WAKE (Wattpad edition)

18. Not into girls.

Soundtrack: 'Speak' - Jhene Aiko

{Kadee}

Kadee hadn't felt this afraid to go to school since Grade 7, when she had started junior high. She smoothed her hands over her hair, pulled back in a topknot to reveal the lotus flower carved into the brush cut at the nape of her neck. She'd been feeling reckless yesterday, and there were streaks of purple and red shot through her dark strands, with the lotus flower at the back tinted a watercolour wash of purple and pink.

And now here she was, hot new haircut and manicure, afraid to get out of her car in the school parking lot. She gripped her steering wheel tightly, watching the doors to the school open and close as students went in. On the first day of Grade 7, Madison and Sarah and half a dozen other girls from the neighbourhood had closed around her like a shield. They weren't here now and she felt like she had a target painted on her chest. The meme of her in her lingerie wasn't going away anytime soon—it now had thousands of views. Not that she had obsessively checked in every hour before she finally deleted the app off her phone.

When she saw Cary slope through the doors alone, she let out her breath and got out of the car to follow him in, slinging her bag over her shoulder. She'd chosen her outfit like armour: tall grey boots with black jeans and a long blouse and belt today. The mirror told her she looked strong and chic, and she dropped her hand in her bag as she crossed the parking lot, clasping the little mace can in her fingers.

The funny thing was, her mother liked her new look. She had looked her up and down as Kadee had perched on the barstool eating an egg-white omelette for breakfast and given a little head bob. She'd taken tiny steps in her silk slippers and touched the topknot at the top of her head, light as a butterfly. "You look like an 'urban' samurai." She said the word in her heavily accented English, and then switched to Japanese. "What are your classes today?"

And that was all she'd had to say about her daughter's extreme makeover. In retrospect, Kadee thought she should have guessed that a decision to choose more modest clothing was always going to meet with her mother's approval.

Cary was trying to fit his books into his locker, his rangy shoulders making his ordinary grey T-shirt look like it was worth a hundred bucks. Kadee knocked on the locker next to his as if it were the door to his personal space.

He jumped a little, then lifted his eyebrows in his still face. "Hey, Kadee."

She smoothed a hand over her hair and made her signature smile. "Welcome to the first day of classes. Who's super excited to be here?"

He snorted.

She wrapped an arm across her body, keeping her back to the lockers. "What do you have first?" She couldn't deny that she felt safer with him an arm's length away and might even have called it an answer to prayer if they had some classes together.

He pulled out a tattered piece of paper from his pocket, unfolding it to check. "English 23."

She couldn't hold onto all of her smile. Class numbers that ended in a three were for kids who had basically failed the previous year and were waved on. She used to laugh when her friends called the people in those classes the "slow-tards." She was starting to wonder why she had worked so hard to get into the academically challenging classes when there were two sets of Grade 12 exams coming up next year and a room full of snotty kids judging her. "Too bad—I have Social."

She hadn't seen him notice her new haircut, so she turned her head to show him, running her hands over the soft brush of the lotus flower. "What do you think?"

His mouth flattened in what could have been an attempt to smile. "Nice."

She wrapped a stray hair around her finger and pulled it tight, wondering how she could prolong this conversation and stay within arm's reach when all he gave her was one-syllable answers. She took a breath for one more try. "How's Jon doing? Did he come today?"