Ashley ✓

Ten | Lead

SOTC: Green Light by Lorde

"HÕLA, WATERMELONS!"

Once again, Ms. Zigenhorn made her greeting while karate-chopping the door shut with a SLAM! Of her red rubber rain boot before she clapped her hands. This was the start of seventh period History class.

Before this rude interruption, I had been in my seat thinking about last night's conversation. After Fedor had recited a long speech explaining how Francesca needed a strong Russian man and not a raging Edgar-Latino named Hector, Sienna had finally caved in and told Fedor she'd suggest him to Francesca at some point.

"I will explain this faster than my textuationships burn out!" Ms. Zigenhorn proceeded. "Today, you will all fill out a worksheet about the American Revolution reading yesterday in groups of two! Yes squirrels, I will group you up with a random amigo in the four walls of this classroom, and will definitely not pair the main character up with the future love interest!"

Everyone squinted their eyes at her and glanced at each other.

This lady was off her rocker...

"Teach, I gotta use the bathroom!" Jordyn whined out, flopping her hand upward lazily.

Isa, one of Jordyn's squad members yelled: "YO, ME TOO!" Her volume made one guys sitting next to her clasp his ears shut.

"Nah," Ms. Zigenhorn said.

"WHY?" a girl next to Jordyn I didn't know the name of exclaimed.

Ms. Zigenhorn retorted, "Because you always smell like a strawberry dipped in FunDip when you come back!"

"EXPOSED!" a group of guys with the same ratchet mushroom cut shouted out.

Ms. Zigenhorn then proceeded to name off each pair of students until she said the mortifying last words:

"Mustafa and Ashley!"

Once again, the classes's looks at me sunk into my skin in the penetration of fangs, especially Jordyn's as she snapped a pencil in half.

I inhaled as I walked over to Mustafa's desk and sat down at a chair across from it.

"Who's doing what?" he muttered, slamming his phone rather aggressively on the desk.

"I can do problems one through six, and you can do six through twelve?" I suggested, twirling my pencil to ease my sudden stress when I looked at him full-on. Oh how the classroom light in serious need of replacement cast in his carmel jaw...

Why did he have to be hot?

"Whatever," Mustafa went under his breath, going back on his phone.

I began doing the first half of the worksheet, trying to ignore the icky feeling bubbling within me.

Luckily the stares had died off and Ms. Zigenhorn allowed Jordyn to go to the bathroom if she genuinely needed to 'make her bowel movements leave the chat' so no murderous glares reached me. That'll probably be the best thing that teacher will do for me all year.

"I'm done," I finally said, putting my pencil on my completed questions.

Mustafa scoffed. "The fuck you are not."

"What?"

"You worked on that for three damn minutes and you didn't even look at the textbook," he explained. "Believe it or not, I actually don't wanna fail this stupid ass class. So do your work for real."

My brows furrowed. "Well, I remember what we read of the textbook. It was the twenty-seventh one on the shelf. The answer for question one is on page twenty-six under the highlighted section at the top of the page. It explained the controversy over The Boston Massacre on whether the British soldiers or the colonists had started the ordeal, which led to the second questio—"

"Make your fucking excuses quietly," Mustafa cut me off in a breath, crossing his arms.

My jaw dropped. "It's not an excuse!"

"You know what? Fuck it. Just give me the damn paper." His spat sliced the air in the sharpness of a knife, that same molar-crunching, clench of teeth from last night's talk slicing a sword through my soul.

Then I cracked.

"Do you hate me? Because I expect you not to like me considering how we met, but this is outrageous. You keep looking at me like you'd pull my life support plug to charge your phone," I ranted.

Mustafa leaned into his desk in front of me. "Damn, I wasn't expecting the Beverly Hills queen to talk about death."

"What is wrong with you?" was all I managed to gasp.

"Something less wrong than you waltzing into this goddamn school," he seethed. "One word of advice, bitch: you're better off where you came from."

I threw my arm back and chucked my pencil lead-first at his eyeball. Mustafa cursed out, grabbing his face. I launched my chair outward with the back of legs, speeding away from the crime scene.

I stormed out of the classroom, my face engulfed in heat and my heart inducing a twisting sensation that threatened explosion of my blood vessels. Every part of my sight blurred with melting icicles down my face as the hall swallowed me further and away from any classroom's earshot.

"STOP!"

I ceased in my position as Mustafa's Air Forces echoed against the floor as he caught up to me.

"Just because I'm spitting facts doesn't mean you stab me in the goddamn eyeball, you fucking cunt!" he continued. "Look me in the face and fucking apologize or I'll drag your ass back to Beverly Hills!"

"IF ONLY IT WERE THAT FUCKING EASY!" I shrieked, pivoting around with a heated mess of a face.

"Here's the story of why a former rich girl is in one of your playground's foster homes! Once upon a time, I came home wasted to my dad and his newest slut dead on my long-lost biological mom's feet. Okay, mommy broke their jaws and drew smiley faces on their throats with a kitchen knife! She tried to fucking shoot me when I found them, but because karma's a bitch a cop shot her in the back right after she turned off the safety!"

Mustafa's lips parted.

"You want to know what happened next? The cops played confiscate my phone, get every scrape of evidence off my body, and interrogate me for three days! Three days of being in a blue potato sack while they asked me question after question while they disassembled my mom's brain to see if she had a crazy gene! So my apologies that my fucking birth giver came out back there! I just needed to take out the fact that I have no life or friends that tried to reach out to me after the whole thing or anything out on someone.

"But I guess it's pointless because I used to live in Beverly Hills, right?"

With that, I sucked in a breath and continued away from him.

He didn't try to stop me this time.