WATTPAD BOOKS EDITION
Can she be herself in a one-size-fits-all world?
Lori Palmer is the new girl at Bay Water High, where students prize glossy hair, beach bodies, and school spirit above all else. She misses her old school―where her talent as an...
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I arrived at BWH and surveyed my surroundings.
Gorgeous girls with oversized beverages in hand walked past me, sucking on long straws. These were probably the same girls who made those blue, smoothie bowls for breakfast with those cute, star-shaped cutouts of dragon fruit.
Boys with rippling muscles also walked past, oversized beverages in one hand, protein bars in the other. And they all seemed so perky. Smiles, bright eyes, and bushy tails, and I wasn't even inside the building yet. I was walking past a row of perfectly polished SUVs that had uniformly ramped the pavement to drop off the kids. Moms in activewear, gossiping to each other in hushed tones. Dads in suits, looking busy and talking on their phones as they climbed out of their overcompensating midlife crisis Maseratis—Kinda like my own dad, I guess. I'd made my mother drop me off a block away from school. I didn't need her causing a spectacle, adding to the overall nail-biting stress of this day.
I pulled the finger from my lips, thrust my head into the air, and tried to look as unfazed as humanly possible. Cool, calm, confident. Breathing in negativity, breathing out positivity, looking for silver linings . . . or something like that. I made my way past the cars and found myself at the school entrance, and just as I'd suspected, the cool kids were all standing outside waiting, talking, laughing. Have you noticed how they always seem to move in packs? Like little meerkats. Hyenas. Swarms of bees. I lowered my head again and resisted the urge to bite my cuticle.
A steep flight of stairs rose up in front of me, and I sighed. My body and stairs aren't exactly friends, and the last thing I needed was to be out of breath when I reached the top. That would draw even more attention to me, and I hated attention. At that moment, a girl and a guy walked past me, arm in arm, laughing, looking like a pair of Insta models and taking the stairs two at a time: #couplegoals.
Despite my previous silver lining–laced thoughts, I was beginning to get the distinct impression that I wasn't going to like it here, nor was I going to fit in. I hoped this was going to be worth it. But judging by my brother's first day at school yesterday, it was unlikely. As my mom and I had been leaving the school, he'd burst out of the classroom, thrown himself onto the gate, and tried to climb over it while screaming at the top of his lungs. Let's hope day two would be better.
I made it to the top of the stairs, impressed that my breathing hadn't even kicked up a notch—probably due to all the nervous adrenaline surging through my veins.
"Hey!" someone called, but I didn't look up. Surely they weren't talking to me?
But when a foot entered my field of vision, and a body blocked my path to the entrance, I was forced to look up.
"Hey, are you the new girl?" conditioner commercial asked, her blue eyes and hair actually glinting in the morning light.
"Uh . . . yes. Lori," I stuttered, averting my gaze.
"Hi! I'm Amber Long-Innes, and this is Teagan." She sounded so perky, as if she was high on the sunbeams themselves. I looked from her to Teagan, who in contrast to Amber was olive-skinned and dark-eyed, with the poutiest lips I'd ever seen. Then her lips parted, and she smiled at me. I was almost knocked off my feet, it was so big and luminous.
Okay, okay. I have a confession to make. A big one. As much as I like to mentally slag off girls like this, silently judge and mock, I'm jealous as hell of them. There, I said it! Not to mention truly and utterly intimidated. My acerbic, inner sarcasm is just a defense for my outward fears and insecurities. Dr. Finkelstein once explained that defense mechanisms were essential to survival, that many creatures had them. Well, at least I wasn't a Malaysian exploding ant.
"I'm president of the BWH SRC," Amber chirped.
"SRC?" I was unfamiliar with this acronym.
"Student Representative Council," she cooed.
"And I'm VP," Teagan added.
"My portfolio is HOSS," Amber continued, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her perfectly shaped ear. She reminded me of Goldilocks, except you could see she didn't eat bowls of porridge.
"And mine's PPC," Teagan jumped in. They talked as if they'd rehearsed this speech many times before, expertly jumping from line to line, like actors on a stage.
"HOSS and PPC?" I asked, when it looked like they'd finally finished the scene.
"Head of School Spirit and Primary Peer Counselor," Amber qualified.
I'd suspected this school was overflowing with teen spirit. Still, I hadn't expected "Spirit" to be an actual thing. The only teen spirit I had was that old Nirvana vinyl that I'd found in a vintage store in Joburg.
"It's our job to show new students around and introduce them to the school."
"Introduce?" I looked into Amber's ridiculously clear blue eyes as panic slid a cold finger down my spine. I tried to push the panic down. I've learned that showing the enemy how you really feel is not a good idea. They can, and will, prey on it.
But then Teagan did something unexpected; she pulled me into a hug. "Welcome to BWH, Lori."
"Uh . . . thanks!" I was surprised by what seemed like a genuine show of friendliness. Maybe I'd judged everyone here too soon? Maybe.
"Great! We'll do the introduction in assembly first period," Amber said casually, and then they both turned, flipped their hair at the same time (had they rehearsed this move too?), and walked away. I stood there, unable to move, as if the rubber soles of my shoes had melted into the hot concrete. Which was conceivable, since it was scorching today.
"Aren't you coming?" Amber turned, tilting her head and looking at me from a different angle. I wondered if she was thinking, Nah, still fat from this angle. I sucked my stomach in quickly in an attempt to appear more streamlined.
"Uh . . . I . . ." Dammit. I exhaled when I realized that the stomach-sucking had caused my voice to rise two unnatural-sounding octaves. "Suuuure." I tried to sound casual even though every cell, nerve, fiber, and muscle in my body wanted to turn around and run, run, run!
***
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