I couldn't get it out of my head no matter how hard I tried. His eyes. His touch. His words. It was all I thought about for the next several days. I couldn't stop it.

   "Are you even listening?" Rya snapped me out of my thoughts and asked. I focused back on the chart she had in front of her.

   "Sorry?" I blinked a few times to force myself back into reality.

   "I said, do you think he's cheating?" she repeated frustratedly.

   "Who?"

   "Christopher!" who else would Rya be so aggravated by? Last night Christopher posted a chart from the Principal's office on his Instagram story showing the running lead for Valedictorian and winner of Best Student. He was in the lead with both and Rya was just behind.

   "I asked around all of my classes to see who they'd vote for Best Student and not one of them said Christopher! Plus, I've been beating him in more classes by a few marks recently. I definitely think he's cheating!"

   "And why would he cheat?" I sighed, resting my chin on my fist.

   "Because he's trying to get under my skin!" she burst.

  I shook my head and rolled my eyes, "And he totally isn't doing that."

   "He definitely is not." Rya said, ignoring the sarcasm in my remark. "Urgh, I wish he'd just accidentally set himself on fire."

   "Accidently?" I raised an eyebrow.

   "Yes, but I'm 'accidentally'. I want to set him on fire."

  I rolled my eyes again and laughed. Sometimes I got too concerned for Rya, she was one anxious ball of stress. I just hoped when she went off to college, she'd calm down a bit. Hoped, is the key word here.

  I focused back on tying my nightmare of a shoelace. I've had the same pair of trainers for almost two years and the white on the sides now looked permanently grey. It was Cheer practice once again and I already couldn't wait to leave. In all honesty, I wasn't a big fan of cheerleading, but I joined because it made sense. The popular girl who's also a cheerleader, it was the perfect cliché despite the fact I could do without it.

   "You know you've been doing your shoes laces for fifteen minutes." The voice of Taylor Vermont commented behind me. I turned my head to look up at him looking down at me, his eyes subtly flickering to Rya every two seconds.

   "So?" I argued.

   "It kind of looks like you're avoiding someone." He gestured his head to Adam running drills across the gym hall. Shitless, I might add. So, I kind of was avoiding Adam. It angered me how one minute he could be the sweetest guy in the world and then turn into some A-class, clown-head, asshole.

   "I'm not." I lied. Taylor gave me a knowing look and I sighed. "And what's it to you if I am, huh?"

  I watched as he looked around and gave in with easy defeat. "You could say we're not exactly friends anymore." The words came out bitterly.

   "What happened?"

  Taylor sighed and rolled his eyes, he sat down next to me and began, "He keeps pretending that she's some saint." I knew who 'she' was. "It's like he's ignoring everything everyone says because, in his eyes, she could never do anything wrong."

   "It's so fucked up." I grumbled.

   "Isn't it? Anyways, I was at his house a few days ago, it'd been ages since we hung out just the two of us, but guess what?" He didn't give me enough time to answer. "Leah shows up, something obviously bothering her - whether it was for effect or not, I don't know - but she suddenly just wants all of Adam's attention, ignoring my presence completely!"

Wow, attention seeker much? I mean, what did we expect?

"I finally decided to speak up about the whole the rumours situation - you know, the one about Rya having herpes and then you and I sleeping together. She acted completely dumb to it. Adam and I ended up in an argument, Leah heard everything, and she got upset. Then he told me to - and I quote - 'get the fuck out and never come back'."

   "Geez." I whispered and looked down at the floor. "This shit show has been going on for too long."

  Taylor agreed. "Yeah, but you know whatever you do is going to be twisted in whatever way she wants it to be. I mean, don't you have to do community service or some shit at the hospital?"

   "Don't get me started." I groaned. Thank god it was only Wednesdays after school, but I had to spend hours in that stupid storage room sorting those papers into those annoying boxes. I even asked the woman at the front desk if I could listen to music, but she told me no out of fear I'd get distracted and mess everything up. What a joke!

  Rya muttered something under her breath in frustration catching Taylor's attention. His eyes danced around her figure, checking her up and down.

   "You... you look pretty today, Rya." He finally complimented.

  Rya's head shot up and looked at Taylor's charming smile. "U-Um, thanks." She shyly smiled back. I could see Taylor's happiness at her reaction. I knew he knew that Rya wasn't that into dating in high school but that didn't mean he couldn't at least try. I knew Taylor had liked her for ages and was waiting to make the right move. It was only a matter of when.

  The Gym doors burst open, and a flustered Nikki ran in, her red hair slightly knotted from the wind outside. "Si... Sienna!" she said between breathes.

  The whole gym stopped to stare at her and then me. Oh, for fuck's sake. What now?

   "Your... your car!" Nikki gasped for air.

  My car? I turned to look at Rya. I drove my dad's car this morning, but I didn't park it in the parking lot. I parked it a block or two away. What could have happened to it?

  Rya and I got up and raced to where the car was without a second to spare. However, when we got there, I almost screamed.

  My dad's car had 'FUCKING BITCH' spray painted all over the shiny, red hood in black. My dad is going to murder me!

   "What the fuck?" Rya whispered under her breath harshly.

  I couldn't breathe. Couldn't even think. I walked around to the back to see the word 'WHORE' also spray-painted multiple times on the back. Fuck!

   "I'm so fucked!" I groan and run my hands down my face. My parents were going to kill me.

   "Look, it's not that bad." Rya reasoned.

   "Not that bad?!" I exclaimed, "I have 'fucking bitch' and 'whore' spray painted on my car – my dad's car! I am so screwed!"

  Rya didn't respond and frowned, knowing I was right. I was so fucked.

   "D'you know who did it?"

  Of course, I knew who did it. There was no doubt I knew who fucking did it.

   "Leah freaking Kingston."

❦❤︎❦

I was extremely lucky my parents were visiting my uncle for the week, but I had no idea how I could get this paint off in time.

  Now, I was at the hospital, trying to do one of the tasks Roman had set me this morning.

  It was just as bad as last time, sorting out those stupid papers into those stupid boxes. I wanted to shred them apart about halfway through and through a freaking parade around the lobby with them, but, alas, that would have been bad – more on a moral census than satisfaction census. I would have loved to have seen the look on the front desk bitch's face.

  Drawing little cactuses around the French sentences I had to translate into English, I felt a presence peer over my shoulder.

   "You did the first one wrong."

  I jumped out of my skin to see the girl from last time holding her water bottle up to her chin, peering over my shoulder.

   "What the fuck are you? Some spy?" I hissed. She didn't care and sat down opposite me.

   "La plupart du temps, j'adore regarder des films d'horreur." She read the sentence at the top. "Most of the time, I love to watch horror movies." She then translated.

   "Yeah. I know."

   "No. You said 'like'." She pointed out my translation underneath it. "It's meant to be 'love'."

  I huffed, crossing out 'like' and putting 'love' instead. "Happy?"

   "I like your cactuses." She ignored the question and pointed to the page again. "Do you like drawing."

   "Kind of, but I was bored." I replied.

   "I like drawing." She said with a smile. "I've ran out of paints and the staff refuse to buy me new ones."

  I furrowed my brows, "Why's that?"

  She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms, "Because I'm not behaving well enough. It's quite hypocritical if you ask me."

   "And why is it hypocritical?"

  It was clearly the answer she wanted to hear. She rushed around to sit next to me, crossing her little legs on the seat. "You see that woman there?" she excitedly pointed to a nurse with blonde hair. I hummed in response. "Well, she a Pulmonologist – a lung disease specialist – but I caught her smoking outside the emergency exist once straight after giving an anti-smoking presentation."

   "Damn." I muttered.

   "Mm hm!" she agreed. "Oh! And those two there!" she pointed to two doctors have a very close conversation, the woman placing a hand on the man's arm and the man blatantly staring at her tits.

   "Yeah?"

   "They hook-up in the supply room even though he's married." Well, holy shit.

   "And how d'you know that?" I faced her.

   "I lost my water bottle one night and so I went to find it. I heard them after hours. They weren't really trying to be quiet."

  I couldn't help the smile pulling on my lips. Who knew hospitals could be so scandalous? I should've watched Greys Anatomy before coming here.

   "But alas! They refuse to get me extra paints." She sighed and rested her chin on her palm. Her light blonde ponytail falling over her shoulder.

   "I thought you liked numbers, not painting?" I recalled.

  She looked back at me and answered. "There's a difference. I love painting, I've loved it since I could crawl but the numbers... it's complicated." She murmured the last bit. I could tell that it troubled her to talk about it and so I dropped the subject. "How often do you come here?" She suddenly changed the subject.

   "I'm supposed to be here every Wednesday after school for however long they wanted me to." I sighed. I wouldn't be surprised if I was here till the end of the year.

   "Who's 'they'?"

   "The people I pissed off." Stupid Principal Cunningham and the stupid Kingstons.

  She got off the seat, grabbing her water bottle and brushed her ponytail behind her. "Well, if you ever want to piss more people off, my room's upstairs, Room 8. You're technically not supposed to be up there but that's the point of pissing people off." She took a long sip of water and happily smiled at me. "Bye Sienna!" she quickly turned on her heel and left.

  She was a strange girl, there was no denying it. But, the strangeness about her made her all the more fun and, most of all, interesting.

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❤︎ hello lovelies! Shorter chapter today but happy anniversary! Exactly one month today I published this book and the response it's gotten in just a month is crazy! This book hit 7k reads yesterday so I can't thank you guys enough! xx

❤︎ on another note, updating everyday can become quite difficult and so, during the Easter break, I'm planning on updating every other day instead of everyday which still is quite a lot and I've got some good chapters coming up :)

❤︎ please don't forget to vote and comment and have a lovely day xx