I enter the doors to my high school, a senior. First day back to school and apparently I'm supposed to be shrieking and crying like an idiot, going, "Oh my God I haven't seen you since... two days ago!" to all my friends... wait, what friends?

But instead of being stupid and wasting my time, I run off to my assigned locker and empty the stuff I don't need into it- the binders and shit for my last three periods will be picked up at lunch- just in time to see Alexa.

Alexa Gena-Odetta Davies has been my Hell On Earth since middle school and I've always wondered if she'd cut me some slack our senior year. Guess it's time to find out.

"Hey Phil, got any more dykes under your spell?" She pauses for effect and makes a disgusted face.

"Oh wait- you don't spellbound them, you disgust them!" she cackles in her evil-but-I'm-so-sexy way so all the guys turn their heads to look at her and a couple chuckle with her, her current lost-puppy-dog follower being one of them.

"No, but I do have a couple of your dumbass exes trailing behind me- remember Kyle? Ooh! He is sexy under all that gear! You were right, Ally!" I chuckle too, but before I have a chance to step back, I feel a slap across my skin and a couple scratches from her nails.

"You have no right to talk about any boy out there, you stupid bitch! You're just some fuckin' cunt with no reason to even be! You use up space that could be filled by someone so much better. Get the fuck away from me, you lesbian whore!" She shrieks it at me, and I think she means for the words to hurt- and I guess deep down they do, but not on the surface. I've been called so much worse- I've heard so much worse. She is nothing in my mind. Absolutely fucking nothing.

I just raise my eyebrows, "I've had one girlfriend. You've had how many boyfriends? Yeah, I'm the whore."

I turn away and walk calmly up the stairs, zipping into my first period acting class right before the five-minute bell rings.

Finally, exactly where I belong- behind a mask.

***

Lunch time, I walk to my locker and drop my stuff off, then down to the cafeteria with the $3.50 I’ve saved up over the two-and-a-half months of my summer and purchase a piece of their ultra yummy sausage-olive-and-pepperoni pizza with a cheap 50¢ bottle of water and a package of Grandma’s chocolate-chip cookies.

I pay for my lunch, scan the cafeteria, and rush to the empty table I see, making it there before anyone else can claim it and sitting down. Hah! No bathroom seating today, Ally!

As I start digging in to my pizza a shadow passes over the table and once I reach the crust of the thing I look up, expecting Chase and his cronies. Instead, I find the new boy from my drama class standing at the seat next to mine awkwardly.

“Yeah? Whadaya want?” I whisper out, I had figured he’d have already heard all about me and wouldn’t want anything to do with me, but apparently I’d been wrong. Maybe nobody wanted to mess with him on account of the fact that he’s dressed in a leather jacket, black tank, and perfect-fit black jeans.

“Do you mind if I sit here?” he asks loud enough for almost the whole cafeteria to hear.

I gulp as everyone turns my way—even Alexa, but she’s glancing at new kid and then glaring back at me—and answer, “ ‘Course not. Go ahead. Table’s empty anyway.” I stuff the cookies in my backpack, along with the water, mumble under my breath about the library and dump my tray, swiftly leaving and walking toward the stairs.

This time, I’m blocked and it is by Chase and his buddies—and Alexa.

***

After they had said their ever-so-kind hellos, Alexa had Chase grab my wrist and tug me to a little branch off hallway nobody ever worried about. He took it and tugged hard enough to have sprained it and held tight enough to bruise it, so now as I walk home, I dread even more what Stepmonster will do to me.

Not that any of this is new, it’s been happening for almost eight years.