Chapter One: Named

The second time I met him, I had Cobra Starship’s The Kids Are All Fucked Up turned up full blast in my car with the windows down.

The second thing he said to me, after leaning in and scaring me half to death, was ‘they’re not the only ones who are, princess.’

The second thing I did to him was stare, open-mouthed, at him, before producing a silver dagger, leaping up and stabbing him till the ground was a pretty red colour. Yeahhh. The brass ones had run out at the nearest hardware store, so it wasn’t like I had a choice between silver and, um, ivory. (Who the hell buys ivory daggers, anyway? Elephants?) You never know when you need to kill a vampire. At least they can do the job on both supernatural beings and human beings, thus fulfilling their earthly function (nine ninety-nine, batteries not included). That’s more than you say for anything else.

Maybe a lightsaber would have worked better.

Alas, if only I’d really done that. What I really did do was stare, open-mouthed, at him (or rather his face, since he’d stuck his head in and possibly contaminated the interior of my car with theta waves at the same time), wondering what in the name of the Galactic Empire he was doing at my school. I was certain that I’d never seen him before that eventful day. That, in essence, meant that he wasn’t. Supposed. To. Be. Here.

On second thought, how had he known which car was mine? I doubted him being Han Solo was going to be a fitting answer to any of the questions buzzing around in my head. If he were Yoda, yeah, probably. Then again, what I really wanted to do was-

“Are you gonna leave me standing here all day or what?” his amused voice cut in.

Fighting an urge to ignore him, I cut Gabe Saporta off, popped the car lock and gave the door a big push, almost causing him to get his head cut off. Unfortunately, he had some brains in him, which meant he managed to scram before I did more damage to his head. I briefly wondered if I had a super-sized packet of peanut M&Ms around in my bag, then decided it wouldn’t be worth throwing it at him. I mean… he could eat them all. I wouldn’t want that!

Did Han Solo ever eat peanut M&Ms in the Millennium Falcon?

“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked politely.

He pretended to think extremely deeply about that. He even went so far as to stroke his chin in a comically intriguing manner. “Well, let’s see. I go to school here.” He dropped his hand and pasted on a thoughtful expression. “I dunno, maybe I should be at the hospital doing that. You’re right! What the hell am I doing here?”

I so wished I had an open can of root beer to pour over him and his smug grin. I hated root beer, for some reason, so that wouldn’t be a problem. Much to my dismay, however, that wasn’t really an option, so I settled for sniffing, locking my car doors and asking in a haughty sort of way, “If you go to school here, why haven’t I seen you before?”

He dropped the thoughtful expression, opting for a teasing one. “You still haven’t told me your name, you know. I might have to continue calling you princess if you don’t.”

“And I’ll continue calling you Han Solo,” I replied smartly, hitching my shoulder bag up as it slipped. Now that I was out of the car and fresh out of sunglasses, I reflected upon my previous testimony. The sun was blazing down on us, turning his hair sort of brownish-black. It was like someone had decided to run a brush with light brown paint through it, but it was likely that he’d never dyed his hair before. I hadn’t paid attention to his hair that day, or it wouldn’t be that big a surprise to me. (I had more pressing issues to handle, you see.) He had a hand cupped over his eyes to shield them from the glare of the sun or I’d probably be able to see the green of his eyes glinting with unadulterated amusement. He looked like a normal American male in his clothes, but I had a bad feeling that I’d most likely be the only one to describe him as ‘normal’. Already, the few girls who were on campus were eyeing him like he was a piece of pancake and they were maple syrup.

Eugh, nice image there!

Apart from the slightly out-of-the-way analogy, it made me feel slightly resentful. People with looks like him could get away with anything. I’d probably be the only one who knew what an ass he was while everyone else wanted to be his best friend (or girlfriend, entirely dependent on gender… or sexual orientation), in spite of what I’d try to tell them. In the eyes of a high school student, there was nothing more important than outside appearances. What was inside didn’t really matter. You can’t see what you are on the inside at first glance, can you? So why bother?

It felt like déjà vu in the worst way possible.

“I’ll probably find out who you are sooner or later, so you might as well make it soon,” he pointed out. I felt like throwing a very heavy object at him (again).

“I’ll rather later, then,” I said airily. “Calling you Han Solo has its quirks, anyway. Harrison Ford’s too old to be attractive now. Kind of like you.” Some freshmen nearly knocked into me on their way past, forcing me to step closer to him. He looked down at me, his eyes boring into mine with an intensity that made me shiver. The dark green of his shirt, which accentuated the firmness of his arms and chest, also highlighted the green of his irises. Try as I might, it made me feel a little excited, yet a little apprehensive too. Perhaps more of the former. Damn it.

“Are you that bent on thinking I’m a bad guy?” he asked quietly, so quietly that I had to strain to hear him.

I frowned up at him. Today, I was wearing a pair of hip-hugging jeans and a red tank top, coupled with a pair of open-toe sandals and a chunky necklace. I liked jewellery like that – I even had a beaded brown one as a good luck charm. I was wearing exactly that one, my blonde hair pulled back from my face in a barrette. I saw his gaze move down towards it, a subtle smile appearing on his face. What was up with that?

He had better not been taking the opportunity to look at my cleavage.

“Yes, I do,” I said loudly. His eyes flickered back up to meet mine. “And let me tell you that it’s extremely difficult to change my opinion. What was with the cryptic statement at the beach? ‘You haven’t heard the last of me?’”

He grinned. “Won’t you want to know?”

I sighed and turned around as if to leave. “Look, whatever, Han Solo, I don’t want to talk to you any more than you want to talk to a girl who threw a candy bar at your head. So either I leave, or you chase after me and I pretend not to see you, or we both go our separate ways and everything will be A-okay.”

He caught my upper arm just after I finished, causing me to turn back again. The heat from his fingers seeped through my skin. It was with a strange sense of appreciation that I noticed that his fingers were long and lean – fingers a girl would welcome her boyfriend having.

Oh, God, why did I just think that? This wasn’t healthy. I couldn’t succumb to yet another jock who thought the world revolved around him. Once was enough for a lifetime. That was it. I couldn’t let myself fall into that trap again, even if that trap had eyes the colour of Kerry’s bedroom walls and a smile that could rival George Clooney’s.

Salty tears rushed to the back of my eyelids. I forced myself to turn away again, but he tightened his grip on my arm. To outsiders, it probably looked like a lover’s quarrel, from the way I was scowling at him and the look on his face, like he couldn’t figure out what he’d done wrong. For the first time ever, I bemoaned my choice of getting to school early to listen to Cobra Starship and steel myself for junior year. It’d always worked, but not now, apparently.

“You know what?” He laughed. “You act like a bitch, but I know you aren’t. Maybe you should ask yourself what’s wrong with you instead of throwing candy bars at people you don’t know.” He let go of my arm, but lowered his head such that his mouth was level with my ear. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t tell me your name, anyway… Ava with an A.”

My mouth fell open at that. “What…?!”

“You shouldn’t leave your wallet in places where people can pick it up and look at the little card with your name on it in the inner sleeve,” he said, grinning. “Besides, it’s written right there.”

Startled, I looked down at what he was pointing at. It turned out to be my binder. A Cobra Starship motif took up most of the front cover, but my name stared up at me, scribbled at the top in (fading) whiteout.

Fuck!

“Oh, and don’t listen to any rumours about the new kid,” he said, still grinning. I noticed how the tooth on the upper right side was slightly crooked. It gave his smile a slightly rakish feel. My necklace suddenly felt really, really heavy. “I didn’t conspire to set my old school on fire, just to vandalize it. Just in case you start thinking I’m a juvenile delinquent on top of a spice smuggler with a reckless disposition.”

For about the thousandth time, I was speechless. He patted my arm, lingering just for a moment, then withdrew and sauntered off towards the main school building. Even from where I was standing, I could see very clearly a tiny-looking freshman staring at him wide-eyed from a distance. Several girls started giggling when he passed by. I was willing to bet that he’d winked at them, though a gaggle of other students blocked my view, preventing me from seeing said wink.

I moaned and covered my eyes with my hands. He knew my name! And he had the nerve to pretend he didn’t, just to coerce information out of me! My blood started a slow simmer at the thought. Good thing I had a will of steel which could resist flirtatious comebacks loaded with hidden meaning, like Superwoman had her Amazonian bracelet to prevent her from going into the Next World.

Right.

God, I felt like shooting him. If I was turning violent, that was a bad sign. Ava Lewis wasn’t known for being violent, except for a certain candy bar accident. She was demure. She was kind. She was trustworthy. She was sweet. She was-

“AVA!”

I moaned again, only in my head, and louder. “Rhonda, hi.”

“I thought I’d catch you here,” she panted, beaming. Her short brown hair looked like it’d gone through several repetitions of ‘Lather, Rinse, Repeat!’, if the way the sun bounced off it was evidence enough. It was my turn to shield my eyes from my cousin’s extra super duper shiny hair. “First day of school, huh? I’m so pumped! One more year till we officially rule this school!”

I looked back in the direction Han Solo had gone off in. Oh, yeah, I still didn’t know his name. If he was the new kid, it’d be easy enough to find out, though. If his name turned out to be Charles or Ronald, I’d laugh my ass out and promptly chew his ass out. If it was Dick or Willy…

“Ava, why are you laughing like a mad scientist?”

I closed my mouth and glared at Rhonda. “Don’t comment on it the next time! I was enjoying that!”

“Good morning, dear cousin,” said a male voice cheerfully from behind. An arm draped itself over my shoulders. Since my neck was exposed, it felt like he was going to poke something into it, so I ducked out of his grasp and adjusted my necklace.

“Rick,” I said with all the enthusiasm I could muster up, which wasn’t much. He was Rhonda’s twin brother; both of them were my age, albeit a few months older. Behind him, I could see a number of the crowd we usually sat with at lunch – Kerry, her boyfriend Jeff, Nora, and Katherine (Kat for short). Jeff had his arm around Kerry’s waist, Kerry leaning into him. The sun coloured everyone’s hair a shade lighter than it usually was, and in Nora’s case, picked out the auburn streaks in her brown hair. Kat had her long black tresses in a high ponytail which swished side to side when she walked. Jeff kept his brown hair short and neat, though I saw that he’d taken to spiking it. Kerry, my best friend in the whole wide world, was watching me with a sly smile on her face.

Had she seen the interaction between me and Han Solo? After all, I’d described him to her after I’d run off at the beach. I hadn’t said anything about how hot he was, but she’d guessed it anyway. I’d bet that from a distance, she’d be able to guess who he was too. She just worked like that.

I gave them all a half-hearted smile. “Hey, guys.”

Rick nudged me in the side. From the force of it, it felt more like a knock. “What’s wrong? Aren’t you always the bubbly one bouncing around cheering about how school’s so wonderful while all of us groan in the background?”

“Leave my best friend alone, Ricky,” Kerry piped up, grinning at me. I shook my head, feeling an unwilling smile creep onto my face. “Can’t you see she’s feeling the Monday blues? Eww, I have no idea why we’re even back here! High school, high school, two more years till we’re out of you…” She mocked shivering.

Cars were turning into the parking lots as we spoke, more students flooding in as we stood in a loose circle. Rhonda pulled out a breakfast bar and started munching on it. Several people I knew called out to me, throwing in a wave or a smile. I felt a wave of familiarity again – even if school was a bore most of the time, the people there made me feel whole. But now that Han Solo was in it too… my good spirits went ker-plunk down again. He’d probably spoil the pattern, like in character shaped Kraft Mac n’ Cheese. He would be the highly irritating one I’d jab at repeatedly with my fork, like what I did to Angelica when Mom bought the Rugrats box. Mom claimed that she’d never be able to buy Kraft without thinking of a cheesy, severed head again. Of course, she was lying, but whatever.

“D’ you think we’ll get Henderson for pre-Calc this year?” Jeff asked, looking down at his girlfriend. He and Kerry were the It couple, the one everyone would remember after high school. They’d met in Honors Chemistry class last year, when Kerry had accidentally spilled concentrated sodium hydroxide in the lab and made a hole in Jeff’s jeans. (No, not that kind of hole.) Kerry had apologized profusely; Jeff had smiled and struck her right in the heart. Yadda, yadda, cue squealing over lunch about the cute Chem guy, cue sneaking around each other for four months, cue embarrassing moment where Jeff blurted out that he’d like to take her to the winter dance and cue Kerry nearly fainting. (Thank goodness she wasn’t eating at the moment too or Jeff would have a heck of a dry-cleaning bill on his hands.) They’d gotten together after the dance, and it’s been eight months and counting.

Of course, seeing as I was Kerry’s main man (and slave), Jeff had undergone special scrutiny. I could probably tell you all about his nervous habits, the way his shoulders seemed to relax whenever he looked at Kerry, the way he unconsciously kept close to her whenever they were together. He knew better than to keep her occupied and away from me too – whenever I was alone with them, I never felt like a third wheel. Jeff was good for Kerry, and vice versa. I envied them for finding their soul mates so soon, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to look for my own anytime in the near future.

There was something more to Jeff, however, than his obvious love for Kerry. It wasn’t a good memory. My mind reacted to it, recoiling and pushing it to the very back of itself. I wanted so much to be able to erase it altogether, but it wouldn’t go away, not as long as I lived.

I tried to banish it by thinking of Han Solo. I remembered how he’d walked off, hands in the pockets of his jeans, like he didn’t have another care in the world. Maybe he didn’t, but I sure did.

What in the name of dinosaur-shaped cookies was his name?

I wondered briefly if Princess Leia had ever gotten herself in such a situation.

“Ava.” Kerry was suddenly beside me, threading her arm through mine. “Who was the major hottie with you just now?” she whispered. Her caramel eyes probed mine, but I knew that she knew the answer. We’d discussed him so thoroughly, dissected him upside down and sideways, that she probably knew him better than I did.

“You know who,” I said back, not bothering to whisper. The noise level around us was high enough to mask my voice. I swore I saw Han Solo at the doors of the school, his head turned towards us, but when I blinked, he wasn’t there. Maybe he’d stolen Luke Skywalker’s tauntaun and crawled in it. Hardy har har.

“Lord Voldemort was the hottie??”

“Eww, Kerry, no! His face is backwards, for God’s sake! And he’s kind of fictional, if you haven’t noticed.” I rubbed my arms in an effort to quell the goosebumps that had erupted. Kerry just rolled her eyes and marched us towards the front doors. I presumed that the others were following behind, not that Kerry wasn’t easy to pick out of a crowd. Her strawberry-blonde hair, streaked with vivid streaks of red, was one thing; she liked to wear loud T-shirts with her jeans too. Jeff particularly liked the one which went ‘Chemistry in Chemistry class’, accompanied with a picture of a test-tube held over a Bunsen burner. Stoking the flames, you know?

I’d told her that wearing it meant that she was publicly displaying sexual paraphernalia, which meant that she was in violation of the law, per se. She’d reacted by wearing her ‘I’m With Stupid’ T-shirt the next day, making sure to stand to my left such that the arrow printed on the front and back pointed towards me.

Why on earth was she my best friend again?

“So?” she asked impatiently as we pushed past the crowds and into the hallway of lockers. Newly crowned seniors were hooting, throwing soccer balls at each other, or just terrorizing the underclassmen. We ducked under an avalanche of paper planes. “It’s the guy from the beach, isn’t it?” Curiosity tinged her voice.

“He knows my name!” I whispered frantically. “Have you heard anything about a new student? I think he transferred over from Oak Grove Senior. That’s the only high school near here – Eisenhower’s almost in another county.”

Kerry’s shoulders performed a simultaneous, delicate shrug. I noticed that she was wearing her ‘I’m a fermata… hold me’ T-shirt today. I had no doubt that Jeff would take advantage of that.

“You looked way pissed when he was talking to you, that’s all I know. What did he say? He caught you bopping to Cobra Starship again, didn’t he?” A knowing look pasted itself on her face.

I pursed my lips and nodded, remembering what he’d said. Oh. On second thoughts, he’d insinuated that I was fucked up too. My blood reached a whole new level in the Fahrenheit scale. “Kerry, he’s giving me all the reasons to hate him! He acts just like-”

“We said we’d never talk about him ever again!” Kerry slapped a hand over my mouth. That was hard to do, considering we were in the middle of an extremely packed hallway, but she managed it all the same. “Anyway, he can’t be that bad. You know, sometimes I feel like you push away every guy who’s interested in you because of… him. You have to get over it, Ava; it’s never going to go away just because you choose to run away from it.”

At that, I felt a chill run up my spine. It always happened whenever that topic came up. I pushed her hand off my mouth and crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m not pushing anyone away, Kerry. I’m just… dealing with it my own way.”

“Girl, even from over there-” she gestured in the direction of the front doors, “-he was really, really cute. I mean, Jeff is cuter, of course,” she added hastily, “but he looked really into you, and that’s not such a bad thing!”

The first warning bell chose that moment to go off. I sighed, turning towards Kerry. She had her ‘you’re talking bullshit and you know it’ look on her face, but after so many years of knowing her, I knew how to dodge it. “We’ll talk about that during lunch, okay? I just want to get through this day without dying.”

She scanned my face, but I knew she’d forget about this by the time lunch came. She’d decided to take almost all AP classes, compared to my two. I was only particularly good at Math, but Kerry was good at a lot of things. She just didn’t bother broadcasting that bit of news, unlike some people I could name off the top of my head. I used to wonder what little shenanigans Kerry and Jeff could get up to in Chemistry with their genius, only for them to cause a mini explosion in the lab, make it stink with what smelled like rotten eggs and get a month’s worth of detention each. High fives had been exchanged, naturally. Weston Smith High’s science labs were never the same again.

“Whatever you say, homie,” she said, slapping me on the arm. I winced, slapped her back, and we parted for our respective homerooms. It felt like weights were tied to my feet; my Cobra Starship-induced high had disappeared once Han Solo decided to stick his head through my open car window and scare the Force out of me. Of all the places he could have gone to, all the people he could have tried to disturb…

I sincerely hoped the girls (also affectionately known as high school students) would eat him right up and get him out of my life.

As I chose a random seat, I thought about Kerry’s words. Okay, so Han Solo hadn’t exactly thrown a candy bar at my head. Shouldn’t he be pissed at me instead of the other way round? I resolutely ignored the voice in my head that chanted ‘you’re cute, you’re cute’ at me; it didn’t matter if he thought I was cute. I didn’t want him to think I was cute. I was perfectly happy with being un-cute, as a matter of fact. It also didn’t matter that he was the epitome of hunky-dory male. He was bad news, and I knew it.

Still, whenever bad news happens to walk into your homeroom five minutes after roll call starts, it’s still not a good idea to groan extremely loudly and flop down on your desk in a show of utter despair like you’d just listened to George W. Bush defending the Iraq war again.

“Is there a problem, Ava?” My homeroom teacher, Mrs. Ingleton, asked. She knew me from Algebra I-II freshman year, where I’d topped the class the whole year running. Why on earth I hadn’t decided to do an accelerated Math class, she’d asked me before, but I’d told her that I didn’t want to. The state required us to pass a year of Algebra and a year of Geometry, and that was good enough for me.

I gave her a perfectly angelic smile. “Not at all, Mrs. Ingleton.” I then tried my venomous glare on him, just for kicks. He was looking at me, smiling in amusement. I heard the girl beside me sigh, probably imagining his gaze on her.

Tearing my gaze away from his, I looked down at my desk again, silently fuming. I’d so wished for him to be a senior, but no, he had to be born in ’91 too. Honestly, though, I knew that he being in a different grade from mine would be too good to be true, and the heavens weren’t exactly colluding with me at the moment.

If his last name started with an L too, though…

“Before Ava interrupted us,” she sent a heavily loaded look in my direction, causing the grin on Han Solo’s face to grow, “I was saying that we have a new student with us today! Would you care to introduce yourself, Adrian?”

Adrian. Like Adrian Mole. Hmm. I could live with that.

Wait. His first name started with an A too.

Holy crap!

“Sure thing, Mrs. Ingleton,” Adrian said, smiling easily. I felt strangely breathless at that. Crap, I hoped it wasn’t because of his smile. No, it was probably because everyone present with a double X chromosome was hyperventilating, robbing the room of oxygen. Was he that good-looking, seriously?

“My name’s Adrian Cantrell,” he started. I envisioned him telling me that the day we met; Han Solo seemed like weak compared to that. “I transferred here from Oak Grove Senior High because I moved, and also partly because global warming’s such a big issue; it saves a ton of gas driving here rather than to Oak Grove.” A few people laughed. “I love playing tennis, walking my dog, and watching horror movies, my favourite being The Shining. Oh, and Stephen King books are the best.” He let loose a devastating grin at that, which oddly made me feel a little hot in my tank top.

“Thank you, Adrian,” Mrs. Ingleton intoned. She waved a hand around the classroom. “You can sit anywhere you want for the time being. Next week, we’ll start sitting in alphabetical order.”

The girl beside me perked up at that. I was the only one whose face fell – because there was an empty seat right on my other side. And I had no doubt that he’d take the chance to torture me even further.

True to my belief, his gaze swept around the class before landing on me. A wicked gleam entered his eyes, and he started towards the seat beside me. I tried to send out evil vibes along the lines of ‘come near me and I shall impale you on a kebab stick!’, but he didn’t stop till he reached his destination. The many girls who’d puffed their chests out in a bid to attract him with the power of boobs deflated – literally. Some sent evil vibes of their own to me, only they seemed more along ‘you bitch, go near him and I shall impale you on my silicon implants!’

I wailed in my head. My life was probably over now. This just sucked. A lot.

To give him credit, he didn’t do much. Not that he needed to – it got on my nerves just to have him next to me. When he shuffled things on his desk, I stiffened a little. When he coughed, my grip tightened on my pencil. When he reached down to pick up something he’d dropped, I focused my gaze resolutely on Mrs. Ingleton, who was droning on about… something. For once, I couldn’t wait for homeroom to be over.

If he happened to be in my gym class, though…

I thought through his ‘introductory speech’, just for a distraction. He liked tennis. He liked horror movies. He liked Stephen King books. He had a dog. He had a nice enough sense of humour. It didn’t sound like someone hell bent on ruining a girl’s life. So what was he trying to accomplish, riling me up like that? Was it because I’d given him the ammunition; horror of horrors, interested him?

Yes, that was it. I had to act like he wasn’t there. He’d give up after some time. We could move on with our lives, forget that we’d ever quarrelled over a stupid vending machine, gaze up at the double sunset on Tatooine eons later and think about why we’d even wasted brain space on this. I chastised myself for not being able to control my temper, since it was basically what had landed me in this mess in the first place – it’d definitely gotten worse since Him.

I sighed, then regretted it when I felt his eyes on me. This was it. Now that I knew his name, I wouldn’t have to find anything out anymore. If he was going to harass me, I wouldn’t let it get on my nerves. He was the new kid; new kids were always given more attention. He’d forget about me sooner or later.

Sooner or later.

The bell for first period rang. Mrs. Ingleton gave us the last announcement before releasing us. I reached down for my bag, intent on getting to gym on time, but realized after looking down that it wasn’t there. Straightening, I saw it dangling from his hand by the strap. How on earth had he taken it without my knowing…?

“So, tell me,” he said conversationally. “Do you still think I’m the bad guy?”

I stared at him incredulously. “Is that what you want to know?”

He shrugged. “Yeah, if you want to be specific. You did throw a candy bar at me and attempt to castrate me verbally, after all.”

My lips quirked a little at that, but I fought to keep a straight face. “I don’t really care what you are, Adrian. Since you know who I am and I know who you are, we can cut this bullshit now and get out of each other’s faces. What do you say?”

He seemed to test my bag’s weight. “You owe me a little something for the candy bar, Ava.” The way he said it, it was like he was testing how my name sounded on his tongue. In his smooth baritone, it wasn’t bad at all. I cursed my eardrums for betraying me like that. “How do you think you’re gonna pay for that?”

I felt like crying and throwing a hissy fit at the same time. “Is this really necessary?”

Mrs. Ingleton chose that moment to speak up. “Ava, Adrian, why are you still here? Move on to your next class! It’s your first day, Adrian; you won’t want to be late today, of all days.”

We jumped at that. Locking gazes, he seemed to hesitate for a moment before handing my bag back. I snatched it from his grasp, pushing my chair back with a loud screech. Mrs. Ingleton looked at us curiously but didn’t comment further.

“I know it isn’t what you want, but we should just forget about it,” I semi-whispered to him. He continued to look at me, an inscrutable expression in his emerald green eyes. “Or you could just throw a Snickers bar at my head during lunch. That should make up for it.”

He stood up fluidly, the sudden movement causing me to step back a little. I had to look up now; the feeling was just a little uncomfortable.

“It’s never that simple, princess,” he said, smirking. A little light danced in those eyes of his, and I struggled to make sense of it. However, before I could say anything about that (damn his cryptic sentences designed to drive a girl insane), he’d whipped his bag over his shoulder and strolled out the door, presumably to his next class. Staring after him, I wondered if he even knew where to go. No doubt the principal had given him a map of the campus, but Weston Smith High wasn’t exactly known for its convenience.

“Ava?” Mrs. Ingleton said sharply.

I snapped to attention. “Sorry, Mrs. Ingleton. I’m going.”

It was too bad, really, I decided as I hustled out. He watched Star Wars, loved The Shining, and actually read books, if what he said about Stephen King was true. I’d never read his books before, preferring to stick with romance novels, but The Shining was truly one of the best horror films ever. No one I knew liked watching horror films, really. Action/adventure seemed more of the norm. And here he was, an anomaly amongst the majority.

In fact, if I wasn’t careful, I’d say that he was exactly what I wanted in a guy.

I tugged at my necklace in frustration. What was this world coming to? I couldn’t be thinking stuff about a guy like that! He was Han Solo! And in spite of what he still called me, I couldn’t be Princess Leia. No freaking way. I’d have to do a Pokemon evolution thingy and turn into R2D2, bleeping and rolling around on my blue and white body. Han Solo would never hit that.

Oh, and I’d have to stop him from calling me princess too.

Yeah. That’d be just as easy as getting to gym on time.

If only he could be frozen in a slab of carbonite.

A/N – I have an interesting story to tell you guys! More like an account… okay, so I was on the train on Friday heading into the city to buy The Host by Stephenie Meyer (which is staggeringly brilliant, by the way). There was this American standing next to me -I live in Asia, for those who don’t know- but I was listening to my iPod so I didn’t pay much attention to him. Then I got a call and put my iPod away, and when I ended my call, he suddenly turned to me and asked me if I spoke English. THANKS! What do I look like? Anyway, he asked me if I knew this restaurant in the city and directions to it too. So I told him, but all the while I was thinking ‘oh my God, his eyes are so blue -like Matt’s from OBTF- and he’s wearing a green shirt, like Adrian from BE!! Talk about hotness!!’ Thank goodness I didn’t faint. Still, he was pretty cute…

Here ends my obsession with my story characters. Lol.

And oh my God, are you guys awesome or what?? 49 reviews for the prologue! (faints) Thank you so much for all of them!! Seriously, I think that set some kind of record for me, wow. I’m so glad you guys like it so far, since I think I’ll enjoy writing this very much :) I didn’t reveal what their names are till this chapter on purpose, since some of you were going ‘what on earth ARE their names?’ And to answer Muted Velvet (Acantha)’s question about why Ava’s so bitchy when Adrian didn’t really do anything to provoke her: I left some rather strong hints in this chapter. Guessy guess!

I hope you guys liked this one too; Chapter 5 of OBTF will be up when I get over my writer’s block for that. I don’t know when I can update this – I guess it depends on the response. I have so much stuff to settle, it’s crazy. Well, as usual, review and have a spankin’ good day :)

-Louisa

P.S Who watched Monday’s episode of Bones? OH MY GOD!