*🔥1🔥*

🔥CHAPTER 1🔥

*-*Meliah's POV*-*

The sun stabbed through my window, dragging me from a sleep that never felt like enough. Another day of hell-school, I mean-waited. All I had to do was graduate. Get my diploma, get out of this cursed town, and leave every bit of the hell it had dragged me through behind.

I forced myself up. The shower was a small mercy, hot water sluicing away the lingering residue of yesterday. Wrapped in a towel, I moved through the quiet of my apartment-a good thing, living alone. I could move at my own pace, in my own silence. I did my hair and makeup with the radio murmuring in the background, a mechanical routine. Backpack ready, I locked up behind me.

I walked. The morning air was sharp and cold against my skin, a relief compared to the usual sticky heat. I had a car, but walking was mine. Asking Steve for a ride was out of the question-his girlfriend was convinced I was after him. If only she knew how wrong she was.

The school parking lot was already buzzing, students clotting together, waiting for the first bell to herd us inside. A few people offered half-hearted greetings as I passed. I wasn't popular, but I wasn't invisible either. I knew the look in their eyes-it wasn't friendship. It was pity, leftover from certain events. I kept walking.

The roar of an engine shattered the morning. A blue Camaro tore past me, so close the gust of wind rocked me on my feet. Tires screeched as it jerked into an empty spot. A red-haired girl spilled out of the passenger side, skating off toward the middle school.

Then the driver emerged.

Cigarette in hand, he leaned against the car door. And despite the fury boiling in my veins, I couldn't unsee it: he was brutally good-looking. But then I saw his smirk-a slow, arrogant curve as he drank in the stares from Carol and her clique. It was a look that said he owned the air he breathed. My disgust instantly outweighed any fleeting attraction.

"Hey, jackass!" I strode toward him, my voice cutting through the lot's chatter. "Watch where you're driving. People walk here."

He turned that smirk on me, his eyes doing a lazy, deliberate sweep from my feet to my face. "Well, hello there, princess. Here for the first taste?" His voice was all cocky challenge.

"I'm not on the menu," I shot back, icy. "Try the girls over there. They seem eager to volunteer." I jerked my chin toward Carol's group.

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah. You clearly think you're the center of the universe, but some of us actually value our lives. Try using your eyes next time."

He took a slow drag of his cigarette, then stepped closer, his voice dropping to a low, intimate rumble meant only for me. "What are you gonna do, arrest me? Careful. I like it when feisty girls try to tie me down."

A full-body shudder of revulsion went through me. I took a sharp step back, putting space between us. "Why don't you just keep that... overcompensating car out of my way, okay?" The words left my mouth before I could filter them. I didn't wait for a retort. The first bell rang, and I spun on my heel, walking away as fast as I could without running.

The universe, it seemed, had a personal grudge against me. The new guy-Billy, according to the teacher's strained introduction in first-period History-wasn't just in one of my classes. He was a shadow, a disruptive echo in every period.

In Chemistry, I felt the weight of someone's stare and turned to find him watching me from across the lab tables, that same infuriating smirk playing on his lips as he twirled a pen. I looked away, my cheeks burning, and promptly added too much hydrochloric acid to my mixture, causing it to fizz violently over the beaker's rim. Mr. Jenkins gave me a sharp look, and my perfect lab record took a hit.

In the hallways, his laughter-loud, grating, and performative-seemed to find me. He held court at his locker, a ring of eager acolytes around him, and his presence created a ripple effect that jostled the school's social order. My usual path to the library, a quiet no-man's-land, was now blocked by his orbiting crowd. I had to detour past the gym, where the smell of sweat and floor wax turned my stomach.

By the time we landed in shared English class, my last sanctuary of the day, my nerves were stripped raw. I always sat in the back corner, a spot that granted me invisibility. Today, he slouched into the seat directly in my line of sight to the whiteboard. I couldn't look at Mrs. Perkins discussing Shakespearean motifs without seeing the worn leather of his jacket, the way he draped himself over the chair like he owned it. His mere posture was a distraction, a loud, silent demand for attention that bled into my focus.

When Mrs. Perkins called on him to read a passage from Macbeth, his voice was a low, confident rumble that filled the room. A girl two seats ahead of me sighed. I dug my fingernails into my palm, forcing myself to stare at the text, but the words-"full of scorpions is my mind"-mocked me. They felt too familiar.

His invasion was complete. He hadn't just ruined my morning; he'd infiltrated the fragile, controlled peace of my entire day. My carefully constructed routines-the walk, the quiet corners, the focused anonymity-were all knocked askew. As the final bell released us, the frustration was a physical pressure behind my eyes. All I wanted was the sanctum of my empty apartment, but even that felt tainted now. I had to fight the urge to lay my head down on the desk and scream, trapped in the unsettling reality that my world had just gotten smaller, and infinitely more complicated.

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