Papillon

Chapter 10: A Threat

Bella

Alana Martin was a new girl in school. I noticed her on her very first day. She had long raven black hair that was as silky as Pantene commercials made you think and very blue eyes.

If she were nice, I honestly might have considered making her my friend, but she was not. It had only been two weeks since school started but she was already coming for my fucking throne in every which way.

I knew, immediately, she was a threat. To all I held dear–which was, excelling in everything I did.

She joined the cheer team and was immediately placed on Varsity just because she was a junior like me. She was vying for a position on the student leadership board like me. And, she was starting to get a lot of attention already, like me.

Normally, I wouldn't give a flying fuck, but Alana bothered me. It would be easy to say I didn't know why but I did. The reason, though–not one I was keen to share with people because I didn't fucking understand why it bothered me anyway.

A couple weeks into school, I was in the locker room after school, changing into my uniform and talking to my friends when Alana strode toward us. It took everything in me to contain the instinctive eye roll.

"Bella," she purred. "How are you, darling?"

Tossing my hair over my shoulder, I smiled sweetly. "Wonderful. You?"

"Fantastic," she grinned.

This was how all our conversations went. Polite, kind, fake. Given the right ammunition, we'd take each other down without a second thought.

Alana seemed to be everything a little more than I was–longer legs, bigger boobs, bluer eyes. She was skinny and tall, and her hair seemed to be naturally wavy and flawless too. The resentment between the two of us was solely because we had the kind of personalities that just clashed.

We were both major alphas. We needed to rule everything we saw. We needed to be on top of the world.

But the thing is, there could only be one.

This was my fucking school. I didn't want her anywhere near here.

We practiced on the soccer field because apparently, girls in cheerleading uniforms were too distracting for the football players. As much as I tried to tell their coach that we'd be on the field regardless at least during game day, he didn't really care.

What was it with men and their inability to keep their eyes to their fucking selves? Were they so utterly incompetent?

Practicing on the soccer field had different issues though and here–enter the real reason I didn't like Alana. She'd set her sights on the captain of the soccer team and Manhattan Prep's ultimate catch, Francis Duval.

Francis was French of course, which immediately gave her some extra points. He was annoyingly hot as fuck, even I had to admit. Long legs that were made to run and a torso that looked big and strong under his shirt–that he never took off, a permanent member of the shirts team rather than skins. The dirty blond curls and those fucking greens were next to nothing compared to the fact that he was an enigma. No one knew a single thing about him.

So, yeah, she wanted the heart of the elusive bad boy who the entire school fawned over. See, I had always surrounded myself with attractive people. Unfortunately, my brother's ridiculously perfect face got a lot of attention all the time and Ariadne was very pretty too, even if she didn't give a fuck about impressing anyone. The Hales were stunning as well. Damon was a quiet mafia king who stayed under the radar for the most part, but Robyn was drooled over everywhere she went–even if she was blissfully unaware of it.