CHAPTER FIVE
Dani
I’m not nervous; I’m focused.
I looked in the bathroom mirror and repeated the reminder, even though it was total bullshit. Nothing was worse than the rst days at a new school, and nervous didn’t begin to cover it.
But over the years I’d discovered that if I focused on what Ineeded to get out of a new school, it made me feel more in control and marginally less… well, powerless. Instead of worrying about things like people judging me or where I was going to sit at lunch, I zeroed in on what mattered.
For example, I wanted to go to Harvard next year.
I wanted to go to Harvard so badly. I wanted to go to Harvard like Lorelai wanted Rory to go to Harvard.
When I was in grade school, my dad was stationed at Hanscom Air Force Base, just outside Boston. My mom used to take me to Harvard for fun, and we’d spend entire autumn days exploring the campus while the leaves were in full color. She fed me Lunchables in Harvard Square, and I fell madly in love.
I’d never been able to put my nger on exactly whatI loved about it, but Cambridge was my happy place.
So, yes, my only goal in life at the moment was Harvard.
I’d discovered over the past few years that when everything in your life sucked, making an absurd college goal your primary focus became an extraordinary diversion.
Lacking in the friends department at your new school?
Who cares? You need to focus on getting into Harvard.
Is that volleyball player mocking you behind your back again?
Who cares? You need to focus on getting into Harvard (and that bitch could never get in, by the way).
So what I needed from Southview was Harvard insurance, since I’d been freaking deferredand was still waiting on acceptance. I needed to maintain my perfect GPA, meet with a counselor to keep my goals on track, and make sure that the only thing admissions saw when they nally reviewed my application again was that I’d landed in Minnesota with my Harvard-destined nose to the grindstone.
The focus of my rst day was to solidify those important things and not worry about anything else.
I put my hair in a clip and turned o the bathroom light.
But when I walked out to our little apartment kitchen, there was a note on the microwave from my mom.
The electrical in the new kitchen still isn’t working, so come downstairs for
breakfast.
Wonderful.
Last night, as soon as I’d climbed into bed, I’d realized that I still hadn’t had a single one-on-one conversation with my grandpa. Aside from “you got tall,” we hadn’t really exchanged any words.
Which left me with this annoying nervousness about how things were going
to be with him.
Mick Fucking Boche.
I rolled my eyes as I thought of everyone’s attitude toward him Saturday night, the way a table full of grown men had behaved as if he’d been Taylor Swift popping in for dinner, instead of an old man with a bad attitude.
Obviously, hockey made people nuts.
I grabbed my coat and backpack and went downstairs, wondering if I should even bother with breakfast.
Seemed like a bad idea when my stomach was so knotted.
Grandpa Mick was sitting at the table when I entered the kitchen, reading the newspaper while my mom appeared to be making scrambled eggs at the stove.
He had reading glasses on the end of his nose, glasses that should’ve made him look old but instead just accentuated how intimidating he was.
“Good morning,” my mom said in a singsong voice, glancing over her shoulder and giving me a smile. “How’d you sleep?”
“Great,” I said, not knowing what to do, so I sat down across from himat the table.
“The beds are so comfy, right?” she said, sounding like a Disney princess with her happy breathlessness.
“The comest,” I muttered, pulling my phone out of my pocket.
“You don’t like the bed.”
I looked across the table, taken aback by the quiet rasp of his voice and the way it hadn’t sounded like a question at all, and Grandpa Mick was watching me with his eyes narrowed.
“N-no, um, I do,” I stammered, shrugging and adding, “It’s great.”
“Because I can get a dierent bed.” He pulled o the readers and said, “You need softer or what.”
What is a bed again? I felt like I was under the harsh lights of an interrogation room as my grandfather looked at me like I’d murdered someone and he wanted to know where the body was buried.
“No, really, I love the bed.”
“Oh.” He crossed his arms over his big chest, giving me hardcore direct eye contact, then said, “Today’s a blackout.”
“What?”
He gave my bulky sweater a chin nod. “At school. The kids are wearing all black because it’s rivalry week, starting with Simley.”
“Oh.” I crossed myarms and said, “I’m just going to wear this, but thanks.”
The thick, warm wool of my sherman sweater seemed more important than school spirit.
“You sure that’s wise.” I thoughthe meant it as a question, but there was a
period at the end of his statement.
What was happening?
“It’s warm and I don’t even know what a Simley is, so yes—it’s perfect.”
“Dani,” my mom said, “it’s rivalry week. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to wear
black today.”
Oh well, if it’s rivalry week.
I knew my mom meant it in the best way. She knew how much I loathed rst days of school, so she was more concerned about me tting in than anything else.
But the truth of the matter was that I knew all the rules of tting in at a new school; I could write the damn rule book.
Rule #1—It’s not about fitting in; it’s about blending. Be invisible.
That wasn’t me being melodramatic; it was me knowing how to survive.
As a new student, you need to be relatively in style so the assholes won’t see a clueless dork and move in for the kill, but you can’t be too in style or it might look like you think you’re cool.
And you don’t want to be ugly because the jerks love that, but prettiness can be perceived as a threat too, so it’s best to be vanilla.
To look like everyone else.
To be utterly forgettable and absolutely uninteresting.
“Yes, I’m sure,” I said. “I’m too new to care about rivalries.”
Wearing spirit-week clothing on your first day might be perceived as try-hard.
“Southview should win,” Grandpa Mick said, his eyes on the newspaper.
“Simley’s got no answer for Zeus.”
“I’m assuming you’re not talking about the Greek god…?” I regretted it the minute the words left my mouth, because I couldn’t care less about sports.
“Helluva defenseman,” he said to me with his eyebrows up like he genuinely thought I wanted to talk to him about sports. “The kid backpedal hits like
Kronwall, I swear to God.”
“What’s a Kronwall?” I asked.
“Niklas Kronwall,” he said, his eyebrows scrunching together in disgust.
“Played for the Red Wings? Legendary checker?”
Now, I knew what he meant by “checker,” because even Iknew the Red Wings were a hockey team.
But I couldn’t stop myself from saying, “Wait, ‘hits’—is this baseball? What’s this Kronwall’s batting average?”
“Hockey. It’s hockey.” He managed to scowl at me while also looking confused by my stupidity, like he couldn’t fathom that someone might actually respond that way. “I’m talkin’ about hockey.”
Minnesota men and their propensity for droppingg’s, I swear to God.
“Are you ready to go?” my mom asked, giving me a look that told me she knew I was being a pain in the ass on purpose.
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I said, wishing I could just be homeschooled. I tried very hard to convince my parents to let me do online high school when they decided to divorce, but good ol’ Mom and Dad were adamant that the things you learn socially are just as important as what you learn in your textbooks.
Sure, I thought. It’s super important for me, as a senior, to continually relearn that I hate high school.
My mom chattered the entire drive to school. I knew she was trying to distract me, but all I could do was stare out the window at the snow and houses while trying my hardest not to throw up on my own lap.
My heart started beating faster when my mom turned into the parking lot, as I stared up at the ridiculously large brick high school that loomed in front of me.
Everything about it looked ominous.
Foreboding.
So freaking cold.
“It looks so dierent from when I went there,” my mom said, leaning forward to look up through the windshield. “But it’s a great school. And I gave you Alec’s number if you want to text him, right?”
Alec never showed up the other night, which was a relief at the time but left me still dreading the reunion. My mom gave me his phone number so I could text him if I needed anything, and I was contemplating sending somethingin hopes of getting the awkwardness out of the way before we had to meet face-to- face.
“Yeah,” I said, reaching down to grab my backpack as she drove closer to the doors.
“Text me as soon as you can, just to let me know how it’s going so I can stop worrying, okay?”
“Okay,” I said. “But don’t worry—it’ll be great.”
I didn’t believe that, but what was the point of letting her into my stress? It wouldn’t make anything better for her, and she was already struggling to bounce back from the whole failed-marriage thing.
“I’ll text you later,” I said, reaching for the door and climbing out. Only the air punched me in the face as soon as I straightened.
God, how can it be so freaking cold?
“Bye, sweetie,” she said, giving me a wave before pulling away.
I swallowed and headed for the doors, careful to take deep breaths in through my nose to try to keep the panic at bay. An anxiety attack on day one would be a nightmare, so I was going to make sure that didn’t happen.
Please, God, no panic attack.
As soon as I entered the school, I saw the oce.
Which was nice in that I didn’t have to wander around looking more lost than I felt.
But as I walked over, I couldn’t help but notice the massive amount of hockey… enthusiasm decorating every surface of the school’s interior.
It was ridiculous.
An enormous poster of the school’s hockey team hung from the rafters of the high ceiling, and posters of individual players were slapped up all over the walls. I understood school spirit, but it was laughable that a bunch of high school boys were taped up all over the place like they were actual celebrities.
I opened the oce door, only to see even more hockey signage inside the
bustling administrative area.
IT’S PACKER GAME DAY!!
Calm down, people.
“Can I help you?” asked the woman behind the desk, who was holding a phone up to her ear.
“Hi, um, my name is Dani Collins, and I’m new. It’s my, um, my rst day,” I stammered.
“Well, good morning, Dani,” she said with a big smile, her tone laced with familiarity, like she’d been expecting me. “You’re a little early, so if you want to take a seat in one of the chairs, I imagine Cassie will be here in the next ten or fteen minutes.”
“Cassie?” I asked, wondering if I was supposed to know who that was.
“The student who’ll be showing you around,” she explained. “You’ll love her —Cassie’s a doll.”
“Oh,” I said, nodding. “Good.”
“She knows everyone and everybody loves her, so she’ll be a great point of
contact for you.”
“Awesome,” I said, nodding again.
I sat on one of the chairs and looked out the oce window, where it was getting busy in the hallway.
Students yelling to each other, groups walking together… God, I hated it so much.
Because on day one, there was no way to know who the threats were.
The group of four girls who were laughing, with their pretty hair and perfect teeth? At this moment, they looked harmless.
Nice, even.
But they could actually be the girls capable of making someone’s life hell.
My life.
And the same went for guys. The four dudes standing by the trophy case, smiling and looking cute—they could either be nice guys, or the ones with the potential to ruin everything.
There was no way to know, no warning signal to give you a hint of danger.
A group of dudes in hockey jerseys walked by, strolling down the hall like they were icons. They walked past the multiple banners with their own images on them, moving like they ruled the world.
Which wasn’t shocking after the hockey-themed dinner Saturday night.
It was clearly the culture.
Still… spare me.
To be fair, I knew that I was prejudiced when it came to jocks. It was wrong to judge an entire group of humans by the actions of a few, but over the years, it’d been my experience that the overcondence that accompanied athletic successes created narcissistic social monsters.
If mean girls were a thing (and they were), then cocky jocks were even worse.
Because they wielded ridiculous amounts of power.
A jock could ohandedly say “the new girl is hot,” and even if he meant it in a complimentary way, it just led to all his friends feeling the need to contribute their opinions as well.
No she’s not.
She looks like a bitch.
Her nose is weird.
Those nerdy glasses, though, come on.
“Just breathe,” I told myself, trying to keep the anxiety at bay.
Watching the hockey players strut down the hall, I noticed another huge banner hanging from above. This one was strung all the way across the common area, and it had an image of the back of a hockey player on it, the name ZEUS
stretched across the broad shoulders.
Ridiculous.
I took another deep breath, slowly inhaling through my nose.
Everything is going to be fine.
As if on cue, a girl with long brown hair walked into the oce. She was wearing black leggings and a black SOUTHVIEW HOCKEYcrewneck, and she went straight for the secretary.
“There you are, Cassie,” the woman said. “This is Dani.” She gestured toward me and added, “Dani, this is Cassie.”
Cassielooked over and smiled like she was happy to see me, which was better than her looking irritated, I supposed.
Of course, it was also my experience that the student who volunteered to show new kids around was usually either (A) a genuinely nice person who liked their extracurriculars, or (B) a control freak who was insane about their
extracurriculars.
Hopefully she was the former.
“Hi,” she said with a grin. “Do you have your schedule yet?”
“Yes, they emailed it to me,” I said, gesturing toward my pocket like she would somehow know my phone was there.
“Same, and I’m in awe of the way you’re taking AP and honors everything,” she said. “By the way, I love your sweater—it’s very Harry Burns rolling out the rug with Sally while discussing dating.”
“Thank you,” I said, wanting to smile at the reference but knowing it was
better to keep my mouth shut.
Because another important rule?
Don’t share personal information with the volunteer who shows you around on your first day.No matter how nice they might seem, you don’t know where they t into the school’s social hierarchy.
One minute you could be sharing with someone you think is friendly how When Harry Met Sally is still your comfort-watch, only to discover two days later that she mockingly told all her friends that you are a loser who still watches
old rom-coms with your mother on DVD.
The less you share, the better.
Cassie led me out into the hallway and immediately turned on her tour-guide persona. She pointed out everything we passed, and I did my best to focus on her while being very aware of people looking at us.
Just as she was showing me where in the cafeteria you could get breakfast, we walked by a few more hockey players, and one of them yelled her name.
“What?” she said with a smile. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”
“Yeah, but we have a question,” the red-haired guy said.
“And it would be…?”
“Where did you go Saturday night after you left the bonre?” he asked. “One minute you guys were there, the next second you were gone. And we couldn’t help but notice Kyle was gone too. So we were wondering…”
“So don’t do that,” she said, rolling her eyes and kind of pushing him a little bit, but in a teasing way. “I have no idea what Kyle did after the party—don’t be an ass.”
“I’m not an ass,” he said around a little laugh. “I just wanted to make sure you both got home safely.”
“Sure you did. By the way, this is Dani—she’s new.”
“Hi,” I said.
“This is Richie,” she told me, pointing to the redhead. “And this is Vinny.”
Vinny had a blond mullet that was so long it went halfway down his back. As if that weren’t jarring enough—what was withthat hair—he was ginormous.
“Wait—your name is Dani?” Vinny asked, raising his eyebrows.
“Yeah…?” I replied, my cheeks warm as they looked at me.
Richie said, “Oh shit—are you Mick Boche’s granddaughter?”
Okay, this is weird.
“Yes…?”
How would he know that already?
“Do you guys know each other?” Cassie asked, looking back and forth between me and these strangers.
“No, but Zeus mentioned her the other night at the party,” Richie said.
What?
“You know Zeus?” she asked, her eyes wide like this was a very big deal.
“No,” I said, unsure why this dude thought I did. “No, I think he must have me confused with someone else. I have no idea who this Zeus person is.”
Richie said, “Yes, you do! He’s—”
But then the bell rang and all I could hear from Richie was… absolutely nothing.
Because it was like we were standing inside the bell, it was so loud.
“Later, Cassie! Dani”—Mullet Boy smirked before bowing—“it was a
pleasure.”
What the hell… And with that, the hockey guys immediately dispersed, leaving me with unanswered questions.
How would some puckboy named Zeus have ever heard of me?
“Okay, let’s get you to class so you’re not late on your rst day; no one likes being the center of attention that way, right?”
Oh, thank God she gets it,I thought. “Right.”
“Okay, so I’ll walk you to your rst class, and then I’ll be waiting when it ends
to get you to second period. Cool?”
“Perfect,” I said. “Thank you.”
But as we walked and she pointed out classrooms and hallways, I couldn’t shake the annoyance that some hockey jock had mentioned me. Like, howwww?
I mean, it didn’t make sense, because I’d literally met no one since I’d been here, but I supposed the tie-in to my grandpa made it possible.
Maybe Richie’s dad was one of Big John’s friends.
It irked me because I just wanted to be invisible. I needed whoever the hell Zeus was to forget he’d ever heard my name, if he had actually heard my name at all.
“Here we are: AP Lit,” Cassie said, interrupting my thoughts by pointing to a classroom. “That’s Mr. Hunter and he’s really cool, so I’m sure you’ll have no problem with him. Actually, let me help you.”
She grabbed my arm and pulled me into the classroom.
“Hey, Mr. Hunter—this is Dani, and she’s a new student.”
He looked down at the piece of paper Cassie was holding out, which pretty much just had my name and schedule on it, and he narrowed his eyes.
I tried my best to pretend the people in the classroom weren’t looking at us, even though I knew they were.
“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Dani Collins,” he said.
I nodded and smiled, wishing he would lower his voice and let me go sit down.
“There’s an open desk in the back of the room—have a seat. I’ll get you a textbook as soon as the nal bell rings.”
“Awesome,” I said, my face on re.
“I’ll be back when it’s over,” Cassie said with a smile.
I was torn between being relieved she was leaving, because she was outrageously perky in a way that made me feel like a noncommunicative boob, and wanting to grab her arm and beg her to stay and protect me.
“Cool—thanks,” I said, then headed toward the empty desk in the back of the room.
Where I would do my very best to become invisible.
