Rewritten

Chapter 1: The present

 Rewrite (n.) a person with the capability to alter the past, leading to changes in their future

 Something's nudging me. I push it away. It nudges me again, and I push it away. Nudge, push, nudge, push. Finally, I open my eyes, annoyed.

    Twenty pairs of eyes look back at me, every one of them filled with amusement. Every one of them, that is, except Mr Clark's. Mr Clark is my history teacher.

    I've fallen asleep in his class.

    Now I understand what the nudging was. The person in the seat beside me, Emma, has been elbowing me to try and wake me up. Any other time, I might have been more subtle, but it's kind of hard to do that when you've just time-travelled to the future, seen your sister get murdered, and then come back to the present in high school. I groan and rub my eyes- both to get the sleep out of them and also to make sure I've not been crying in said "sleep", and get the shock of my life when what comes off on my hand is not tears, but what I think is mascara. I never wear make-up.

    "Athena Roberts!"

    Something must be wrong with my attention span recently, because between Mr Clark and the mysterious hot guy from my future, I'm jumping around the place like a gazelle. Normally I never let my guard down since doing so is liable to get me killed, and I value my life.

    "Er, yeah?"

    "Were you just sleeping in my class?"

    I feign nonchalance. "Of course not!" I laugh, nervous. I have never had Mr Clark before. I've no idea if he hates me, whether or not I've previously pissed him off, or even if he's the type to get anal about seating plans. To top it off, the info dump hasn't even happened yet, so I have no idea who I am -or at least, who I'm pretending to be.

    "Really? Then can you explain the history of the altereds?"

    I shrug. "Which part?"

    Clearly this isn't the response Mr Clark was expecting, because he calls me impertinent and kicks me out of his class with a note to go and see Headmistress Anderson. Apparently, he's that kind of teacher.

    Of course I don't go straight to the head's office. I go instead to the bathroom which, in a very rare situation, is actually empty. And that's when I get a good look at my face. Most of it's still the same: the same dark red hair that most people assume is dyed, the same mismatched eyes (one green, one blue, with the former hidden by a contact lens), the same full lips, heart-shaped face and Barbie-tiny nose. But what I expect to see ends there.

    For a start, I'm actually wearing make-up, now smudged from my eye rubbing. My hair looks as though I've actually bothered to do it this morning because it's been straightened and styled to frame my face. This I could have lived with if not for the glaringly, torturously obvious announcement of my current social status: I'm wearing a cheerleader's outfit. The miniskirt, low cut top and plimsolls, all in the red, white and blue of London City High School practically scream popular. I nearly vomit into the sink at how sick this makes me, because that means that I'm now supposedly friends with the very people that I hate. It also means that if I make a single slip up, everyone in the whole school will know about it in moments -a result that could easily end with a bullet in my head.

    What in the hell was I thinking?

    I splash water on my face, trying to clear my thoughts. It does nothing to stop my panic attack, or the sick, apprehensive feeling in my stomach that things could go badly wrong. Needing a distraction, I decide to actually go to the head's office.