Death writes with a Purple Ballpoint Pen

2: The British Boy named Ben

Dedicated to AshlynHeart. You made my heart swell with your comment on the last chapter.

Wade Poezyn as Ben, yo. Swoon with me, swoon. Also, All Time Low by Jon Bellion.

2: The British Boy named Ben

After a quick breakfast prepared by Dad – he was the cook of the house – both my parents drove me to school.

As if I was a twelve year old and not in twelfth grade.

Most kids thought it was weird that a license-toting eighteen year old was still being driven to school by my parents. It's helped me cultivate and keep the image my parents wanted me to go for: quiet, nerdy, weird.

"Now that you guys want me to be popular and all, do I get to drive myself to school now?" I asked excitedly.

"Don't shoot for popularity, Anna," Dad reminded me from habit. "And we haven't really gotten to planning that part yet. We thought you'd be excited from just the idea of it."

"Wow." My voice conveyed as much excitement as a person about to go through a root canal. "I'm totally on the edge of my seat right now."

"I don't think it wouldn't hurt if you had the car for some days," Mom amended. "It's not like we need it."

Our three-bedroom apartment was right above our travel agency so my parents really had no daily commute. Driving me to school, and picking me up afterwards too, was their excuse to get out of the neighborhood. They had a years-running joke that it was their only chance to see the outside world.

I would laugh but in a way they knew I thought it wasn't funny at all.

"I get the car tomorrow," I reminded my parents when I stepped out of the station wagon in front of the school. They nodded and with a wide smile, I waved them off yelling, "Bye Mom, bye Dad!"

The group of freshmen nearby stared like I was an alien.

There goes my running start to ridding myself of the weird girl mantle.

Old habits really were hard to break.

I sighed and shuffled into the school.

Senior and sophomore lockers were in the West Wing of the school's two-floor building. Assigned alphabetically, I had the wonderful pleasure of getting a locker at the far end of the school – and on the second floor, to boot.

I didn't mind the walk.

I did mind the person whose locker had, since freshman year, always been next to mine.

There was only one other kid in my class whose last name ended in W – Oliver Wood. And in the universe of Fells High School, Oliver was the jackiest of jack asses, the holiest of assholes, the sluttiest of man-sluts.

The last one was a bit much. Maybe.

Oliver Wood was on the way to looking like a GQ model, sure, but that didn't justify having his own entourage – made up mostly of drooling girls and his loud teammates from the swim team – who flocked around his locker every day.

Sometimes, I wished I could freak people out. Open and slam my locker shut with my mind, do it three or four times for good measure. Maybe they'd think it was haunted and stay away for good.

But in keeping up the whole invisible, geeky human facade, I'd been forced to 'excuse me' my way through the throng – a technique that didn't work with those enamored by Oliver's magnetic presence.