Liar, Liar (Book 2 in the Hide and Secret Series)

(2) Jill's POV

When I got to my locker, I wasn't too pleased to see another girl leaning against it.

I'd had a rough start to my morning. It had begun with my mother criticizing my outfit and how my hair looked. "You look disheveled, Jill. Remember, a Hemmings woman never shows weakness... Even if you have a lot of weaknesses."

Later on, as I tried to smuggle food to Serena, because she'd run out of her house without eating, my mother made another nasty comment. "Another banana, Jill? Looks like I'll have to schedule some extra time with my personal trainer for you."

And throughout it all, my mother was always going on about her new intern she'd scored over the summer, who was my age and apparently was the second freaking coming of God. My mother talked about her so much that I practically knew the girl and hated her even though I had never met her before. I was always being compared to the bitch. My own mother seemed to love her more than me.

"My new intern is such a hard worker, Jill. You should really take a page from her book if you want to win valedictorian." (Message implied: My new intern is much smarter than you, despite the fact that you're ranked third in your graduating class.)

"My new intern is blessed with natural beauty. And of course, she knows how to enhance her assets properly." (In other words: Jill, you will never be as beautiful as I want you to be, despite the fact that mothers are always supposed to say that their daughters are beautiful.)

I was getting awfully sick at hearing about Mom's holier than thou intern. I said sarcastically once that if she loved her intern so much, then why didn't she just adopt her? She had looked like she was actually considering the prospect.

School was my only solace right now, because it was the only time that I could get away from my mother's harsh criticism. And right now, all I wanted to do was have access to my locker so I could put stuff inside of it, jet off to Homeroom, and finally feel like I could do something right.

And that was hard to do when some bitch was using my locker as her own personal lounge spot.

I narrowed my eyes, and channeled my Popular Bitch Mode. I could still do it very well, even though I had mellowed out recently. But sometimes, the tone came out around people that I simply couldn't tolerate.

For example, Zach Glenn. I had tried, I really had. Apparently he was doing sound crew for the school musical that was coming up, so he had bonded with Serena over their combined love of musical theater. And he'd been Taylor's friend before the whole mess. But I could not, and probably would never be able to, tolerate Zach. He was just so unbelievably annoying to me. And weird. He took photos of roadkill and called it art. The dude ordered stuffed, previously living animals online and kept them all in his bedroom. And I don't think he ever forgave me for how I treated him back when I was a bitch.

Okay, admittedly, I still was kind of a bitch. But I was improving, sort of.

I stormed over to the girl who was blocking my locker. She was so engrossed with staring at her fingernails that she didn't even notice me coming over. I took the time to observe her. She was dressed preppy, almost like my style, except for her shirt was wrinkled a little bit. I clearly wore the look better.

I cleared my throat to get the mystery girl's attention, and she looked up with surprise.

"Oh, hi!" she said cheerfully, holding out her hand for me to shake. "I'm Cheryl. Cheryl Missini, but you can call me Cheryl. Because calling someone by their first and last name would be a little weird, wouldn't it? Anyways, I'm new here, so I don't really know my way around. Could you maybe tell me where..."

I held up a hand to stop her from talking. Her voice was already too chipper, especially at this early of an hour. "You're standing in front of my locker. Could you move?"