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Chapter One

It doesn’t matter.

None of it matters.

They don’t matter.

To hell with them all.

It’s just High School. One more year and then you’re free. One more year and then you’re free. I repeated it in my head over and over again, like a mantra, my new words to live by. I simply needed to keep my head down, pretend no one else but me existed in this shit hole and I’d surely be just fine. You can do this, Ariel Kimber, I told myself. Three years down and only one more to go. Piece of cake, right?

I walked through the semi crowded hallways with my head down, eyes on the wrinkled piece of paper that I held clutched tightly in my hand, taking my own advice. Or, trying to that is. It was a lot harder to do than I thought it would be to not pay attention to what was taking place around me. The noise and the people were almost too hard to resist. Almost. I desperately wanted to look up but reined in the urge.

This was my first day at a new school. It was also the first day of the school year on the whole. Yesterday had been the last day of summer vacation not just for me but for everyone else, too. Normally, I would love this day. Getting to be somewhere where my mother was not for eight delightful hours or so a day was a blessing in my eyes, and not a small one either. But this was different. Now, I’m the new kid. A hot commodity in this podunk town, I’d felt the eyes and heard the whispers from the moment I exited my vehicle and made my way from the student parking lot to the building. I’d almost rather spend the day with my mother than be subjected to this. Almost. Not really, though. I could never handle spending any amount of time with my mother. She made me crazy and sad. Two things I’d rather not be if I could avoid it.

You see, two months ago, my mother and I moved to this ridiculously small, backwoods town on one of her many crazy-assed schemes (she’d had a lot of crazy-assed schemes over the years, but this one was a doozy). She hadn’t cared that she been uprooting me from all I had ever known, the only place we had ever lived (not that it had been a good place, but still), or, that she had thrusted me straight into the unknown. No, she been a selfish cow, like always. She probably always would be one, too. There really was no hope for the woman.

I had loved my old school. It was huge. Mammoth. Four stories tall, complete with a creepy basement that had weirdly housed the gym. The building itself had damn near taken up an entire block. It had been stuffed full with kids and easy to get lost in. I could walk through the hallways with my hood pulled up over my head, entirely unnoticed, like an invisible ghost. Which is exactly what I did, and I had loved it. There were so many people that nobody paid me any mind at all. And that’s how I liked it, a nameless nobody with an ordinary face in a sea of faces.

I’m rudely brought out of my thoughts when something, or better yet someone, bumped into my side. Unfortunately, I dropped the piece of paper containing my schedule from my hands and watched with big eyes as it floated through the air before landing face up on the floor. Before I could bend down to pick it up a hand, quick as a flash, reached down and snatched it up.

Please, please just give me my paper and then be on your way, I thought to myself. Please, don’t stop to talk to me.

“Watch where you’re walking, new girl,” a low, menacing voice rumbled at me from the person who now had ahold of my schedule.

I didn’t dare look up into his face. His voice alone gave me chills.

“Whaaa… Whaat?” I stammered out, stunned by the menace in this stranger’s voice. This stranger that bumped into me, not the other way around.

“Here,” he snarled, shoving the piece of paper into my empty hands. “And for fuck’s sake, watch where you’re walking. Others won’t be as nice as I’ve been. Remember that, girl.”

Nice? Nice? Who was this guy kidding? He was crazy! And mean.

I gripped my paper tight in between my shaking hands, took in a deep breath, and for the first time since leaving the main office, I looked up and around me. Only to be disappointed. He had already turned and was walking away. I caught dark brown, shoulder length hair on a very tall, lean body. That was all I had time to check out before he rounded a corner, out of my sight.

I sighed in relief. Geez, what a dick!