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next to June’s so hard the metal rattled. She nearly groaned when she

peeked around her open door and saw Arabella Ferguson there.

If people thought their Mondays were rough, they should try one at

Fairfield Upper Academy. The private high school catered to Cincinnati’s

elite. The tuition for a year cost more than most people paid for college

admission. The chances of getting into a good college were increased by

attending a good high school like Fairfield, and June’s parents had urged

her to take all her brightness and bundle it into applying for a scholarship.

It was rough, going to a new school for her last year. She didn’t know

anyone when she’d started and all the rich, spoiled, entitled kids knew she

was both fresh meat and hadn’t grown up in the same gated communities

and mansions with freaking pools in the backyard and sports cars in the

driveway.

Arabella turned to her group of friends, four other girls who were all

various shades of blonde. None of them were as pretty as Arabella. They

didn’t dare upstage her, and all of them, including Arabella, were on the

cheer team.

She held her nose in June’s direction and pretended to gag. “Ugh, it

smells like old trash. Rotting garbage. That’s it. Right. Poverty. The stench

of little miss ‘call on me in class all day because I’m so smart that I got a

scholarship to be here’.” Arabella laughed obnoxiously and Christine,

Charlene, Aberdeen, and Savannah joined in, their forced giggles feeding

Arabella’s mean-girl giggles.

“I heard your dad’s a mechanic. He spends all day working on the cars

he’ll never be able to afford. Must be hard, wanting something so badly,

knowing that you’ll never have it. Oh, I have an idea. Maybe I could talk to

my dad, and he could come work for us. My dad is always complaining

about how his cars need tuning this and fine tuning that and whatnot. Oh,

wait. I’m sure he doesn’t work on things like that. Probably just the regular

junk the rest of the world drives. But if your family needs the help, I could