for a split second, our eyes meet. My stomach flips like in one of those cheesy rom-coms, and I swear it actually feels like fucking butterflies.
“Who the hell are you?” the generic bully asks, demanding my attention. His group of friends laughs, like he’s just cracked the world’s funniest joke.
“No one,” I answer.
“Well, No One,” he sneers. “You’re in my way.” He motions to the locker behind me. There isn’t anyone on either side of us in the hall. He could obviously go around.
But this isn’t about that, is it?
I’ve met dozens of guys like him, and they’re all the same. Privileged, starved for attention, and maybe even a little deranged.
He’ll probably be a politician someday.
When I step back without so much as a single word, his face goes slack, disappointment marring his face.
Not the reaction he was hoping for.
“You here on some sort of scholarship or something?”
My brow furrows. “It’s a public school.”
“Yeah. In Malibu,” he emphasizes with a snort. “So did you just move here?”
“Sure,” I deflect, adjusting my backpack.
He eyes me warily. “Why are you so shifty? Are you sure you go here?”
I scoff. “Why else would I be here, man? Do you think I snuck in to go to gym class or something?”
He shrugs. “We have one of the best athletic programs in the area.”
“Whatever.”
I try to step out of his way, but he blocks my path.
I am not a violent person. Not because I don’t necessarily want to be, because there are times when I definitely want to be, like right the fuck now. I have plenty to be angry about, but I can’t afford to be.
The last time I took a swing at a guy like him, my mom and I were out on our asses in less than two days.
While I hate most of my mom’s boyfriends, I hate being homeless and hungry even more. Which is why I take a deep breath and calmly try to step around him. His friends, however, box me in, and suddenly I’m cornered.
No one else in the hallway pays any attention.
Or if they do, they pretend not to.
“I’m gonna ask you one more time,” the guy says. He’s up in my face now. Whatever his mom made him for breakfast still lingers on his breath, and I try not to gag. “What is your name?”
“Hollis!”
We all turn around. Yeah, I kind of want to know who’s shouting my name too, especially when I don’t know a single person in this school.
If these guys are quintessential jocks, then this newcomer is the bad boy. Dressed in ripped black jeans and a Megadeth T-shirt, he looks like he belongs on a stage with a guitar in his hand.
