The New Girl & The Power Couple
disregard: [dis-ri-gahrd]; verb; to pay no attention to; leave out of consideration; ignore.
Mrs. Wise ran the welcome committee homeroom, and to everyone in the room except for her, the tension was practically unbearable; the two cliques in the school who were in constant contact, talking, flirting, laughing, were now completely isolated from each other.
Ethan sat with his basketball team, far behind where the cheerleaders sat in the front of the room, basking in the glory of being allowed to sit with Jessica Anastos and Sasha Corrian. People would do anything to be accepted by them, and throughout Ethan's time as the best friend of Sasha's boyfriend, he had seen incredibly strange things that the cheerleaders had done to gain the approval of their captain and co-captain.
The basketball team was hardly that political. While everyone knew that Ethan Meek and Caleb Halpon were in charge of everything the entire team did, and that anything they said was law, there were no freshmen burning their clothes or shaving their heads to try and be a part of the team.
Ethan had spent three years as the best friend of Sasha Corrian's boyfriend, and there was hardly anything he hadn't been able to do; he had gone to every party in the school, thrown by everyone who was anyone, he had gotten into clubs just by standing near Sasha and Jessica, and he had scored the girl of his dreams: Scarlet Levings, a girl who was just the tiniest drop below the two Queens of Capital High on the social scale.
Then it had stopped.
Ethan was still one of the two most sought-after guys on campus, there was no question about it. But once Caleb and Sasha's relationship had come to a crashing and violent halt, there were far less of everything: parties became something he had to seek out, clubs were only accessible with a professionally-made fake ID, and anyone who was even remotely connected to the cheerleaders ceased in communication with him.
Scarlet, however, was part of the group of girls who were popular for the sake of being popular; they had nothing else going for them besides their looks.
The door to the homeroom opened and Scarlet herself waltzed in, her curly blonde hair swept up into a ponytail and her outfit leaving hardly anything to the imagination. She made a beeline for Ethan, planting herself on his lap and giving him a quick kiss before taking out her phone.
"I'm so over being in separate homerooms, sugar." She sighed, "It's like we're never going to see each other! I'm going to miss your precious face. Send me a snap every period?"
"Of course." Ethan nodded, "I'm sorry that you didn't get to be in the homeroom baby."
"Yeah, why did we let Jessica Anastos, of all people, convince us to join a welcome committee?" Caleb Halpon rolled his eyes as he looked up at Ethan, surrounded by his teammates and whatever girls were interested in him that week. Ethan shrugged, unsure of how to comfort his best friend.
"Hey, at least we're not in a homeroom with a bunch of nerds, like that one kid who always beats you out for class rank...Fred?"
"Felix." Caleb corrected. "You're right. If I had to see him every morning I might shoot myself."
The door to the homeroom opened again, and in walked two very different people: Felix Brannon himself, and a girl who Ethan had never seen before. She had dark brown hair and glittering green eyes, and she was staring right at Ethan Meek, almost subconsciously.
<><><>
Nova Desai stared at the boy in the back of the room, unsure of why her eyes had been drawn straight to him. It was most likely due to the leggy blonde girl on his lap, who was so deeply immersed in her phone that she hardly seemed to notice the fact that Nova was blatantly staring at her boyfriend with the eyes of someone who had never seen a member of the opposite sex before.
Nova tore her eyes away from the blonde boy to search the rest of the classroom, unsure of how she was going to go about locating the Jessica Anastos who was supposed to be her tour guide. Capital High School was absolutely huge, and Nova had little to no idea how she would get around the school. She had been completely relieved to see her cousin when she walked into the school, but past that, she wasn't sure about how she would get to know anyone.
"Hi! I'm Jessica Anastos, are you Nova Desai?"
A gorgeous blonde girl was suddenly in front of Nova, her green eyes harboring a desire to get this day over with as soon as possible.
"Yes!" Nova shook the girl's hand, relieved that, despite her clear dislike for being a tour guide, Jessica Anastos was at least standing in front of her. "I'm Nova, I'm new to the school and I was so worried about finding you! This is my cousin, Felix Brannon! He helped me get here!"
She wasn't sure why her voice sounded so excited, and she could feel the eyes of the classroom on her.
"Well, thank you Felix, but I think I can take it from here." Jessica smiled at Felix, with a bit of an air of discomfort and coolness.
"I'll be off then." Felix replied, starting to back away towards the door.
"Wait!" Nova exclaimed, "Felix is the only person in this school that I know, and he's been really helpful in helping me get here! Is there any way that he can stay with us for the first couple of days? It would make me so much more comfortable." She was desperate to have a familiar face around when she was out with people who she knew nothing about.
Felix returned into the homeroom and nodded, causing Nova to breathe a sigh of relief. All she wanted was for something to feel normal in her life.
"Guess we'll be seeing each other a bit. I'm Felix." He said to Jessica.
"Jessica." The tour guide replied coolly, "Guess so."
The three of them began to walk out of the homeroom together, but not before Nova turned around again to get one last look at the blonde boy in the back of the room.
He was looking at her too.
Happy Monday! I hope you guys had a great weekend! My weekend was bomb because I got my housing for college next year and got to start texting my roommates, and they're all amazing holy crap it's gonna be a bomb freshman year 🤑
-Katherine