Homecoming for a high school senior was a lot like finding a date to Comic-Con for a self-confessed nerd. It was like catching a glimpse of side boob for a prepubescent boy. Like snorting a line of coke for a detoxing drug addict.

It was exhilarating. Thrilling. Perhaps even life-altering.

Emma Belrose, however, was no ordinary high school senior. Having little interest in the pep-infested week that came around without fail every October, she'd completely forgotten about it.

At least she had until she walked into her small school Monday morning and was greeted by the sight of pajama-clad teens roaming the halls. She even spotted Mr. Mason, her decrepit Biology teacher, wearing a pair of long johns she was nearly positive were as old as the man himself.

Still, it was the least objectionable of the dress-up days to come, Emma was sure.

Feeling rather foolish in her jeans and navy camisole, she was relieved to spot her best friend – dressed normally, praise whatever deity was watching over her – lounging against her locker. The opposite of Emma in many ways, Collette Monet was a short, shapely girl with a bob of red hair that curled attractively around her ears. She was bickering passionately with the third person who made up their friendship trio, Luca Bates – a human bean pole with a mop of blond hair atop his head.

Neither noticed Emma approach as she hurried over.

"I wouldn't be caught dead wearing anything like that! I mean, do those even count as clothes? Scraps of fabric,
maybe
."

"Hey, guys," Emma greeted her friends, interrupting Collette mid-rant and shooing the redhead out of her way. She grabbed her thermos of orange juice out of her book bag before dropping it off in her locker.

"Emma!" Collette greeted her excitedly, a satisfied gleam in her eyes as she took note of her lack of sleepwear. "Finally, someone with a little sense in her head!"

"You two are such killjoys." Luca shook his head in mock despair. "It's homecoming! And our senior year to boot. You could show a little school pride, you know."

Luca was adorned in a yellow bath robe. The flap was open, revealing plaid pajamas and a pair of bunny slippers on his feet. He looked both ridiculous and adorable, something Emma was sure Collette had noticed – at least the adorable part. Not that the girl would ever admit it.

"School pride? Is that what you call
that
?" Collette retorted, pointedly eyeing the gaggle of girls chatting excitedly at the other end of the hall. It was Maribeth Campbell and her two sidekicks, Flower and Bambi.

Yes, those were the girls' real names, and no, Emma had no idea what their parents were smoking when they'd come up with them.

All three girls were blondes, though Emma was fairly certain that only Maribeth's hair color was natural. The other two girls possessed dark brown roots that would appear and miraculously disappear every few months.

It was not only their hair color that matched today, however.

Emma took in the fact that all three girls were wearing revealing, silky tank tops and tiny boy shorts that couldn't possibly be the right size for their admittedly generously-sized booties. Nor could they possibly be allowed to wear them according to Maple Valley High's dress code.

"Because I don't call that school pride," continued Collette as Emma sipped her juice and eyed the three girls. "I call that a group of skanks desperate for male attention."

Emma nearly choked. "Collette!" she sputtered disapprovingly, though her brown eyes were alight with laughter as she wiped a dribble of juice from her chin.

"It's true," Collette protested before setting her sights back on the grinning Luca. "I suppose you would've preferred we had dressed like those bimbos."

Luca shrugged, completely unabashed by the accusation. "Well, I certainly wouldn't have objected."

Emma hid her smile behind her thermos as a dark blush spread across Collette's cheeks. It was her friend’s turn to sputter. "Pigs! The whole lot of you boys are pigs!"

Before she could come up with more creative names to bestow upon the male sex, however, the shrill whine of the school bell sounded throughout the hall, and waving good-bye to Luca with one hand, Emma grabbed Collette's elbow with the other and began dragging the girl to their shared Art class.

"Can you believe him?" Collette complained. "Ladies are not objects to be ogled."

"You liked it," Emma teased good-naturedly as they found their classroom and sat at their usual table. "And besides, Maribeth and her posse certainly
do
want to be ogled."

Collette crossed her arms over her chest. "I wouldn't exactly call them ladies."

Emma laughed. "Fair enough.”

No sooner had she said Maribeth’s name did the girl in question stroll into the classroom. Art was one of two classes Emma shared with Maribeth and her friends. Only Art and Gym, thank God.

It wasn't that Emma had anything against the blonde, per se. Despite her ribbing with Collette, she truly didn’t care what Maribeth did or how she chose to dress.

Maribeth, however, despised Emma. She had a permanent “hate-on” for her as Collette had oh-so-helpfully explained one day. "Because you're naturally gorgeous," she’d said, "and she is positively green with envy."

Emma was skeptical of that explanation. She was no great beauty. With dark brown hair that fell halfway down her back and big doe eyes of the same color that dominated her otherwise dainty face, Emma found herself to be rather plain. She was of average height and didn't have the voluptuousness of Collette or even the ample bosom of Maribeth to accentuate her figure.

Whether Collette's words had any merit or not, however, the fact remained the same. Maribeth hated her.

Luckily, their teacher, Mrs. Horton, entered the room and assigned them all to their task of the day: painting homecoming posters with which to decorate the school.

Joy.

Emma begrudgingly set to work on the mind-numbing job. Soon, however, she became distracted by the loud whispering of Maribeth, Flower, and Bambi. While relieved that she didn’t seem to be the target of their gossip, Emma found their loud murmuring nonetheless irritating.

"He's definitely handsome. I saw him in the school office this morning and let me tell you-"

"But isn't he dangerous?”

"Yeah, he got kicked out of his old school. For fighting, I heard-"

"Bad boys are so hot! Like, H-A-W-T hot!"

"What in the world are they talking about?" Emma asked Collette quietly.

Her question was awarded with a raised eyebrow. "Don't you pay
any
attention to the rumor mill?"

That was hardly fair. Collette knew that she didn't. Emma had a penchant for daydreaming. And besides, half of the rumors that floated around the school seemed to be about her. Rumors spread around by the vicious Maribeth, of course.

Like the fact that Emma was a pathetic, little loser with no friends to speak of besides the books she was constantly totting around. (Sort of true, Emma supposed. Collette and Luca
were
the only people at school she considered friends. And she
did
read a lot.)

Or, you know, the fact that she'd supposedly slept with Maribeth's boyfriend. (Definitely
not
true.)

"You know I don't," Emma pointed out, like the answer should have been obvious.

Collette frowned. "Oh. Well, a new student is supposed to arrive today. That must be who this supposedly hot, like H-A-W-T hot, bad boy is." Her frown transformed into a teasing grin. "Why, are you interested?"

Emma rolled her eyes. "No. Not like how you're interested in a certain tall, slipper-wearing guy we both know and love anyway."

That shut Collette up.

Emma had no reason to think of the new boy again until lunch break rolled around. Waiting for her friends to show up, she snatched up an empty table in the cafeteria. She spied Maribeth and Gunther, the blonde’s muscle bound boyfriend, across the room and immediately noticed the nasty scowl on the girl's face. She vaguely wondered what had put it there.

Before she could think too much on it, however, Luca and Collette arrived, the latter loudly plopping her tray down across from Emma. "Oh. My. God."

Emma scrunched her nose in confusion. "What?"

"I saw him."

"Saw who?"

Collette looked at her like she wanted to throttle her. "The new boy. Remember? The one Maribeth and her cronies were talking about? Seriously. Like O-M-G."

"You said that already," Emma pointed out.

"It bears repeating. He is a hunk."

Emma glanced surreptitiously at Luca, who shrugged helplessly. "It's true. He was in my Trigonometry class. As a guy secure in his masculinity, I can safely say he's what you girls would call a hottie."

"Even more importantly," Collette interrupted, "he totally snubbed queen bee Maribeth. It was glorious," she praised. "Miss Thing sat by him in Trig and was being her usual skanky self, shoving her boobs in his face and whatnot. Well, he whispered something in her ear – and it must have been real nasty, judging by the look on her face – and right after, he just stood up in the middle of Mr. Werner's lecture and moved to the back of the room, literally as far away from her as he could get. Her face was positively puce."

Well, that certainly explained the girl’s scowl. "So that's why she looks even more surly than usual."

"Yup," Collette agreed, popping the ‘p’. She shrugged. "But I'm sure she'll get over it. She was probably just flirting with him to get her lughead of a boyfriend jealous anyway."

Emma glanced at the lughead in question.

Gunther Kingston.

Despite his attachment to Maribeth, he'd made it clear on more than one occasion that he had a thing for Emma. She had no idea why and didn't care to find out. Not only was Gunther already in a relationship, he wasn't her type at all. She didn't care for pushy, pompous pricks.

Luca cleared his throat. "If you gossiping hens are quite done, I myself have a juicy tidbit to share. Lulu Jennings told me…"

Emma nearly groaned aloud at the mention of Lulu and discretely looked over at Collette, whose lips had suddenly perched upon hearing that particular name. The redhead viciously stabbed what had once been a hamburger with her fork.

Lulu was actually a sweet girl, if not a little dim. She was a tall brunette with a habit of wearing short, flowy skirts. And flirting with one Luca Bates.

Collette despised the girl. She wouldn't divulge why, but the reason was obvious enough to Emma.

She just wished her two friends would get together already.

"...and apparently Emma here is a homecoming queen candidate."

Those words had Emma's train of thought stopping in its tracks. "You're kidding,” she deadpanned.

"Lulu rarely knows what she's talking about; I swear the inside of her head is completely made of air,” Collette agreed. “But I can't say that I'm surprised.”

Wait…
what?

“You're pretty, smart, and most importantly, nice. That's more than most girls here can tout. Plus, you’ve got that whole shy bookworm thing going for you. I swear that half of the school has a crush on you. Not only guys either."

Embarrassed, Emma attempted to sink into her seat. "Shut up, Collette."

"It's true!" her friend insisted.

"You're just as fabulous, my dear," Luca said.

Collette's cheeks practically glowed in pleasure, but she merely sniffed faux-conceitedly. "Well, of course I am!"

After ten more minutes of being forced to watch the two oblivious buffoons painfully flirt with each other, lunch ended, and Emma was happy to make her way to her favorite class – at least of her current semester – American Literature.

Collette hadn't been exaggerating when she'd called her a bookworm. Emma loved to read whatever she could get her hands on, whether it be the dirty romance novels littered across her bedroom floor – they'd surely make her father blush if he ever dared to open one – or the more highbrow books she was assigned to read for class.

American Literature was even taught by her favorite teacher at Maple Valley High, Miss Blanchett. She was a rather robust woman in her early sixties who had large drawn on eyebrows and a head of short lime green hair. At least that was the color it was this month. In September, it had been bubblegum pink.

Miss Blanchett was just instructing the class to crack open the novel they'd finished the week before –
The Scarlett Letter
by Nathaniel Hawthorne – when the classroom door opened, and a boy Emma had never seen before waltzed into the room, nonplussed and seemingly uncaring of the eyes that immediately zeroed in on him.

The ratty zip-up sweatshirt the boy was wearing disguised his physique completely. All Emma could really tell was that he was tall. The hood of his sweatshirt was up, too, and only a few strands of blond – maybe brown? – hair escaped it. The rest of his face was hidden.

Other books

Agent of Change by Sharon Lee, Steve Miller

Executive Toy by Cleo Peitsche

Synister: The Push Series - Book 1 by Alexis Riddley

Our Love Unhinged (Reluctant Hearts Book 4) by Brighton Walsh

Bruises of the Heart by J. J. Nite

Enduring Service by Regina Morris

Sudden Backtrack: A Hollows Short by Kim Harrison

The Revelation of Louisa May by Michaela MacColl

Trapped by Carrie Grant

ServingSimon by Caitlin Ricci