Childhood best friends to enemies to lovers.
Alina wants nothing to do with the rebellious bad boy, Liam Somner.
Which is difficult, because he goes to her school. And lives on her street. And keeps showing up at her apartment, and sitting in her ki...
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I still have no one to sit with at lunch, so I sit at a random table and try to eat my food as fast as possible so I can spend the rest of my lunch break in the library, where it's socially acceptable to be alone if I pretend that I'm studying. I'm halfway through my food when I happen to glance over at Gracie's table, and realise that Liam and Gracie are sitting there, and they're both looking at me.
As soon as I meet their gaze, they turn and look away.
I keep staring at them.
After about five seconds, Liam looks up at me again, and then looks down again when he sees I'm still looking.
I feel a hotness creeping up my cheeks and neck. Liam and Gracie are talking about me. I know they're saying something horrible, because of the way that Liam keeps glancing at me with a weird expression on his face.
After a while I grab my lunch, dump it in the trash, and flee out of the cafeteria. There's no way I'm brave enough to confront them about it, so instead I just need to escape. As I'm running to the library, I keep going over in my head what they could be talking about.
I've done nothing wrong. But I know more than anyone that the smallest thing can gather momentum and turn to hatred. If Liam and Gracie are talking about me - bitching about me - then I don't have a chance.
For the rest of the day my anxiety is through the roof. I can't concentrate in class. I can't listen to the teacher or understand any of the schoolwork. I'm lost and distracted and once again, I'm falling behind.
By the end of the day, I'm almost in tears by how wound up I am, because I expect that Liam and Gracie are about to start a campaign of hatred against me, again. I remember Loren Epworth's cruel words at the Halloween party - "are we talking to Alina Wallace again?" - and I realise that Gracie and Liam hold all of the power at this school. If they want me to be a social outcast forever, I will be. And there's not a single thing I can do.
I get home and go straight to the fire escape, even though it's freezing, because I just want to sit somewhere that I feel safe, and the fire escape, for some reason, is my safety.
When I hear my Mom getting home, I finally come indoors, hoping that a conversation with her will distract me.
"What are we doing about Thanksgiving?" I ask Mom.
She takes off her high heels at the door, leaves her handbag on the side table, and then looks at me.
"Did you make dinner?"
"No," I say. "Wasn't Oscar supposed to cook tonight?"
"Didn't Oscar go out?"
I frown, because this is the first I've heard of it. I glance down the hallway towards Oscar's bedroom, and for the first time I realise that he's not home. I was so distracted that I didn't even realise Oscar isn't here. I feel a flooding of panic, because I let my guard down. I should have realised, but with everything else going on, I forgot that I need to check on my brother.
