Screw boys.

Screw them and their beautiful faces.

Their sculpted bodies, staggering height, drool-inducing cologne smell, swirling pools of icy blue eyes...

No!

Screw them and their infuriating asshole friends.

Screw them and their need to call me and my best friend 'scholarship pussy' just because we weren't rich.

Screw them and their need to be racist assholes to the only friend that I'd made at the cesspool that was Hartingrove Academy.

And most importantly--SCREW Parker Hartingrove and his annoying way to make my heart skip in my chest like no other boy has ever been able to do before--not even in bed.

You're just full of surprises, aren't you?

I shoved his voice out of my head.

One past memory with Parker notwithstanding, the boy was a complete stranger.

Ugh.

I was pissed off.

I hated this new school.

I only had one friend, and even that was tenuous at best considering the fact that I'd known her for a total of one-and-a-half-months.

We'd been thrown together the first day of senior year at Hartingrove, and while we each had our own reasons for starting a brand new school for our last year of high school there, we had just clicked instantly.

It helped that the rest of the school kept a wide berth around the both of us, unwilling to make new friends so late in the game.

So it was Cami and Mori against the world.

Or, more accurately, against Carter and sometimes even Colton.

I'd never asked him about it, about how he seemed like a completely different person at home than he did in school.

At his house, he was courteous, polite, quiet, shy, funny, and even sweet sometimes.

At school? He was a typical overgrown playground bully, following every word from Carter's mouth as if he were the one who was the dean's son and not Parker.

It was only early October and even I could discern the social hierarchy structure in the school.

Parker and his little group of athletes and assholes were at the very top, then of course you've got the girls who are always at their side--Leah Maren (the only senior girl in the group), Kennedy Mercer and Victoria Vanderberg, the three of them lighting the halls with their various styles of uniform that somehow didn't get them in trouble for being in violation of the dress code.

They weren't all terrible--Victoria had once helped pick up my books for me when I'd dropped them on the ground in front of everyone, giving me a smile and introducing herself in the process.

She was the sweetest person I think I'd ever met, constantly helping others, tutoring students that needed help, always keeping a smile on her beautiful face and even keeping the rest of them from slinging insults toward me or Mori in her presence.

I couldn't say the same for the other two girls, however.

Leah Maren had stayed out of my way and I stayed out of hers, same with Kennedy who was the unofficial ringleader of the girls, but that didn't mean they liked me.

None of them liked me, in public, anyway.

Which was why I was completely mystified at the fact that not only had Colton actually held eye contact with me today in the halls, but his friend Parker had spoken to me on the bus to the class trip.

Was this his idea of integrating our relationship into the public? If so, he was doing a real shit job at it, especially considering his best friend Carter had insulted us and put us down right in front of him and all his friends.

What I would've given for Victoria to have been there, or at least on the class trip.

Their behavior was always worse when the nice girl of the school wasn't with them.

Which was why, as I grabbed Mori's dark hand in mine and twined our fingers together, I kept us far, far away from the group that had, at least before today, virtually ignored our presence.

The presentation at the museum beckoned us forth, and I silenced my mind as I took in the lecture from the tour guide.

Art from all corners of the world had been displayed in this museum, starting from the earliest found cave paintings in North America to the modern interpretations portrayed on large canvasses to abstract statues and sculptures.

There was a giant ball of cotton dribbling red paint that was supposed to be a metaphor for the female struggles women had to endure that men would never experience.

I rolled my eyes as the guys behind us snickered and laughed, asking girls if they could shove a tampon that big inside them.

We ambled back to the beginning, to the first cave paintings, and finally my interest was piqued.

My major in college was already laid out and ready for me when I finally graduated, archaeology with a minor in anthropology.

Art was a part of history, as it was influenced by the experiences and situations of the times, and the art museum, while not one filled with historical artifacts, was almost better at capturing the state of the times.

People created and painted out of creativity and the need to express themselves, to escape and to state their message, whether explicitly or not.

I had been obsessed with history, with ancient humans and their social mannerisms and how they compared to humans today, ever since I was younger.

I didn't know what spurred it on in me, but learning about others was a way to throw myself into work and books, art, and literature and to hide away from the prying eyes of the rest of the world.

It was easier to slink into the stacks in the library than it was to escape my foster family of the month and the leering gazes of the men in those homes.

I would always run away, and I would always get moved.

Until now.

I was determined to stay in this home, as my scholarship and spot in the school was predicated on the location of my home. If I was re-homed again like a stray dog that bites or growls at babies, then I could be put anywhere in the entire state of California, or worse, a group home.

I would always wonder what happened to the children no one wanted in the times of the Neanderthal during Pleistocene Epoch. Were they left outside to freeze to death or be eaten by a stray saber-tooth? Or were they found and put in their own kind of foster care program before they could become some prehistoric animal's snack?

"Now, not many people would immediately think of North America when they hear about ancient cave art. The pictures you're seeing here are from the Tennessee Mud Glyph Cave. Does anyone know where the first modern discovery of cave art was made?"

No one spoke up, but I knew the answer. I had been fascinated with the discovery in northern Spain.

"It was in Altamira, in Spain."

My head whipped to Parker, who had been paying closer attention to the lecture than I had realized.

Since when was he interested in ancient cave art?

"That is correct. They first didn't authenticate the site, not believing it to be genuine, but multiple more discoveries proved its validity. The Mud Glyph Caves discovery led to surveys of caves in the southeastern states in the U.S. which..."

I tuned him out until we moved on, the tour guide asking more questions that Parker answered effortlessly.

Parker was top of his class in math, which I struggled the most in, and excelled in science and english, when english and history were my best subjects, somehow he still beat me.

Granted, he had a stable home life and his family was well off, so on the surface, I didn't see any stressors that would keep him from being the top of his class.

Me? I was practically homeless and had to work my ass off for anything I wanted in my life.

My journey to attending a top tier college required that valedictorian spot.

Applications to my big three--Harvard, Princeton, and Yale--had already gone out in the end of the summer, but I still had multiple more to send out.

Columbia, Brown, Stanford, Vanderbilt, Cornell, UCLA, UPenn, and Dartmouth were all strong contenders as well, but I'd spent the most time on Harvard, Princeton and Yale so far.

The SAT's had gone well, at least.

I had taken the test the first time for free courtesy of the school's scholarship program, but the second time I'd had to pay the fee since I hadn't gotten the score I wanted.

1450 wasn't a good enough score to get into the Ivy's, so I'd enrolled in the elective prep classes, stayed after school everyday until they locked up, then took the bus to Colton's house where I'd spend half the night reading and the other half tangled up in the sheets and his arms, only to repeat it all over again the next day and find some time in the day to eat.

I was finally rewarded with a 1490 score after everything I'd done to improve from August when I'd taken the test first to last week when I'd finally achieved a score I wanted.

Math was the subject I'd struggled the most in, but there was no surprise there.

The rest of the tour dragged on and on as we got closer to modern times, and I forced myself to stay awake despite the lack of sleep Colton had allowed me to get the night before.

I could still feel the imprint of his fingers on my skin as the memory of him trailing them slowly and sweetly up and down my arms to wake me up for a middle-of-the-night romp and while our time wasn't unpleasant--quite the opposite--that didn't meant I wanted to be woken up during the short time of sleep I was actually able to get.

"Well, that was dull, wasn't it?"

I couldn't help but laugh at Mori's facial expression.

Despite being in the archaeology club (because I forced her to so we could spend more time together) and on the track team with me (because, extracurriculars = ivy league school crack), Mori still hadn't taken well to my interests, which was completely fine.

I had joined her modern feminists club no questions asked, and though we were two of the club's paltry five members, it was still my favorite club I'd ever been apart of.

"Yeah, towards the end when he wouldn't shut up about the 'transcendent nature of using art to make a sociopolitical statement', I felt like I could've typed it in Google and it would be his dissertation in his Intro to Art I class."

We were laughing and following the last stragglers on the large yellow bus when I spotted Colton and his friends already occupying the last row. Of course, they'd raced to the bus as soon as the presentation was over.

I ignored him and his piercing dark eyes while I picked an empty seat in the middle for me and my best friend, when suddenly the entire bus stopped talking.

My head swiveled, but there was no one else there besides Mori.

The guy walking in front of me had thrown his bag down in the floorboard of the seat I was aiming for.

That said guy was Parker Hartingrove, and he was waiting patiently beside the seat, his hand motioning for me to slide in first.

My eyes flicked between him and his friends, who were watching the scene with curiosity and Colton with barely veiled jealousy.

"Um, excuse me?"

I hated that my voice squeaked out weakly, that Parker was making my stomach churn with anxiety and...excitement?

"Sit with me. I'd like to ask you some questions on the history test for tomorrow."

He remembered that we shared that class together?

I turned my head to look at Mori but she was already pushing me with her hands into the seat, hard enough that I stumbled right into Mr. Dreamy Eyed Hartingrove and his suspiciously awaiting hands.

"I'll just sit over here," Mori said sweetly, motioning to an empty seat a few rows up.

I only nodded mutely, because I was pathetically awkward, and noticed that the seat we were taking was the one with our bags marking them.

Had Parker gone to the back, grabbed his own bag where he'd left it, and then brought it here specifically to sit with me?

Why?

I shook off his warm hands off my shoulders where he'd captured me to keep me from falling face first onto the sticky and wet bus floor and got comfortable by the window.

He sat and affixed me with a blindingly optimistic smile that made my stomach churn again, but this time I knew there was no anxiety there, only attraction, and I wanted to punch myself in the face for that as I felt the laser glare of Colton's gaze into the back of my head.

This was sure to make for an interesting bus ride.