"Pizza, again?" Javier asked, his bright eyes dancing with laughter.

"Hey, you're the delivery guy so just do your job and leave me with my cheesy goodness! Judging me isn't in your job description." I teased, earning a wide grin from him. Something about his features was familiar, but I brushed it off.

"Sorry," he said in a surrendering tone, handing over my dinner. Well, it would be my breakfast too, judging by how huge it was.

I handed him the cash with a smile and a large tip, and he jokingly tipped his baseball cap at me. I waved him goodbye, wondering how one of my only decent friends was the pizza delivery guy.

I'd been at school for a week now, and Ally and I were well on our way to becoming great friends, as were Chris and I. Charlie was a little too much of a preppy frat boy for us to be best friends just yet. He was nice enough and we talked quite a bit, but we weren't really close. Romi kept to herself for the most part and talked only once in a while, and spent most of her time with Brad. Brad and Travis were best friends and, whenever he wasn't with Romi, Brad was with Travis. Travis also spent a lot of time with the other guys on the football team.

Tamsin and Millie, on the other hand, didn't take much of a liking to me. Since my mother was rich and they wore clothes from her label, they weren't outright rude to me, but you could tell that their niceness was fake.

Therefore, at this point, I could safely say that my best friends were Ally, Chris, Javier and the pizza he brought me.

I had friends from before, of course, but the distance proved difficult and we weren't talking too much. I had spoken to my best friend from San Francisco, Jess, everyday during the summer, but we were already beginning to drift now that school had started. I spoke to the others at least once a week, but even that was hard.

"Why are you eating that?" My mother asked, her nose crinkling delicately, as I grabbed a slice of cheesy pizza.

I rolled my eyes exasperatedly, hating the fact that she was back for the weekend.

"What do you mean?" I asked, feigning innocence.

"You can't afford to put on any more weight. You're already fat."

I rested a hand self-consciously on my stomach. Sure, I wasn't the skinniest girl out there but my stomach was flat. My collarbones didn't stick out, but I worked hard every day at the gym to stay fit.

I dropped the slice, suddenly losing my appetite. She was right. I shouldn't eat too much. I'd been eating too much pizza lately.

"Good girl." She smiled, her eyes approving. Her heels clacked against the marble floor as she walked towards me. She seized the pizza box and, with a cursory glance in my direction, tossed it into the trashcan, a vicious smile decorating her lips the entire time.

She quirked a perfectly plucked eyebrow at me, daring me to speak, but I just turned away and went back upstairs. I didn't come back down for dinner, and she was gone by the next morning.

The next morning, Ally picked me up for school in her bright red BMW convertible. It was very extra but, as I'd come to learn, it was also very Ally.

Physics was first period and I wasn't mentally prepared for it, having spent all of my weekend procrastinating and ignoring the fact that I had to go back to school.

For the first time, though, the seat next to mine in Physics wasn't unoccupied. Julio, the asshole in the leather jacket, was sitting there.

"What are you doing here?" I whispered, my hostility evident.

"I'm in this class, princess. Not that it has anything to do with you." He scowled, refusing to further acknowledge my existence.

"Look, I was just asking because you weren't here all of last week. There's no need to be an ass about it." I stated, unwilling to just sit down and take it as Ally had asked me to.

Even as he turned to look at me, eyebrow cocked, I knew that I was being hypocritical. I had been incredibly rude when asking him, but I wasn't about to apologize to him or anything.

However, he didn't say a word. He continued to act like I was invisible, even after the teacher walked into class.

"Guess what, class!" Mr. Barker exclaimed, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. They always seemed to be falling off. "We're going to do a group project!"

If he expected that to be met with exclamations of joy, he was severely disappointed. The class collectively groaned and Mr. Barker's face fell almost dramatically.

"Come on, it's okay!" He reassured, "We can have fun with this! You get to draw your partners' name out of a hat!"

This was even worse.

"Each group will have three people." He powered through, only slightly thrown off by our lack of enthusiasm, "Since there are twenty one people in the class, there will be seven groups. So, I'll pick seven groups of three out of a hat." He explained, in an attempt to drum up some excitement.

"All of you write your names and drop it into this young man's hat." He said, pulling the fedora off of a random guy's head. Ew, a fedora.

To my surprise, Julio was the first person to get up and drop a bit of paper into the hat, his expression stoic and unreadable. I followed his example, feeling all eyes on me. I was especially aware of a particular pair of caramel colored irises as they studied me, completely expressionless.

"Okay!" Mr. Barker said, after everyone had eventually put their names in, "The first group is Lauren, Mike and Keira."

This went on for a while, and I tuned him out until I heard my name. I faintly registered Julio being sorted into a group with two people named Kate and Ben.

Finally, he called my name. "The sixth group is Ryo, Taylor and Hope." I looked around, attempting to figure out who my partners in this project were. I located Ryo easily, with him being the only Asian guy in the entire class, and Hope ended up being a girl with dyed pink hair. I made my way over to them while our teacher called out the last group, even though it was pretty obvious that they were whoever was left.

"If you desperately want to change your groups you can come up to me right now." Either Mr. Barker felt bad for us, or he wanted us to have fun on this project.

Immediately, a hoard of people rushed to the front, overwhelming the poor, balding man. Hope went and joined her friends, who ended up being the people in Julio's group, while I turned to Ryo.

"Do you not want to change your group?" I asked, looking up at him curiously. He was really attractive, I noted, with strong features and slightly upturned dark eyes.

"I don't have friends in this class, anyway." He shrugged. His voice was very slightly accented, as if he hadn't lived in America all his life.

Deciding to make small talk, I pressed, "So, where are you from?" I questioned perkily, smiling at him. I was feeling slightly dazed in his presence— again, I was really, really attracted to him. He was, in my opinion, one of the hottest guys at school. Though, he didn't beat Julio.

Then again, I was really into Asian boys. I watched way too many K-Dramas just so I could look at the boys on offer, despite some girls I knew thinking they were too pretty.

"I'm from Japan. We moved here four years ago." He said, leaning against the table as we watched the scene that was playing out in front of the class.

"Why aren't you requesting a change in partners?" He asked, looking at me interestedly. God, he was so hot.

"Um, I don't really have many friends here. I just moved."

"I know, but I just assumed that someone who is friends with someone like Ally Blanchett would have tons of people vying for her attention." He was teasing me, and the lazy smile that was turning his lips up at the corners just proved it.

"Well, Ally's really sweet but the same can't really be said for some of the people she hangs out with." I stated truthfully.

"Fair enough." He said, looking down at me. He was a head taller than I was, and that just made him even more attractive. "But, I don't think that we run in the same circles."

"Why is that?" I frowned, though I was beginning to have an inkling of what he meant.

"Because my father isn't some hotshot businessman. He's an accountant and my mom is a nurse. We might not be dirt poor, but we're not filthy rich either and your kind doesn't hang out with people who have a number with anything less than six zeroes tacked on to the end in their bank accounts."

"Maybe I'm not like them." I stated, slightly offended, despite the wry smile he wore. Not for the first time, the thought crossed my mind that the class divide here was much worse than I'd assumed.

"Maybe." He repeated, looking at something over my shoulder.

I glanced over, and noticed Julio making his way over to the two of us, not looking happy about it in the least.

"Looks like we're all partners now, princess." He told me, smirking as a look of agitation took over my features. He scowled at his old group, which was now talking animatedly with Hope. Julio didn't even spare Ryo a glance.

I forced a smile onto my face, staying in my spot beside Ryo as Julio stood a little ways away from us, as if he didn't want to be associated with us.

"What crawled up his ass and died?" Ryo whispered into my ear, his voice amused rather than offended. I let out a sharp chuckle, that soon turned into a full-blown laugh. The joke itself hadn't been hilarious, but the context and the tone made it so.

Ryo soon joined me, though not as loudly. We were attracting a few weird looks, especially from people that I'd seen hanging out with Millie before.

Julio sent us a withering glare, like he thought he was above us. Or, maybe, he'd hit the nail on the head and realized that we were laughing at him.

"Settle down back there!" Mr. Barker called, though we could barely see him from our position. "I have to talk to you about your assignment."

I sobered up immediately, remembering exactly why we'd been segregated in the first place. Another assignment did not sound like fun, especially in the second week of school.

Mr. Barker gave us our topics and informed us that we had to make a presentation on the assigned topic. Whether it was a PowerPoint or a handmade 3-D model or whatever was something we could decide ourselves.

Ryo and I decided on a PowerPoint because it was easier than slaving away and both of us were lazy. Julio didn't make any effort at inputting his ideas, except to say that his place was off-limits to do our work at. We settled on Ryo's place after school that day and mine the next day.

The bell rang, and Julio was unsurprisingly the first person to leave class. Ryo sighed, saying that he'd talk to him further about our plans during PE, which they had together later. I was just glad I didn't have to deal with that any longer, having finished with PE in junior year.

"I'll see you later." I told Ryo, as we stood outside my next class, which was Calculus. Ryo had a class in the next hallway, so he'd offered to walk me there.

"Sure." He grinned, and I saw a dimple. He had a fucking dimple. Could he be more perfect?

I blushed before ducking into the classroom, only to be faced by an irate Tamsin.

"What the hell were you doing with that Ryo Karasawa guy? He's so unsuitable."

I internally groaned; this was going to be a long class.