The Sword and the Scythe

Chapter 6: At Seventeen

Six Years Ago

There were a lot of really shitty things about being an orphan. The way that people in town stared at her now, whispering behind her back when they thought she wouldn't notice. According to Lexi Bronson's grandma, there hadn't been a kid orphaned in Freighton since the early seventies. Holly couldn't figure out why people in this town remembered stuff like that.

The admissions pamphlets for her dad's California Alma Maters flashed through her mind. She knew both USC and UCI were longshots. Her grades weren't great, and she didn't have much time to get them back on track with only one semester left of her junior year. Then she'd be applying in the fall and it'd be too late.

But God, did she want to get out of this small town where everyone knew her and her whole sad story. She'd give anything to be able to start over in a place where no one knew her so that she could have some anonymity for once in her life. Being seen and ignored by the majority of her classmates wasn't the same thing as being able to walk unseen through a crowd.

Even in a small town, she'd never been what anyone would consider popular—nor did she want to be—but in the two months since her dad had died, everyone but Peter and Tameka avoided her like the plague. They wouldn't admit it, but she noticed the way that her classmates even avoided looking at her during class, like her orphanism was contagious.

Holly leaned her head against the cold glass passenger window of Tameka's bright red VW Bug. Her friend was easily the most fashionable person at Freighton High, but it came with the high price of running late every single morning. Three minutes before the late bell would ring, Tameka finally came running out of the house, using her hurdle training to fly over the porch steps without touching them.

"We're never going to make it," Holly muttered, watching as Tameka turned the car on and buckled herself in.

She raised one perfect eyebrow, her blue eyes gleaming. "Is that a challenge?"

Holly groaned, "No. I'd rather be late than dead."

By some miraculous twist of fate, she made it to the school parking lot without being either late or dead—a new record for Tameka. But making it to class on time meant that Holly had to sprint to her English class from the parking lot. She crashed directly into Derek James as she passed his locker right next to hers.

"Whoa there, Barnes! Slow down a little, will ya?"

"Can't! Late!"

"You care too much!" He called after her. "It's just high school."

***

"And then I bumped right into him," Holly groaned, resting her head down on the table later that day in the cafeteria. "I don't even think I stopped to apologize."

"Well, at least he talked to you. All this time you've been crushing on him and he's never so much as said 'hi' to you before. Maybe you should bump into him more often." Tameka replied, inspecting the bruise on her green apple.

"Yeah but this isn't the good kind of talking to me. Nobody asks you to go out with them after you nearly maim them in the hallway."

Peter picked some lint off of his T-shirt. "Can we change the subject? Not that the hunky Derek James isn't my favorite topic of conversation."

Tameka tilted her head to the side and rolled her eyes. Peter always bristled when they talked boys.

"Oh my God, Holly, don't act like a spaz, but he's heading over here."