Feline

Feline (Feh-lene)

Feline

{Pronounced Feh-lene}

Preface:

I was born in Bangor, Maine, USA, to Anita and Melchior van der Meer, who were themselves Cape Dutch immigrants, (that's Dutch people from South Africa, rather than Dutch people from The Netherlands.) My paternal great grandfather was named Felinus van der Meer, and he was well remembered for something or rather he back he did back in the day, just not by me. But my dad was pretty damn proud of whatever it was he had done, and named me after him. That's how got stuck with the name Feline. Feline van der Meer, literally, "the cat from the lake". Which is a cool enough name, but not if you'd like to assimilate and blend. Fortunately enough for me, they made my middle name Rita, because my mom grew up absolutely obsessed with American movie stars, especially Rita Hayworth. So I went by Rita, and refused to disclose the fact that my first name was Feline. This plan typically worked well, except in the case of substitute teachers taking roll (who were swiftly corrected), and when my peers visited my house. My parents still called me Feline, despite my many pleas, and continually were disappointed to learn that I refused to go by that name anyplace else. No one ever called me that except for my family, that was until I met Ethan Greene.

I liked living in Maine. We lived in a moderately small seaside town, and it was generally quiet, which is generally how I liked things to be. My high school, Bangor Central High School, was small, my senior class measured only about 100 or so kids, and the entire student body was only around 500 kids. The only downside to a school that small is having to deal with inevitable social hierarchies.

As a student body we weren't particularly very good at anything,  the exception being our marching band, which placed and took titles at numerous national competitions every year. It seems strange now, in hindsight, band nerds were at the top of the social hierarchy instead of the athletes. It's sort of inverted. At the time however, it didn't seem weird at all, that's just the way things were. So it didn't matter that I was the captain of the drill team, or number three in my class (bested only by Aaron Xu and Heather Prakash)- only reason I was ever popular was because I had been dating Logan Page since eighth grade. Logan, aside from being physically stunning, was in the drum line, which was the most prestigious position in the most prestigious school organization. The drum line had 18 spots, given primarily to upperclassmen; Logan had been a member since his freshman year. He was talented and popular, and I was his, and I became popular by association. Rita and Logan. We, along with Logan's friends and their girlfriends, including my best friend Melanie and her boyfriend Nick, were at the top. Logan and his band friends made a point to make sure everyone knew the rest of the way down. Right below the band were the athletes: football, basketball, soccer players, cheerleaders and the drill team. Then the rest of the arts: Choir and orchestra.

At the bottom were the "untouchables", named so after the bottom tier of the Hindu caste system, I assumed. Logan hated them, and so did most of the student body, on account of them being, for lack of a better word, not important. The untouchables consisted mainly of the theatre kids, the burnouts, the goths, the computer and video game fanatics, and a group who were called "the tempramemtals", because they did not have a group to belong to, they just sort of existed. They were considered the worst of the worst. Ethan Green belonged to the undecideds. He embraced it, he was their de facto leader, and my boyfriend hated him more than the rest of the untouchables combined. The peacock show of excessive testosterone is, in practice, intolerable, but it makes for a good story.

Chapter I:

"I don't get why Logan is being so weird," I complained to my best friend, Melanie, who also was my Lieutenant on the drill team. I peeled off my sweaty spandex practice shorts and shoved them into my locker.