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"Up and at 'em, Honeybear!" my dad flipped on the light switch, and I immediately winced, using my covers to block my eyes from the bright light. "C'mon. It's only your third day."

"I have no friends," I groaned into the blanket, though it greatly muffled my words. "Ben's made, like, forty friends! I don't want to go."

"Maybe you should think about joining a sports team if you want to be as popular as your brother. Or trying actually talking to people. I'm sure that would help."

"Your sarcasm does nothing but give me a headache," I spit, almost a little too angrily, and then climbed out of bed so he wouldn't yell at me. "He only has friends because they're sucking up to you."

"Maybe it's because I'm normal, and you're a fucking loser," my older brother Ben gracefully slipped his head in the door frame behind my dad, brown hair dripping water all over the hardwood floor.

"Benjamin, language!" I heard our mom yell from downstairs, but he just laughed, rolled his eyes, and walked away.

"Don't listen to him. You just need to put yourself out there, and you'll make friends," my dad sighed, like he always did. We had moved to six different schools over my sixteen years of life, and it always remained the same. Ben joined the football team, because my dad was the new coach, and immediately was pulled into the popular friend. It took me weeks to make one kind of friend that I was sure only invited me places because they felt bad for me. When we eventually moved, we never talked again. Ben kept all his old friends, in different group messages, where they stayed forever.

It was always the same. It never changed, and it never would. Sometime within my next two years of high school, Dad would get offered a better job with better pay and we'd move again. Even if Ben was gone to college, I'd be severely unequipped to handle a new school and new friends all on my own. It would always be the same. There was no point in even trying.

"I need to shower," I told him, a small smile on my face. He always, always tried. I could appreciate that much, even if he was always wrong.

Once I showered, I blowdried my hair and pulled it into a braid. I put on jeans and a flowy white shirt with some brown leather sandals, fixing my eyebrows with some gel and calling it a day. I went downstairs and made myself microwave oatmeal, not missing my mother's judgmental glance at my plain breakfast.

"Maybe you should put some fruit in that," she said, then glanced down towards my stomach. "You're going to gain weight if you're only eating carbs, love."

"Fruits are carbs," I tried to hide the bite in my words.

"Healthy carbs with many vitamins and minerals that fuel your body," she informed me, for the millionth time, so I just nodded to shut her up. "Your dad has practice after school, so if you want to drive yourself, you can."

"I'll just sit in the library," I told her. Driving was something I was never really good at. If I could avoid it, I did. "I'll see you tonight."

"Okay, doll," she hugged me, something she always did before we left for school, and placed a kiss on top of my head. "I love you."

"Love you too," I pulled out of her arms and slung my backpack over my shoulder, meeting with Ben at the garage door.

Ben was tall, and conventionally attractive (according to everyone, and I mean everyone, I had met over the past eight or so years). He was also funny and extroverted and pretty much everything I wasn't. He was also the favorite, and he wore it very humbly.

"You riding with us?" he smiled.

"Yeah."

"Shotgun, bitch," he laughed at his own joke, pulling open the door to our family car and sliding in. I rolled my eyes. This was how it always happened. Ben always got shotgun. It wasn't some sort of revelation.

"You do this everyday. Does it not get boring?"

"Never," his wicked smile just brought a frown to my face. "You're fun to mess with, Honey."

I just hummed in response, wiping the sweat forming on my upper lip from sitting in the hot car waiting for Dad to come out and crank it. It took him a minute or two, but once he was in, we were off. The two boys in the front chatted back and forth about fumbles and quarterbacks and some kid named Todd, who was apparently very good. I picked at my nails and cursed myself for forgetting my headphones at home.

We got to school in one piece, then I followed them inside, trailing behind enough to where I wouldn't be associated with them.

I made it to my first class, AP biology, unscathed, and sat in the seat I sat in the past two days. I was just lucky we started on the first day of school this time, as opposed to the many other times that I sat confused and lonely in my other classes at my other schools.

The first change that this day brought about, a Monday, was that someone sat next to me. She had light brown hair and brown eyes and a nice smile.

"Hi," she said. "I'm Ester."

"I'm Honey," I told her with a small smile.

"Wow, I heard your name was Honey. Didn't believe it. How boring that Miss English calls you Miss Johnson," she laughed. "Such a pretty name. Honey. I love it."

"Thank you. Ester is pretty too. Esther is kind of a bad ass in the Bible," I awkwardly picked at the seam of the plastic cover on my binder, cursing myself for my Sunday school lessons that somehow popped into my head at all times.

"Yeah, I've heard the story a couple hundred times. Somehow it still doesn't trump my older brother David. They act like he killed Goliath," she rolled her eyes with a huff, then seemed to cringe. "Sorry. I'm just a little salty."

"No, same," I nodded. "My brother is Ben Johnson, I don't know if you've heard of him yet. Every school we go to, he always ends up being Mr. Popular."

"Ben's friends with my brother," she nodded solemnly, like she had heard the story before. "It sucks. But hey, we're in this together, right?"

"It's always pretty cold in the shadows, but hey... we can keep each other warm," I giggled at the thought of us sticking up for each other, even though we'd only just met.

"Wow, Ester... third day in, and you fucking ditch me," it was a fellow blonde that said it, but she was much prettier than me. Her short hair was cut near her shoulders and her glasses kind of made her look like a pornstar... in a good way. "Who the hell am I supposed to cheat off of now?"

"This is Corinna. She's David's friend. She's a senior," Ester introduced me with a sigh. "This is my new friend Honey. She's a junior... wait, you are a junior, right?"

"Yeah," I nodded with a laugh. "It's nice to meet you."

"Honey... hmm," she pursed her lips and looked me up and down. "You're gonna be a hit around here. Just wait."

That day, I could've sworn she was wrong. Turns out, Corinna was right. Corinna is always right, I came to learn.




Hi im bored and cannot stick to one idea to save my life LMAOOOO i have issues we been knew

Xoxo abby

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