#NewGirl

High school, the start of spring, and the falling of cherry blossom petals onto sidewalks crowded with students. The feeling of butterflies in your stomach as you tug at your freshly ironed uniform and tuck away stubborn strands of hair behind your ears to make a good first impression.

A giddy nervousness settles in the nerves of a young girl. She’s a bit late to her first class, but she’s hopeful. These were supposedly going to be the best years of her life and-

And then it’s the taste of pavement after being rammed into violently like a fist to a punching bag.

These are supposedly going to be the best years of her life.

“Sorry, didn’t see you there!”

It isn’t the violent fist of life coming to wake this poor student from her dreams of the perfect high school experience.

It’s far from that.

Instead, it’s a radiant girl on roller skates with a lion’s blonde curls and dark brown eyes that never seem to waver with doubt. She has a whole collection of bracelets on her wrists and a couple of colorful clips pinning back her golden hair.

Decorated about as much as a Christmas tree in a department store.

Her upbeat energy resembles the sun.

Blissful and confident.

“I’m Honey,” She says with a brilliant smile.

This ray of blinding sunshine extends a freshly manicured hand to her poor victim, helping the student back onto her feet. Honey brushes the nonexistent dust off the student’s uniform skirt and although discouraged by the fall, the student feels heat rise into her cheeks.

Then the warmth leaves her face all at once.

“Make sure to follow me on Sinstagram at hunnie.bunnie143!”

The sun skates away.

This is Honey.

She weaves around other high schoolers as she races down the block, phone clasped in her hand like it was her own heart. And it is, in a way, because when she checks her follower count for the third time that morning, it has increased by 3 and so does her blood pressure.

3 is nothing.

Even her 7 AM post is down a couple of likes more than usual. At this rate, she’ll never catch up to where she was before, the year before she started on a clean slate.

Her first year of high school buries itself somewhere deep in the back of her thoughts and slinks out in her frustration. It’s a memory she shakes out of her head.

Forget it.

Honey frowns, knocking another student out of her path. This one doesn’t look like they even own social media so she skates on and tosses a careless apology over her shoulder.

The wheels of her roller skates are unaware of the couple toes they run over and the looks of annoyance as they fly past mobs of uniform-clad teenagers. Honey smooths out her own skirt and pats down her fringe to cover the abomination of her forehead.

The bangs are new and it took her all break to style them properly for her debut as the new and beautiful transfer student.

After today, her fellow classmates will be dying to follow her on social media to save themselves from their desperately boring lives.

How could they resist?

Her path of destruction, and more than a couple of aching feet, follow her all the way to Godforsaken High School, which stands like a colossal concrete brick beside the main street.

It has no color, no character, and no distinguishable traits that set it apart from a prison block. Some of the letters spelling out the name at the front gate are missing so now it technically says, “_o_forsake_”.

Just as ugly and depressing, a few students loiter around the front courtyard puffing on cigarettes and watching a skirmish break out near the shoe lockers.

Everything is gray or black or wearing something that went out of fashion years ago and teenagers not attending this shoddy school sigh in relief as they hurry past it.

Honey, however, stands triumphantly at the front gates, sporting her pink skates and particularly flamboyant cardigan like a lion looking at its prey. She’s a stark contrast of color, sticking out like a sore thumb and stirring a couple of snickers from the other Godforsaken students.

Perfect, she thinks, these people must be starved for a pretty face!

Without any other comparable potential, Honey has no competition. By this time tomorrow people will be fawning over her and finally, FINALLY, she can regain some of her lost dignity.

Then she can wipe that smug look off a certain face, the queen of her previous school with the very punchable features.

Honey holds onto that fact to fuel her determination.

This time. This year for sure.

Again she tries to adjust her bangs over her forehead but gets a hard shove to the side.

“You’re blocking the path, bimbo.”

Spits a student that looks like the other end of a toilet brush. His hair sticks out from his head like it hasn’t been washed in weeks.

Certainly smells like it too.

Luckily, someone catches Honey before she falls and it might have been a chivalrous act if said individual didn’t throw her back like unwanted garbage. And if she didn’t roll over his feet with her skates.

She whips around to give this idiot a piece of her mind.

Behind her looms a student too tall to be a teenager and too intimidating to be a high schooler, whose picture would come up under the definition of a delinquent.

Well, almost.

His straight black hair is swept out of his dark eyes with a hairclip that screams dollar store kid’s accessory. Plastic butterfly and all.

Great. A weirdo.

Honey’s glad to be out of his arms and now a safe distance away. She wonders if it’s even worth it to promote her Sinstagram...then realizes she doesn’t want him following her on any sort of platform.

“Watch it,” He says in a voice cold as ice.

Toilet brush and his little gang have their necks shrunken into their shoulders as if it made them less noticeable. Whoever the weirdo was, they cowered like dogs being caught rummaging in the trash.

Not as snarky as before.

He stutters to come up with some sort of coherent response, but the best he can mumble is, “what’s it to you”.

Honey’s nose scrunches up.

She doesn’t like this. Mainly because she has to be seen conversing with these two, but also because she feels misplaced in this awkward power dynamic.

If Honey isn’t superior, she doesn’t bother.

“Ugh, I’m out of here,” Honey tucks her phone into her shirt pocket and simply leaves.

Not worth her time or her budding reputation.

She won’t get into a fight today. Her uniform and sweater are brand new, a single blemish would ruin her chances of an explosive first impression. It would be above average at least, but not enough to be the most popular girl at Godforsaken High.

Honey, optimistic and oblivious, doesn’t know what she had gotten herself into.