Page 12 of Obsession

“Chris, where have you been?” I heard another voice behind me and turned towards it.

I noticed the brown-haired boy still standing next to me. I could have sworn he had left.

“I just bumped into the new student,” he introduced me, still smiling. Why did everyone smile so damn much in this town? I thought my dad was the only one who was weird. Did no one else have problems here?

And how did he know I was new? I guess it was pretty obvious, really. A normal student wouldn’t have been wandering the hallways analyzing locker numbers.

“Oh, yeah, I heard about that. Hi, I’m Zac,” the other guy smiled and held out his hand to me.

He was much more built than Chris and clearly belonged to a sports team. He had black hair that was styled into spikesand blue eyes like Chris. He was wearing a T-shirt with the school logo on it.

I wasn’t sure if it was the right time to make friends, but I had no choice.

“Kath,” I gave him a tight smile and shook his hand.

“Where did you guys disappear to? That was the funniest shit I’ve ever seen.”

Out of nowhere, a girl with chocolate brown hair appeared, laughing as loud as she could, but not in an annoying way. Her face turned serious when she noticed me.

“Who’s this?” she asked with a wry smile.

“This is Kath, she’s new,” Zac clarified.

“Nice to meet you, I’m Kristen, but you can call me Kris.”

Another hand, another smile.

“Katherine, but call me Kath, it’s nice to meet you too,” I forced myself into a friendly grin.

“Oh, and I’m sorry about that hyena laugh,” she pointed somewhere behind her, “I’d just heard the cheerleaders talking about the hottest guy in school, and trust me, you don’t need reality TV when you have something like that,” she almost burst out laughing again.

I laughed, too.

The hottest guy in school, huh? That could be something interesting to watch.

“And the hot guy was me, right?” Spoke Zac, flexing his muscles.

“You wish,” Kris snorted and slapped him on the shoulder.

“Kath?! Kath?!” I heard the fearful tone in Candice’s voice, as if she were a lost child in a supermarket calling out for her mother.

I introduced her to everyone, and unsurprisingly she was much happier to meet the others.

I had reached a point where I wasn’t sure if everyone else was weird or if I was the problem. Probably me.

Candice’s pink t-shirt looked like a lollipop. Actually, her whole face reminded me of one. I was 5’9”, but she was taller than me.

Kristen was more my style, wearing ripped black jeans and an oversized band T-shirt. She was shorter than me but had a bombshell figure. She seemed like the kind of girl who would hang out with the guys and get into trouble. The three of them suddenly reminded me of my old group.

It was sad, but somehow, I was glad I had found something that resembled the better version of what I had back home. Maybe this place wouldn’t suck so much after all. It all depended on me and how much I wanted to continue the moping. I could make new acquaintances pretty quickly when I wanted to.

“Okay, obviously there’s no class today, how about we go outside?” Chris asked, throwing his backpack into his locker.

“Sure,” we all replied, Candice’s voice covering all others.

We walked out into the yard, trying to find a spot in the sea of students standing all around. Meanwhile, Candice and I were being quizzed about moving to Seattle. Her parents had wanted a change of scenery, so the redhead relocated from Austin.

I kept the details of my story to myself.

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