The Wild Side | Stiles Stilinski | One

3 - Mean Girl Chic

The next morning, I was permitted to wake up to the sound of my alarm clock. Exhausted, I still managed to smile. Lydia had let me sleep in, which meant I had her blessing to choose my own outfit and do my own hair. I was finally being pushed out of the bird's nest, so to speak. Small favors.

Rolling over in the dark, I fumbled with my phone, surprised to find that I had a new text from Allison.

"Talked to Scott! I NEED to talk to you! Like, EMERGENCY! See you at school :)"

Suddenly, I felt wide awake. I jumped out of bed and hurried to get ready.

Scott McCall was the mysterious up-and-comer of the Beacon Hills lacrosse team. Lydia had burst into the bathroom last night while I was brushing my teeth, wielding her yearbook like a weapon and ranting about how long it had taken her to find him. It was clear that her new obsession wasn't going to die down anytime soon, which was precisely why I neglected to mention my text from Allison as we drove to school.

I knew that Lydia was...intense, to say the least. It was one of the things I loved most about her. She was headstrong and determined, and far smarter than people gave her credit for. But that also came with a tendency to come on too strong, exactly how she'd done with Allison the day before. Allison was still probably nervous about being the new girl; I certainly was. The last thing either of us needed was Lydia hounding us for information about a classmate we barely knew.

When Lydia and I arrived at the high school, we met up with Christine just as we had the day before, though today her perky smile was a little more superficial. I might have been imagining it, but Christine couldn't seem to look me in the eye for more than a few seconds. I wished it made me feel more confident, the way it had the day before, the way Lydia always seemed to feel when people feared her. If anything, the idea made me feel rotten.

Inside, I left Lydia at her locker to make out with Jackson, and set off to find Allison. But she wasn't at her locker, and she wasn't at my locker, and she wasn't waiting in the classroom. I even checked the bench in front of the school, in case Allison had been planning some top secret meeting in the place we'd first met, but the bench was just as empty as Allison's desk. For someone who had capitalized the word 'emergency,' she was certainly taking her damn time.

I sank into the same desk I'd claimed the day before. My eyes anxiously bounced between the window, the door and the chair in front of me. I sent a text to Allison comprised exclusively of question marks, then looked out the window, back at the door, down to the chair in front of me. The window, the door, the chair. The window, the door—

Scott walked into the classroom with his excitable friend in toe, and I quickly immersed myself in my book. I wasn't ready to talk to either of them just yet. It's not that I wasn't interested in Scott. I was just as intrigued as Lydia—okay, maybe not quite as intrigued. He certainly seemed interesting, but I was still trying to remember where I'd seen his friend before. Neither of them had been invited to the exclusive lacrosse get togethers Jackson had thrown over the summer. Still, there had to be somewhere...

Just before the bell rang, Allison sped through the door. She was grinning like a madman, which only got worse as she brushed past Scott's desk. She slipped into her chair and began organizing her things—opening her binder, pulling out her book, two pens this time just in case—until I pointedly cleared my throat.

"Hey, sorry," Allison whispered, not looking sorry at all. "I had to wait for my dad to get off the phone before he could drive me."

"Okay, and?"

"...and what?"

"And what happened? You texted me 'emergency' at like six in the morning!"

Allison bit her lip, glancing over her shoulder at Scott's back. He was still facing forward, but was sitting stock still with his head cocked to the side.