Chapter I: Making Enemies

It all started with detention. Or, rather, a slough.

It was one cursed September morning during my usual walk to school that I found myself lying on my stomach in a swamp of mud and leaves, with my hair in my mouth, my glasses smudged, and my pride officially diminished to the size of a pin needle.

This was no ordinary morning, for it had all started out wrong—with my alarm clock's not going off, with my parents' being out of town, and with my best friend Britt Owens' getting an early ride to school without me.

Somehow in my haste to run to school, I'd managed to trip over absolutely nothing and face plant in this delightful slough. I didn't have to look down to know that my outfit was utterly soiled. I also didn't have to look to know that by now I was twenty minutes late to school—and counting.

This was my worst nightmare—or a combination of all my worst nightmares—coming true all at once. Ruined outfit—check. No friend here for emotional support—check. Late to school—check. Late to Mr. Baldwin's math class—check. An automatic trip to detention—check.

Despair growing, I yanked my head from the slimy mud and propped myself up. Taking in a panicky breath, I opened my eyes and looked about. An elderly woman stood about sixteen paces off with her dog, just staring at me peculiarly. As if I were some sort of spectacle.

Too embarrassed to even try to explain anything to this stranger, I turned my head away and began picking myself up. Rising from the slough, I reached down and wiped off the superficial muck as best I could. I knew the undercoat was not going anywhere without proper cleaning supplies, but there was simply no time for that.

Fighting back those tears that had already begun brimming, I grit my teeth and set my feet back on the sidewalk. Mud or no mud, I was not going to let myself be more than half an hour late.

I started off at a fast walk just to regain my balance, but before long, I was sprinting again. The sprinting had landed me in the slough, but there was no other choice here. I could either be late or later.

With my lungs wheezing for oxygen and my muscles screaming in protest, I was surprised I even made it all the way to the school property without wiping out. But there was no joy in this accomplishment.

Sending fleeting glances toward my watch all the while, I climbed the stairs to the main door of Central Meadow High and shoved the door open, leaving a dirty smudge on the door handle. I felt my stomach transfer to my throat as I watched the minute hand of my wristwatch tick dangerously toward the sixth digit. Screw this!

It was all such a blur; I barely even had time to think as I stumbled down the nearly vacant hallways to Mr. Baldwin's dreaded math class. The tears had already spilled over by the time I pushed his classroom door open in shame.

And then I was forced to meet the surprised and equally amused eyes of the rest of the class. They were living for this—the nerd, being late to class and looking like a swamp monster. And then there was my real fear—Mr. Edgar Baldwin, who just so happened to be the strictest high school teacher in all of Meadowfield, Michigan. I couldn't even look at him. I was so incredibly late. I couldn't believe it. My life was over, I knew.

"Maine Eilerts?" his voice pierced the heavy silence.

"Yes, sir?" I asked tentatively, still not daring to lift my gaze. My palms were growing sweaty, so I clasped my hands together behind my back.

Mr. Baldwin didn't wait another moment before ordering, "Detention—now."

My bottom lip quivered. Had I really even dared to hope that I'd avoid this? Everyone knew that one tardy with Mr. Baldwin was a high enough crime to commit one to detention. My cheeks flushing with misery, I took the detention slip out of his hand and slowly turned to leave the room. I couldn't believe what was happening. I was going to detention. Detention!

With one last glance back, I could hardly refrain myself from blurting, "I'm so sorry, sir!"

And then I was back in the hallway, my shoulders shaking from the gasping cries I couldn't seem to hold back. I hated that I was crying so pathetically because of this—but, in my defense, I never got in trouble. Ever. I made mistakes, sure, but I was never the student to stir up trouble.

And yet, here I was. My perfect record…down the drain. Just like that.

As I neared the dreaded detention room, I imagined myself five years from now, paying the consequences for this fateful day.

"Well, Miss Eilerts, you seem to be a lovely choice for this job—oh, wait; what's this? A detention! From twelfth grade? I'm so terribly sorry, ma'am, but we're going to have to choose someone else to fill this position. Maybe if you had gotten a clean slate in high school, then you could have—"

My mind broke off mid-sentence, as I presently found myself standing outside the frightful prison called detention. Hardly believing that I was bringing myself to do this, I cautiously turned the door knob and moved my body past the breach.

What met my eyes was rather disgruntling. Mr. Hardy, the principal, was staring at me as if he'd just seen a ghost. When I looked to the rest of the classroom, I was met by another dozen sets of eyes and a handful of open mouths. Half the room looked like they wanted to swallow me whole—the other half looked like they wanted to laugh. Kill me now.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when Mr. Hardy asked for my detention slip. I tried to regain my bearings as I jerkily passed him the crinkled piece of paper.

"First time I've seen the likes of you in here," Mr. Hardy remarked in the sourest tone I'd ever heard as he examined the slip. "I hardly recognized you under all that mud."

My eyes fell to my soiled clothes.

"Sorry," I squeaked. Apparently that was the final straw for the amused half of the room. One kid snorted, and the rest burst out laughing. Pretty soon the whole class (even the eat-you-alive portion) was laughing.

All except for the one boy lounging in the far back row, the front two legs of his chair a good ten inches off the floor and his leather-clad feet propped up on the desk.

He was just unapologetically glaring at me. It was Ashton Savvonski.

I knew Ashton Savvonski—not intimately, but we'd gone to the same school since sixth grade, so I'd seen him around. We were in completely different crowds though—I was somewhat of a self-proclaimed goody two shoes, and I'd heard some pretty awful stories about him. To be honest, I'd always been a little curious about him—he hadn't always been like he was now—but he still scared me.

Hence, the fact that he was openly glaring right now did nothing to quell my detention anxieties.

The moment I turned away from him by taking a seat in the front row, I could have promised that I still felt his eyes burning holes through my back. Never mind the other dozens of eyes on me. At least the laughter had died down to only a few occasional snorts.

Drawing my damp hair closer to my face, I squeezed my eyes shut in mortification. I could see no redemption for this day. When I opened my eyes, I saw the sheet of paper Mr. Hardy had just put on my desk. According to the directions at the top, I was supposed to write a five hundred word essay on what I had done wrong and how I should improve my behavior.

Mentally groaning, I looked up at Mr. Hardy then, for he was staring at me down his long nose. He almost seemed to smirk then. "It gets easier next time."

My lips parted in dismay. Now he was chalking me out to be that kid? Somehow my shame was beginning to morph into indignation. It wasn't my fault my alarm clock hadn't gone off. It wasn't my fault I'd tripped in that slough—okay, maybe that was my fault—but even so. I wasn't a delinquent!

And now I had to write this essay about how I had messed up. Sighing at my plight, I sucked it up and dug around in my backpack for a pencil. No time like the present.

It took me an inordinate amount of time to write my essay, partly for lack of words, partly for the distracting punks with whom I was serving detention. I didn't know these kids—but they knew each other. From what I gathered, some were enemies, some were best friends, and some were into each other—like, really into each other. So into each other that Mr. Hardy had to change seating assignments.

To my dismay, Hardy had me move to sit between two of the lovebirds. So on top of writing this gruesome paper, I had to endure Greg and Lucy's making kissy faces at each other from both sides of my desk. I was about ready to gouge my eyes out with my pencil, but somehow managed to refrain. Sitting between Greg and Lucy was worse than detention itself, and I prayed that I'd never share a class with either one of them ever again.

Despite the nausea-inducing comments they kept ping-ponging over my head, I plugged on and continued to scribble down whatever penitent words I thought would satisfy Mr. Hardy. At least for the most part, I was truly sorry for what had happened—I was just having difficulty coming to terms that it was completely my fault. Life was not working in my favor today.

Nonetheless, I somehow reached my five hundred word requirement and signed my name at the top. After re-reading it about four times, I decided it was sufficient. It was no award-winning confession, but it would have to do. The self-conceited part of me reasoned that it was surely better than the other essays Mr. Hardy would be receiving today. That was really just an assumption though. Most of the kids here weren't completely daft.

As I let my eyes finally rake the room for the second time since arriving, I found myself drawn back to Ashton Savvonski. He had been moved from the back of the room to the row behind me, just kitty corner to my desk. Out of curiosity, I looked down at the sheet on his desk and found it to be empty. That made me wonder—what would his essay look like if he had chosen to write it? What had he done to land himself here this time?

From what I'd heard, he was a regular here in detention, but the other kids seemed to avoid talking to him. I wondered just what would happen if they tried.

He wasn't popular by any means, but everyone knew about him. He was the kid you didn't mess with. And he was the kid who was no longer looking at the back of his hand.

I had been so distracted by his blank paper that I had failed to notice he was now looking at me. I met his dark brown eyes for one split second before whipping my face forward again. Heart racing, I tried to ignore that uncomfortable feeling of being caught.

As the minutes dragged by, my pulse gradually slowed and my guard dropped. There was no way I would be sneaking any more glances behind me, but I felt confident I wasn't going to get any dents in my skull for the time being.

I was in the middle of pondering the meaning of life when Mr. Hardy's phone suddenly went off. All eyes were on him as he picked up. "Hardy. What is it?"

We all watched as his face turned redder and redder and his eyebrows knit together furiously. "Not on my watch they aren't!" he abruptly exclaimed, launching from his seat.

In a matter of seconds, he was out the door, and the whole room leaned forward to see the door shut behind him. Once he was gone, the class let out a collective sigh.

"Finally!" somebody exclaimed, and just like that, everyone was either out of their seats, or talking loudly, or just causing general mayhem. I, for one, was still planted at my desk and looking out in horror at my fellow students.

I had never seen so many juvenile delinquents in action at once. Nelly was standing on Hardy's desk, throwing paper planes across the room—and I thought for sure she was aiming for my head. Brent was having a standoff with a kid who must have been in the fight that had landed them both in detention. And then there was Cayden, parading around the room, tipping stacks of papers over, and knocking books off the shelves.

It all would have been fine if it weren't for Greg and Lucy. It would have been fine if they hadn't started making out on my desk. I stood up so abruptly I nearly fell over my chair. And as I stood up, my essay slipped out from under my hand and sailed through the air until it landed on the floor right beside Ashton's desk.

Feeling overwhelmed by all that was transpiring around me, I was inclined to grab my paper and just make a run for it. This was not how I had planned to spend my Monday morning.

But just as I turned to retrieve my paper, I saw that it was already in the hand of someone else. Ashton flipped the paper open before I could even blink.

"You're kidding, right?" He spoke up for the first time today.

Unable to form a response to that, I just watched with wide eyes as he stood up and then launched himself onto the top of his desk.

"Hey, everybody!" Ashton shouted. In virtually no time, he had the audience of the entire room. "Wouldn't everyone like to know how Miss Perfect here got herself in so much trouble?" A chorus of "yeahs" ricocheted across the room. "Well look, she's got it all written down for us—and with such a nice neat penmanship too." I looked on in horror as Ashton proceeded to broadcast my paper for everyone to see.

Even Lucy and Greg stopped their snogging to inspect my handwriting. Lucy burst out laughing. "It's just so cute."

Wincing, I impulsively jumped forward to grab it from Lucy's hands, but Ashton was quicker. He snatched it up as my fingers closed around air. And then, as I tried to reach up after his hand, he extended it toward the ceiling and began reading my paper aloud.

"'It is with deepest regrets that I come here today. My intentions in life have never been to upset the rules and guidelines that have been placed before me—'"

I wanted to cover my ears and curl up in a ball. Feeling helpless surrounded by all these strangers, all I could do was wallow in mortification as my whole falsely penitent speech was laid bare. Ashton's voice grew louder and louder in my head as I shrank smaller and smaller in my oversized sweater.

It wasn't that my paper had been badly written—after all, English was my best subject. It just hadn't been meant for these kids to hear. It was not my most truthful essay, for its sole purpose was to please Mr. Hardy. It was not intended to fall on other ears and be misinterpreted as the pretentious mess that it apparently was.

And I knew as I heard it coming from Ashton's lips that this paper came across in all the worst ways to a crowd like this. It would have been fine in my honors English class, but this wasn't honors English. In the paper, I sounded like a stuck up little prig. Even my apologies sounded priggish.

Make it stop. Make it stop. My mind was screaming at me, but my lips wouldn't form the words. Finally, about when I had decided to flee the scene, Ashton finished reading.

I stared at him then as if pleading for mercy, but his eyes just took on an evil glint. Looking about the room, he grinned and said, "Don't you just love self-righteous people? This has got to be the suckiest suck-up paper I've read in ages." Then, looking me in the eye, he said patronizingly, "You must be so proud."

I couldn't help it. My hands reached out and shoved his legs so hard that he lost his balance—nearly. He regained composure so fast that it made my attempt at derailing him look completely laughable. He just looked down at me and smirked.

Suddenly nothing else mattered, save getting out of this place. I didn't stop for anything as I pushed past Greg and Lucy and made a run for it.

Thankfully no one tried to stop me—I didn't know what I would have done if they had. Since Hardy was still nowhere to be seen, I was able to run all the way down the hall and out a side door into the fresh air.

Now that I was out, I let the cries rack my body as I crumpled down on a set of secluded steps. What pathetic levels could I stoop to now? I'd already been publicly humiliated. Now I was the kid in the corner crying tears of self-pity.

For a while, I just stayed there and let the waterworks play their course. But then as the fog began to clear and I was able to wipe away the trails of moisture from my cheeks, my mind started to work furiously.

From my faulty alarm clock, to my general loneliness this morning, to my face planting in the mud, to my being sentenced to detention, to the nightmare that detention was, to that punk stealing my essay…

Everything else from this morning sank to the recesses of my brain, as one name came to the forefront. Ashton Savvonski. Ashton stupid Savvonski.

He was going to pay.

I wasn't usually the type for revenge, but today was different. For the first time in years, I thought it just might be time to step away from the sidelines and take matters into my own hands.