Running Away

chapter eighteen: frenemies in the making

Edited.

E I G H T E E N: FRENEMIES IN THE MAKING

- Taylor -

It took me a full thirty seconds to recompose myself after I watched Blaire Freeman disappear, my mind still reeling. After all, she wasn't just Blaire Freeman the captain of the volleyball team or Blaire Freeman the school ambassador: She was Blaire Freeman the face of Social Rhythm, the music creating and sharing app that was currently sweeping the country. And that might not have been that big of a deal in any other situation, but it felt like one for me.

Blaire's mothers had approached Isabella for the advertisement campaign at least three times. They'd sent baskets of cookies and boxes of fancy wireless headphones and shiny pink phone cases with the Social Rhythm logo stamped onto them, all of which I'd kept for myself, to bribe her. And Is had almost signed with them. Except for the fact that she despised Blaire Freeman, and working with Social Rhythm meant working with her, which was something Isabella simply point-blank refused to do. Distaste blossomed inside of me as I thought of how controlling and dismissive Blaire had seemed, but of course, that could just have been spawned by Isabella's hatred for her.

You need to go to class, a small voice in my head piped up, and I immediately felt the distaste morph into something more like anxiety.

Class. First period Advanced Placement English. I glanced at my schedule one last time, noting the teacher's name, and then knocked rapidly on the door.

It flew open within moments, but no one greeted me. Instead, a petite and heavily pregnant woman with neat curls and a kind face gestured me inside, still lecturing the class animatedly about Wuthering Heights.

"—so, in short, that could be the reason for Heathcliff's awful personality." She finished with a flourish.

In one eerily simultaneous movement, twenty pairs of eyes swiveled toward where I was standing, still half in the doorway, with one hand gripping the strap of my backpack. I allowed my gaze to travel over my new classmates, from a brunette girl with warm honey skin and sharp hazel eyes to a handsome boy with a crooked smirk and long dark lashes, until it finally landed on one that was oddly recognizable.

She was sitting in the far right of the room, three rows back from the front, with her feet propped on top of her desk and her notebook balanced precariously on her knees. She hadn't looked up since Mrs. Hunt had stopped talking, but was still scribbling madly on her paper. She was the only one not staring at me. Her flaming crimson hair was tamed underneath a San Francisco Giants baseball cap, pulled low on her forehead and shielding her eyes from view.

That hair was awfully familiar. Before I could dwell on it more, though, Mrs. Hunt seized me by the elbow and pulled me into the center of the room. She stopped just short of the chalkboard, turning to me with a radiant smile on her thin face. It struck me then just how mismatched her round belly was to her otherwise tiny frame. It was almost funny.

"Why don't you introduce yourself, sweetheart?" She prodded, making a sweeping motion with her arm so as to encompass the twenty other people facing us.

"Oh, right," I blurted before I could stop myself. Color flooded to my cheeks as a minuscule smattering of laughter fluttered through the students. "I'm Taylor O'Donnell." I muttered hastily, the urge to spin on my feet and rush out growing ever stronger.

Mrs. Hunt seemed to sense my nerves, because she tightened her grip on my arm. Motioning to the empty seat ahead the girl with the Giants cap, she said, "Why don't you sit in front of Spencer? We don't have assigned seats in here, but that can be yours for today."