Spoiler! :
Chapter One
I could see my breath when I exhaled. It was the white transparent color that always makes it seem as if an unknown life-force has just left your mouth. It was the first day in my new school, new city. I was going to have a fresh start, as they say.
I sighed to myself, staring at the knee-high combat boots laced up my legs as they slowly grew whiter from the snow. The pure white looked lovely- until it was crushed under my boot and became muddy brown.
When I finally reached the new high school, it seemed as if no building had ever been bigger. The gray brick walls. The muddy path where hundreds of students were milling up to the school. I tried not to think of the past, but to focus on the future. On my so-called "new beginning" that everyone kept telling me about. Tricia said that I had to act like a casual teenager for once, so that was what I attempted to do. Nonchalant and relaxed gait, apart from my usual focused and alert stride. My facial features were calm and collected, I looked as if I didn't have a care in the world. I suppose my attire weren't the typical gear someone my age would wear, but I had to be ready for anything.
Maybe I looked like. . . uh. . . oh, I had no idea what I looked like. The dark clothes, the leather jacket- probably like an escapee from juvi. They weren't far off.
Some kids were having a snowball fight as I walked by. I heard the whistle, and my instincts took over. Someone was shooting at me, already.
I dropped to the ground and watched the snowball sail over me.
Stupid freaking teenagers! I flipped them the bird, but the boy in front just laughed. I guessed he was the one who threw the snowball. Tall, strong, good looking- arrogance embodied. A girl was standing next to him. I wondered for a moment if she was the culprit, but she looked far too much like a barbie to have been throwing snow. The boy was still laughing at me- I gave him a snide, devilish smirk; then, like the friendly little demon that I am, I scooped up a handful of snow. Time to be a normal teenager, I thought mischievously.
"Oh ho? Gonna try and throw snow at me, new girl?" The boy laughed and faked a duck, mocking me. One of his friends cat called me, and I grinned at him.
“I'm gonna do more than just try."
WHAM. My vengeance was beautiful. The boy fell into a classic ‘legs-in-the-air-puppy-play-dead’ position. The girl next to him screamed. Literally screamed. Because of a snowball. My ears rang from her high-pitched yelp.
"Woah, Damien, new girl has faster moves than you!" one of the guys howled.
"Dami! Dami! Oh my God! Dami, are you okay? Can you hear me?" The Barbie sounded just as much like a Barbie as she looked, but she must be stronger than the blonde doll- she was shaking him so fiercely that his head was rolling. I think she was doing more damage than I did. Wow. I couldn't help but laugh. He sat up, slightly cross-eyed.
"Lena! Lena. Will you quit that? I can't see!"
So her name isn't Barbie...
"Sorry! Sorry!" She instantly backed off. I grinned and headed on towards the school. This day was going better then I’d thought it would.
As I walked up the concrete stairs there was only one thing on my mind: Look straight ahead, don't look back. The victory of the snowball fight was already fading from my mind. I couldn't help it. Even though I'd gone up against grown men with guns and worse, the school scared me. I looked up at the glass doors with the words Millen High stretching in a golden banner along the top of them. I'd guessed that the schools' colors were black and gold, all of the school-related paraphernalia bore those colors. The bell rang as I stepped inside.
Surprisingly, the stares that I received from everyone in the hall didn't alarm me much. Of course they would stare. But it was a large city- people didn't care about a new face that much. They probably had new ones every month. Oh, I'd done my research. I may have been forced to be "normal", but I wasn't going to agree without knowing what I was getting myself into.
I strode to the office, telling them my name and receiving my schedule. It would tell me which classes I would go to, when and where. I soon caught on to the very simply laid out floors- there were four floors, each room on each floor began with the floor number, and the rooms went in order. Each floor had an estimated fifteen rooms on it. There was one cafeteria, one auditorium and a gym.
The first five periods practically flew by for me (The high point? Seeing mister "Dami!" and his girlfriend giving me the evil eye. Who's good? Who's good? I digress.) and it was time for lunch. I never really ate much, because if I was in a situation where I had to move quickly, I couldn't let my stomach slow me down. Nothing slows a person down like a full stomach- believe me, I know. Nevertheless, I still took a full tray. I just threw away everything but an apple, a bottle of water and half of my turkey sandwich. Which I wasn't sure was edible. Was that mayonnaise, or last year's leftover glue?
I walked outside onto the sea of white and looked at my surroundings. There were another set of steps leading down to a sidewalk, and on either side of the steps were stone walls. Nothing new. Nothing different. I was the only one outside- all the other kids were eating in the warm cafeteria. Well- almost all of them.
There was only one thing that was different from everything. A petite girl, whom I'd never seen before was perched on the edge of one of the walls. She was very skinny, almost unnaturally- like an anorexic. Her hair was long and black, but somewhat tangled and flat- like she didn't bother to take care of it sometimes. It was cold- but she was wearing ripped jeans; though I couldn't tell if it was real or if she was trying to look cool.
I shoved the sandwich into a trash can I walked past and strode over to her, plopping down next to her. She jumped up suddenly, frightened and startled, then looked down at me, almost as if I weren't human simply because I had sat next to her. To tell the truth, I wasn't sure why I had.
She stayed like that for what seemed an hour, just looking at me, studying my every move. And I did the same to her, calculating, criticizing. The cool air bit my cheeks.
"Well aren't you going to say something?" I finally asked. She dropped her hands to her sides, shaking her head. "Why not?" I stood up, leaving the apple and water sitting on the ground.
She looked around as if to see if anyone was watching, then motioned to her neck. I noticed a jagged pale scar stretching across her neck. It looked as if her skin had been sliced open before. Finally, I realized, and my mouth silently pulled into an expression of surprise. She wasn't remaining silent just to irritate me, she couldn't talk. Embarrassment flushed my cheeks for a moment.
I nodded to myself, calculating my next response. She shakily sat back down on the wall, a little further away from me, pulling her thin trench coat around her. Without meaning to, I noticed that the bit of her freezing pink wrists that was showing was covered in pale scars. I tried not to look for too long, in fear that she'd see me staring. The scars somehow didn't look self- inflicted, in fact they looked like someone had cut open her skin with a sharp piece of glass. But the chances of that were small- more likely she cut herself, hating her station in life. Or maybe she had an accident. I knew all too well the scars you could get from broken glass. I quickly turned my eyes away when she looked over.
"My name’s Cassandra," I finally said. She turned to look at me, squinting slightly, like she'd forgotten I was even there. "What's yours?"
Jamie. She traced the name in the snow with a finger. I grinned, somehow it was perfect for her.
The bell rang and Jamie rushed up back into the school faster than I thought possible, like she was a shot fired from a gun. I narrowed my eyes and followed after her, though she was long gone, taking my last breath of the fresh, cold air for the next few hours.
Three hours later school had finally ended. Although the first half of the day went by quickly, the second half seemed like it would never end. I was anxious to get out. At first I thought it was because I hated my time at the school, but when I examined my motives, I realized that it was because I wanted to speak to Jamie again. Jamie intrigued me, I could sense a sort of loneliness in her. She needed a friend, and so did I. So. . .why shouldn’t I be her friend? I wasn’t really the friend type, but if its as easy as they say in the books. . .Well, I need to work on that, I thought, chuckling to myself. The bell rang, indicating classes were over.
Thank. God.
). Also, the voice was pretty consistent throughout, unlike some co-authored books where you can tell when one writer drops off and another picks up. 
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