The New Girl

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Thea's POV

"Okay, this is for real now. Breathe" I thought to myself.
I am, standing in front of Greensvale High school and quite frankly freaking out. I should probably introduce myself, I am Thea Walter, 17 years old, and a new student at Greensvale High School. The school was started by my grandfather but is now managed by an old family friend slash my current principle Thomas Novak, or as I prefer to call him Uncle Tom.

Anyways for some personal reasons I have to keep my identity hidden in this school so here I am Thea John; John is my middle name after my grandfather's name, Johnston. The reasons are quite obvious actually. The thing is that my family is what you call extremely rich; after all, my dad is 'The James Walter' owner of Walter Incorporations, one of the country's biggest companies. My mom, Laurel Walter, is a working woman and workaholic just like my dad is; She has her own clothing brand Sapphire and has released till date several clothing lines. I have 3 elder brothers, Erik who is the eldest at the age of 24, Aaron, 21, and Nathan, the youngest at 19. My brothers and I live in the small town Greensvale, a place near New York, in our mansion situated just outside the city. You must be thinking that what am I, daughter of a billionaire doing in a public high school such as Greensvale High but amongst my reasons, one is that I was home-schooled from as long as I can remember so when I turned 16, I decided to join this school to have an experience of normal high school life; my brothers were a bit reluctant at first because apparently I can't take the pressure, their words not mine. It took me a year to convince them to let me join the local high school. My parents couldn't care less, as long as I was safe. So, with the help of Erik, I registered to the school as Thea John and became a 'scholarship student' in the school. We had to talk to Uncle Tom and told him about my joining school and to say he was excited would be an understatement, but after explaining about my plan of hiding my real identity, he understood and agreed nonetheless. I became Thea John because I thought if anyone knew about me being the Walter family's daughter, they would want to be my friend because of my status and not for me. In our world, there are many fake people who are greedy, who show-off their money in order to gain attention. We have enough of that without even trying. That is one of the reasons we are living in Greensvale, to avoid being followed by paparazzi.

Here, in Greensvale City not many people know us, but they know our grandfather. He was from this place only; he went abroad for his education in business management and soon after he started his own company. He worked very hard and built the entire Walter Corporation from scratch. After becoming successful, he came back to his hometown and developed it.

People know that the grandchildren of Johnston Alfred Walter are now living in the city but they don't really recognise us, yet. We used to live in New York before, my parents moved us there when I was a baby. Living in New York was great but the constant watching out and getting hounded by the photographers was too much. My parents stayed there but my brothers came with me, as they too didn't like living in the spotlight all the time. So, it is easy for us to manage. I mean, it was a bit difficult to manage at first because Erik had already joined our business to help Dad, he has to commute a little long to reach the office in Manhattan early. Same goes for Aaron and Nathan. Aaron is studying law in Brooklyn Law School and Nathan is studying business education in Manhattan College; they too have to leave early because the drive is longer now.

Greensvale High is not so far from our home. But because I was so nervous, I got up early and woke my brothers too. They insisted on dropping me to school but I refused, since the walk to the school helped calm my nerves.
As I was walking towards the school, I started relaxing, a bit. I raised my hands to push open the main door and thought to myself "Here goes nothing".