The Ugly Side of Beauty

Chapter Two: Malay

"Look what the cat dragged in!" A guy's voice hollered. And the whole class burst into laughter. I could feel my face burning up and a lump formed in my throat.

"Stop it, you guys!" Jolene's horrified voice rang out. She ran to me and put an arm around my shoulders. This made them laugh even louder and I could feel tears stinging my eyes. "This way, there's an empty seat." She said to me soothingly. I nodded mutely, choked up. This was bringing back memories of my old school, though it was nowhere near as bad as it was there, it still reminded me of my trauma.

I wanted to scream 'enough' and run from the classroom but I could barely move my legs forward after Jolene. Thankfully, a few of the students were not so bad and they helped Jolene shush the noisy ones. My empty seat happened to be next to the all-American-guy. What was his name again?

"Oh, hey, it's you." The guy said casually. He smiled at me and I was surprised when my heart thumped in response. He was a really good-looking guy. I looked away from him quickly and stared at my table.

"Hi." I murmured flatly. He raised an eyebrow but didn't question it.

"I'm Thomson Lee," he chuckled when I raised my eyebrows. "I know, right? My parents are such evil people to give me that name. I get people to just call me Tom."

"Okay." I winced at the horribly emotionless tone of my voice. It sounded like I couldn't wait for him to stop talking. "Why is your name Lee?" I forced myself to ask a friendly question.

"My dad is half-Chinese and my mom is American." He grinned. "What's your name?"

But before I could answer, this Chinese looking girl came and nonchalantly wrapped her arms around Tom. He jumped a little in surprise and turned to see who it was. The girl sent me to hell with a glare before switching her face to an incredibly pleasant grin.

"Hey, Tommy. Did you miss me?" she tried to sit on his lap. He cast an embarrassed glance at me and hauled her away from him and held her at arm's length.

 "Hello, Cindy." He smiled at her in a purely friendly way. "Why would I miss you?" Did it make me a bad person that I enjoyed the annoyed look that flashed across her face?

"Well, we didn't get to hang out a lot in the holidays." She pouted. I decided that it was time to avert my gaze and ended up looking into the curious eyes of the guy in front of me. His left cheek was in his left palm and he'd twisted his head to the back to study me. I groaned internally. There were good-looking guys everywhere.

"Cindy, we live in the same neighbourhood. It doesn't matter if we hang out or not." I looked away from the dude in front of me to see Tom roll his eyes. I bit my tongue to hold back a grin. Cindy looked around for something to change the subject to, and her eyes inevitably fell on me, the new student.

"So, when were you going to introduce us?" Cindy smiled with false warmth at me while batting her short eyelashes at Tom. I wanted to gag at the farce in her voice. As mean as I was, I was very upfront about it back then. I had always, without fail, hated fake people.

Tom turned to shoot me a look of exasperation. The look was so amusing to me that I turned away quickly. This guy was going to make me fall for him too easily. Tom cleared his throat and I looked up again. He was looking at Cindy now.

"Well, she was going to tell me her name before you jumped me." Tom grumbled at her. He turned to me with a careful smile on his face. "What's your name?"

"Uh..." crap, not this again. I looked down, glad that the glasses on my face would hide my eyes. "Lorelei D'Vina."

Cindy cracked up instantly, and so did about half the class. Tom just looked mildly surprised. I wondered if I should take pride in the fact that everyone knew my name. Tom frowned at Cindy disapprovingly and shot me an apologetic smile.