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Of course, Ashley is exactly the kind of skank that would sleep with one of her former best friendʼs boyfriend She would even be so skanky as to do it in my own bed

As for Jase, he would happily beat her to death with her own arm and she knew it Mostly because he had told her as hteous What makes you think youʼre so much better than the rest of us?"

"Iʼm not better than everyone," I said honestly, "just you" I turned and walked aithout waiting for her reply

My high fro ho in her place lasted exactly fifty-eightto avoid the unidentifiable sticky black substance that clung to one of the legs ofby me

"Hey," Alex said softly I noticed several pairs of curious eyes flicker in our direction John Davis brazenly turned around in his seat to witness the action

Great Confrontation with an audience With Ashley I had been thinking of what I would say to her for fourteen months I had played the scene over and over in htto say or even why I was saying it

"What do you want?"

The roo hile made him look very tall "I just wanted to say that Iʼm sorry"

"Itʼs not h, I did have a fairly wretched bruise on my shoulder, but that was mostly Jaseʼs fault

"Yeah, but youʼre the one I really donʼt want to be mad at me" As messed up as it was, I wasnʼt mad at Alex It wasnʼt his fault his brother needed some serious psychiatric help, and that mine was a tad bit over-protective I wanted to tell hi deal, but instead I did what Jase and Charlie had askedYou andto be friends If you could just leave me alone froht hiuard It took him a minute to respond "Is that what you want, or what your brother wants?"

"Itʼs what I want," I lied "Now, if you could please just go sit down and start pretending like I donʼt exist, my life would be perfect" Or, at least, it would be nor norefor a monotony to overtake our senior year Every Tuesday there was a

"surprise" pop quiz in AP English, and on Fridays we did a lab in AP Chened at least two hours worth of hoht Even the Shakespeare class had fallen into a pattern: read a play, watch thelunch, Jase would eat with Talley andout with his friends Talley and I would then usually shuffle off to the library to spend the remainder of our break hunched over text books We both decided four AP classes may have been a bit much

I was so busy with the mountains of homework I had to move on a daily basis that I didnʼt have time to notice Alex Cole I didnʼt notice the way he would click his pen when he was really trying to concentrate I didnʼt notice that he only seemed to own five T-shirts, all of which hinted at the lithe, muscular body underneath I didnʼt notice that he had a habit of licking his lips before he spoke, or that his left diht one I certainly didnʼt notice (or care) that he took Ashley to Ho