When people stare at me, I stare right back, right into their eyes, until they can't handle the pressure. That always does the trick.

"You're doing it again, Soph," Esmeralda says through her unfinished yawn.

"Doing what?"

"Giving stank-eye to anyone who looks your way. It's like you're plotting to flay them."

"But..." I pause to think. "I am plotting to flay them."

Esmeralda chuckles. "Then, nevermind." She snuggles against the bus window in a ball of mahogany legs and long skirts and it's my job to wake her if she starts snoring. It's the first day of high school, and Esmeralda isn't even excited.

The boy from before keeps eying me whenever I'm not looking. He's got full, pink lips and bright green eyes but his cheeks are riddled with acne and he keeps sucking on his braces and snorting his snot.

Yuck. Blow your nose already.

The familiar disgust creeps over my skin, but it becomes stronger than ever as we step off the school bus and over the concrete walkway towards the main school building.

I hate people.

Middle school was bad, but high school feels like everyone has fully embraced the pathetic persona they assumed for themselves when they were thirteen. I've probably got a persona too, but that doesn't prevent me from seeing everyone else's.

And gagging.

We get lost finding the homeroom and getting our schedules. Then get lost as we search for the history classroom. If you disregard for a moment that Esmeralda is like one of maybe five black kids in this entire school, we just look like normal girls, cracking jokes as we take yet another wrong turn.

I guess that's what happens when we finally do find our way into the history classroom and the students that are already there take our measure. They all think we're normal.

In terms of looks, I give Esmeralda and myself a ten out of ten. Me with my naturally ginger hair and perfect butt and Esmeralda with... basically her everything. We know it. They see it. Their eyes follow us as we choose seats.

First impressions are so misleading.

There's a group of guys on one side of the room and a group of girls on the other. I don't take the time to look at anyone. I don't care about them enough to give them even that much attention. But I hear the grinding of a chair being moved, and then slow footsteps. I sit in my chosen seat, unzipping my lilac Jansport bag to take out a new notebook.

Two palms come resting on the tabletop in front of me. I know whose hands these are. Even before I lift my gaze, my left eyebrow is twitching in annoyance.

I look up.

A combination you just don't see often enough is bright blue eyes and dark skin. Obviously, it's more genetically difficult, but the effect you get is like putting sapphires on black velvet. That's Shawn Henderson. Even I — a girl who knows how much of a douchebag he is — am not immune to those blue eyes with their frame of black lashes and tanned skin.

"What do you want?" I ask in a low voice.

He arches his eyebrows but I pay more attention to Esmeralda who's eying him with her mouth cocked to the side.

He doesn't even notice her. He's having too much fun pissing me off. "Just observing the wild Fee in her natural habitat."

"You think this is my natural habitat?" I try not to scoff, but I don't try hard enough. He's using that ridiculous nickname again.

He nods his head towards the group behind me who are, doubtlessly, staring at our exchange. "It looks to me like it fits like a glove."

"Even the class psychopath post is taken," I say and maybe I sort of want to be the only class psychopath.

"What? Who's the class psychopath?"

I make the slightest gesture towards the group of girl. "That blonde," I say.

Shawn looks over and yeah, he sees her alright, it's plastered all over his face.

"She's Ashley Glick," I continue. "Don't touch that, Henderson, she'll eat you alive."

"She's got all those friends. What makes you think she's a psychopath?"

Both Esmeralda and I snort but he doesn't notice. He's too busy ogling Ashley.

"Anyway, Fee," he says, snapping back to me. "After school today a bunch of us are going to —"

"No," I cut him off.

"You didn't even let me finish."

"You didn't even have to begin."

"Listen, I'm offering you an opportunity to step up in society. This is high school, nobody knows you here. This could benefit us both. Dave Sharpe, the basketball captain, was totally..."

This time, I don't have to say anything, he trails away just from the look I give him. Shawn Henderson does not have a death wish.

"I'll speak slowly so you'll understand," I say in a voice so low nobody but him could hear me. "In here, we're strangers. You don't know that I exist and I don't know you exist. That's how it's going to be from today till we graduate. If you don't want me to saw off your foot and force you to eat it, you will never again include me in your plots and schemes. Am I clear?"

He pulls back, furrowed brow casting a shadow over his face. His teeth gnash together.

"Am I clear?" I repeat myself.

"Very." I can't say I don't get a kick out of the look of complete fury that passes over his face. It's there and then it's gone, but I saw it and his rage belongs to me.

Esmeralda and I watch him leave, then she leans in towards me. "Was that... Greasy Fart-Face?"

"Yup. And you finally got to meet him."

"That went well."

I grin, feeling great with myself. I've just made high school eighty percent more bearable. "He's never gonna mess with me."

★ ★ ★