The Monday morning train was always the most crowded one because of rush hour. Young business people with briefcases stood smushed together in the middle holding onto the metal poles with fierce grips. Even journalists, aspiring young performers, and unemployed people – anything you could ask for. They were easy to spot.

Then you had the short people who were in that awkward position where they couldn't grip onto anything and just settled on not falling over by squishing into the sweaty crowd like a pack of penguins huddling together to stay warm.

You had to either be really early or really lucky to manage to get a seat on those subway trains, and even then you were probably bound to give it up if an old lady with back problems and a walking cane hobbled on the train.

Actually, the cane and back problems didn't matter – you had to give up your seat to any elderly or pregnant person who stepped aboard or else you'd be deemed as a disrespectful, selfish teenage hooligan.

Then there was Spencer. He usually stayed away from the seats and opted for leaning on the subway doors against the "do not lean on door" sign. It was technically not allowed, but Spencer would much rather stay away from the vortex of commuters instead of getting swallowed whole by it.

"The next stop is 103rd street," a loud voice announced through the public address system prompting Spencer to throw his worn-out backpack over his shoulder and take out his earbuds.

As the music faded from his ears, it was replaced by the flurry of chatter and bumpy train noises. Spencer yawned and stretched his arms out as far as he could.

When the train stopped and the doors opened Spencer was the first one to jump out. He headed for the stairs, keeping his eyes on the floor so he wouldn't accidentally step on a patch of sticky bubble-gum like last time.

Toni had to help him scrape it off with her Swiss Army knife. Spencer still didn't know why she carried around that Edward Scissorhands-like weapon, but "it's really handy," she'd argue. It was funny, really. That was the only time Spencer had actually seen her use it.

As Spencer kept shuffling through the mob, he stopped when an unexpected sound of music swirled through the underground subway. The moment the soft notes traveled through his ears, Spencer felt goosebumps on his arms.

He'd turned off his MP3 player, right? Spencer pulled the backpack off his shoulder and unzipped it to check and just as suspected – there was his blue music device, tossed into the bag and not making a peep.

His friend Toni was waiting for him by the subway entrance, but Spencer decided that it was fine to leave her there for one more minute. Besides, he had taken the early train so it wasn't like they'd arrive late to school.

Not that Toni cared. Spencer curiously followed the music, ignoring all other people who for some reason didn't seem fazed by the hypnotic playing of the guitar strings. The melody seemed familiar.

"When you were here before," a low voice sang. It continued: "Couldn't look you in the eye."

Spencer noticed a short boy standing against the wall with an acoustic guitar hanging around his shoulders.

The guitar case was lying on the ground, propped open and begging for tips. It made him think of a dog who wanted a treat. Spencer started digging around in the pockets of his baggy jeans, looking for coins. He found an old penny and thought that it was better than no treat at all, so he dropped it in the guitar case. That granted him a quick, thankful nod from the guitarist causing his silvery hair to lightly bounce along.

"You're just like an angel... Your skin makes me cry."

Spencer was so entranced by the performance that he had to rip himself away from the guy and force himself to walk away. Toni didn't like it when people were late, but it was somehow always okay when she was. Spencer had no desire to argue with her about that logic.

He rushed up the steps of the West 103rd street subway entrance, spotting Toni with a Starbucks coffee in her hands. She was shouting at some stranger, trying not to spill her drink.

"Fine, forget about it!" she yelled after the stranger who had taken off. Then, more to herself, she muttered a few curse words to calm herself down. "Fucking prick."

"Hey, Toni!" Spencer greeted her as he reached the top of the stairs. "Who was that guy?"

"Nobody," she replied and took a sip of her coffee with her eyebrows wrinkled. Only Toni could pull off the 'aggressive-coffee-drinking' look. "I was just... Waiting here for you when he bumped into me and I spilled some coffee on his shirt. I told him to watch where he was going but he started blaming me! I didn't even do anything!"

Toni wildly flailed her arms around again, and Spencer prayed that she wouldn't spill her drink again.

"Okay, okay...," Spencer said in an effort to calm her down. "Did you get that from the Starbucks across the street?"

Spencer looked behind her head, where the coffee place stood. It was a cozy place; nice drinks and close to school. Albeit a bit expensive for his taste, though.

"Yeah, Robin gave me a discount!"

"What a jerk," Spencer said. "I've been there just as many times as you have and yet I never get discounts."

"Well," Toni said, making sure to drag that vowel out to its fullest potential. "Of course he would make an exception for his older sister. And besides, it took a lot of effort for him to land that job so I don't think he'd be keen on handing out discounts to everybody."

The pair started walking down the busy street towards Amsterdam Avenue. Cars stood lined up by the sidewalk and yellow cabs drove by, honking at the other vehicles and pedestrians. All the commotion and tall buildings sometimes made you feel as small as an ant.

"This hangover from the pizza place last Friday is killing me," Toni said. She tipped her head back to soak up the last few drops of her beverage before tossing it into a flower box standing in front of the windows of some snobby bank.

"Yeah, we didn't drink anything this weekend," Spencer commented. "We ate one pizza and that was it. It was mad delish though. What was that place called again? I swear, it was even better than Ray's Pizza."

"Take that back before I cut you," Toni warned coldly. "Anyway. You're supposed to look out for me, Spence. That's your job."

"Are we forgetting you're one year older than me? Should be the other way around."

"Right, I'm a fucking senior this year," she said, burying her hands in the pockets of her leather jacket. "Feels like only yesterday when you were best friends with T–"

"Don't," Spencer simply said.

"Is it still a sore subject?" Toni replied. "I'm sorry, Spence. But it'll be different this year, yeah?"

Toni tried going for an assuring smile, but when she didn't receive anything else than Spencer uttering a small noise of agreement she thought it'd be best not to dwell on it.

"Anyway, I was thinking about the whole college thing and I didn't realize I was supposed to do stuff to put on my application."

"What the hell?" Spencer said. "Everybody freaking knows that."

"You haven't done anything noteworthy, either!" she complained. "And if you don't, you'll stress out about it in your senior year and realize you haven't done shit for three years. Like someone we know."

"Yeah, you! Get your fucking act together!"

"I was talking about Gloria, actually."

The two teenagers reached the intersection and jaywalked across the road, and then headed down to West 102nd Street. A black car drove past them and had to slam the breaks to not hit them.

"I think we should join a club or something," Toni suggested. "Become student body presidents. Me first, and then I'll leave the crown to you."

"That's not even..." Spencer began, but then stopped short. "Never mind. Just... Go talk to the guidance counselor if you're that worried."

~*~

"Stupid idiots!" the chauffeur muttered at the boy and girl who had nearly ended up under his car. He noticed the passenger looking at him in the rear-view mirror, and he cleared his throat sheepishly. "My apologies, sir."

"It's fine," the passenger said and looked at the teenagers. He recognized them from school, but couldn't for the life of him remember their names. "Could you pick me up after school too?"

"Certainly, sir," the man said and drove into the dead end of 102nd street.

"You know you can just call me Kyle," Kyle said while starting to pick up his messenger bag and the BlackBerry phone.

"I believe your parents would think that's all too familiar," the chauffeur argued and parked in front of the school. "Now get on. I see your girlfriend is waiting for you."

Kyle sighed when he saw Jenny standing next to Natalie, the two of them chatting. Jenny had apparently noticed Kyle's car and cheerfully waved at him as a bright smile painted her pink lips. Kyle had no desire to talk to her but he'd been avoiding her for a week now lying about being grounded, and he didn't want Jenny to get suspicious. Keeping the whole act up was exhausting.
He got out of the car and walked up the steps to the school entrance.

Edward A. Reynolds West Side High School, the letters above the entrance read. Jenny ran up to him and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Kyle awkwardly patted her on the back, trying his best to hold the fake smile.

"I've missed you so much!" Jenny said. "How have you been? Natalie and I went back to school shopping on Saturday and I bought these cute uggs!"

Jenny showed off her fuzzy shoes and giggled, but Kyle didn't know what was so funny about them. His face started to hurt.

"We should get some new clothes for you too," Jenny continued and fumbled with Kyle's tie to get it tidy under his shirt and cardigan. "You dress like a cricket player. How about we go to that Steven Alan store after school?"

"Uh... Yeah?" Kyle said, not really realizing that he had accidentally agreed until Jenny gave him another bear hug.

Kyle was so fed up with her. He had to get away so he could get to homeroom in time. But how? Kyle looked up at the far right window on the second floor – the one in the library. He prayed that Mason was in there so he could get the signal. Kyle flashed a call-me sign at the window and waited.

"What are you doing?" Jenny asked after she released him from the tight embrace.

"Scratching my nose?"

"That is disgusting," Jenny said and backed away from him.

"What? No, not like-," Kyle tried to explain, but was interrupted by the ringing of his phone. "Oh, I'll have to take that. See you at lunch!"

Kyle answered the call and started hurrying away from them. That one was close.

"How many times do you think he's going to keep doing that?" Jenny asked Natalie after Kyle was out of sight.

"I don't know," Natalie answered. "But maybe he's having a bad day? This doesn't have to mean that he doesn't want to talk to you... At least you're hanging out after school, right?"

"I appreciate you trying to find a silver lining, but it's not a fucking silver lining if he doesn't actually want to hang out with me. Jesus Natalie, get it through your skull!"

Kyle held the BlackBerry to his ear and rushed off to his locker. The halls were full of classmates and confused freshmen who had no idea where they were supposed to be.

"Thanks for calling, man," Kyle said to the phone.

"Please tell me that's the last time," the voice on the other line responded. "Jenny obviously knows what you're doing. I'm watching her from the window right now and she's crying into Natalie's chest."

"What?" Kyle said, stopping in his tracks.

"I'm kidding," Mason said and laughed. "She's just standing there looking into her pocket mirror. What's she doing? Hang on, I think Natalie is trying to tell her that her makeup looks fine. No, wait... I don't know. I'm still learning how to read lips properly."

"Don't joke about stuff like that," Kyle told him and opened his locker to toss his bag inside.

"Why, because you don't want her to be upset?" Mason asked. "That's rich. Even richer coming from the rich kid."

"Can we not do this now?" Kyle said in a hushed voice, looking around the halls to make sure nobody was listening.

"Jenny is my cousin," Mason told him. "I know she can be... Presumptuous, but she doesn't deserve to be treated like air. You know?"

Kyle lingered in front of his sad, almost empty locker and tried to swallow the lump in his dry throat.

"Yeah," Kyle said in a small voice. He knew.

~*~

Over in the principal's office, the principal sat at his desk and went over the files of the two transfer students who sat in front of him. The first girl sat up straight with her legs crossed while the other girl sat slumped in her chair leaning her head on her palm.

"Let's see... Melanie Myers and Connie Taylor?" he said, reading the files.

"Yes, I'm Connie," the first girl said and smiled.

"And you two are half-sisters from Los Angeles?" the principal asked. "I wouldn't be able to guess that, you look so different from each other. Are you enjoying the city so far?"

"Very much," Connie said, twirling the ends of her blonde bob cut. "The big apple is a beautiful city. I can't wait to start attending West Side High!"

The other girl, Melanie, scoffed into her palm and a short-lasting grin tugged on her lips. The other two in the room didn't seem as amused and settled on ignoring her to clear the room from the tension.

"Well, uh," the principal stuttered, "I hope you'll enjoy it. Feel free to come here between my free hours if you have any more questions. You've got your schedules and locker numbers, yeah? Homeroom starts in 20 minutes."

The girls got up from their plastic chairs and Connie thanked the principal before leaving the office. Melanie had already left to find the English classroom that she was supposed to be in. She had homeroom with one Mr. Lee, and Melanie did definitely not want to be the last one to find the classroom. According to the school map that she'd gotten from the principal, classroom 1B was... Oh. Right in front of her.

"Get out of the way," a tall passer-by said and shoved Melanie away.

Impulsively, she took one big step back from the wave of students pouring her way and shoved the useless map in her backpack. She wished she hadn't brought so many notebooks with her because now the backpack stuck out on her back like a turtle shell. Someone was bound to get hit by that disaster. She had to dump it in her locker. Now, where was it?

Melanie dug out the scrunched-up map from the bag and folded it out completely. It was too big for her to hold, and she couldn't even see the small text printed on the map. To her, it looked like undecipherable, mirrored letters and Melanie hated that she had left her glasses at home in the new apartment.

"You know what, Spence," a girl with long black hair put up in a ponytail said as she walked by. "I'll meet you there. I just have to go get some fresh air."

"Was that rhyme on purpose?" the guy with her asked.

"Shut up, idiot," she said and walked away from him against the current of students.

"Bye Toni!" he shouted and then headed off down the hall.

Those two reminded her of how she and Henry sometimes used to chat with each other back in California. How they used to sit on the beaches in L.A. and build ugly sand castles together. Henry would always trample them in the end and Melanie would try to rebuild it as fast as she could, but she always giggled so much that it was impossible to catch up. She missed him.

Melanie had already given up on the stupid map and tossed it into the nearest trash can she saw. It was starting to overflow with junk and some had fallen out on the floor, but she had no energy to care.

She started moving away from the crowded hall, pressing against the bulletin board on the wall and getting her eyes buried with posters. Say no to drugs! Yes, because people would obviously have a poster to thank for not getting stoned.

She stopped when she saw a lone poster hanging on the board. It was a signup sheet for joining the newspaper club, and there were rows upon rows of empty space where she could write her name. It did sound fun – her old school didn't have a newspaper club and she'd always thought that journalism seemed like an interesting hobby. Sort of like a spy interrogating people for information; hiding in the bushes to dig up dirt.

She picked up a ballpoint pen from her bag and swirled it over the first line on the page.

"Hi!" a girl suddenly said. It startled Melanie and the pen drifted off in the wrong direction. "Are you the new sophomore transfer student?"

"Yes, I am...," Melanie replied while eyeing the scribble she had ruined the page with.

"It's nice to see a new student joining the newspaper club," she said and gave Melanie a sweet smile. "I'm Natalie, a member of the student council. If you have any student-related concerns you can come to me!"

Natalie grinned at her again and tipped her head to the side so the hair bobbles in her brown curls clunked together. She seemed kind, and not that sickening kind of kind that people used to get what they wanted.

"Alright, thank you," Melanie said to her and attempted a smile as sweet as hers.

"See you around!" Natalie said and then walked away in the opposite direction of the student flood without getting trampled by it like Melanie had gotten a moment ago. How did she even do that?

"Making friends already, are we?" Connie said who had shown up behind her. "That's nice."

She stood there with an arm on her hip, her short hair falling over her blue eyes and long lashes just waiting to pierce your soul. It was no secret that Melanie had always been jealous of Connie's inherited beauty from their mother.

"What do you want?" Melanie asked her. She clicked on the pen profusely, like she usually did when she got irritated.

"I see you signed up for a club," Connie noted. "I'm still looking for a cheerleader try-outs poster, but they probably don't even have a team here. Lame."

"What did you expect?" Melanie said.

"Well, I didn't expect you to laugh at me in front of the principal back there," she said and crossed her arms. Her conniving smile stretched from cheek to cheek, and Melanie recognized it all too well. "That was kind of mean. What did I ever do to you?"

"What did you ever do to me?" Melanie echoed. "I don't know. Ask yourself that first."

Connie was still adamant on keeping her smile plastered on. After all, it was her shield of armor and the most intimidating thing she possessed.

"I have to go to homeroom," Melanie announced and walked away without waiting for Connie to reply. She wasn't worth it.

~*~

Victoria flipped her phone open to check the time. The same numbers lit up the screen as the last time she had checked. 08:52 AM. She sighed and looked out of the window of the bus.
There was the tall, window-spattered brick building and the people she always saw on her way to school. Same old tired faces, patrolling the sidewalks and hurrying across the streets.

The bus stopped at Amsterdam Avenue on 102nd, nearby the cul-de-sac where West Side was. Victoria got up from her seat and walked out. She ended up right in front of the bus stop to see two people looking at her before they entered the bus. They weren't staring – she knew that because she told herself so every day. However, it still made her feel watched.

Class wouldn't start for another ten minutes. It was still too early and the hallways were probably a nightmare to venture through.

Maybe she could go visit the corner bodega down the street? But then again, Victoria knew that she wasn't actually going to buy anything and she didn't want to look like a shoplifter. Anyone would assume she was because of the baggy sweaters she wore and her awkward posture. The pulled down, knitted beret on top of her light brown bird nest hair was the main thing people noticed when they saw that Victoria preferred to keep her gaze on the ground.

Was there anything interesting about the dirt on the ground, or the faint trail of moss that sometimes broke through the cracked asphalt? Not really. But it was safe.

Victoria walked slowly pretending to admire the street while buying time so she'd arrive late as usual. She counted on the bus to arrive late, but the schedule was never consistent. So here she was.

Every step towards the school was increasingly frightening but Victoria kept going. She started to get close now. One step up the stairs to the school entrance, and then two steps...

Meanwhile, Toni walked out of the school with a pack of smokes in her hands. An unlit cigarette was tucked between her lips and Toni tried to light her zippo without dropping everything. It was a difficult task and she'd much rather smoke by the school entrance, but the dumb rule said that nobody was allowed to smoke on school property. That led to most of the kids going across the street to smoke in the small park. It wasn't very pleasing to look at with all the cigarette butts dumped on the fresh grass but to Toni, it was her favorite thing in the world since she turned eighteen. She did follow the rules to some extent.

Victoria braced herself for the last step, holding onto the railing on the stairs. She lifted her head for a split second and came to face a person about to walk right into her. Oh no.

"Fuck-," Toni uttered as the pack and zippo slipped away.

Victoria lost her balance and her heart rate went up in the blink of an eye, clutching pain throbbing in her chest. Her long hair flew in the wind. She thought she'd fall and crack open her skull, but suddenly someone grabbed her arm and it was like the whole world had been frozen. Victoria took a few deep breaths before looking the person in the eye.

"Whoa, hey there," she said, still holding onto Victoria's arm. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to bump into you."

Victoria cleared her throat before speaking. She always sounded quiet and squeaky when talking with strangers.

"I'm sorry about your smokes," Victoria said and watched the cigarettes on the ground that had escaped from the pack and were now spread across the ground.

"It's fine," Toni said and pulled Victoria up to let go of her arm. "I can still smoke them, so no harm done. If they had landed in a puddle I'd be fucking pissed at you, though."

Victoria wasn't sure how to reply to that, so she just nodded along and placed her sweaty hands on the strap of her bag. Her fingers had started to shake. Damn it.

"Anyway...," Toni said at the prolonged silence that lingered between the two of them. "I'm Toni."

"Victoria."

"Freshman?" Toni asked the girl. She certainly looked the part, considering how short and stiff she seemed.

"No," she said and shook her head.

"Transfer student, then?" Toni wondered.

Victoria shook her head again and this time lowered it to the ground. She started drumming her fingertips against the strap of her bag just to give them something else to do.

"I thought I knew everyone at this school," Toni said. "Why haven't I seen you around before?"

"There are lots of students here," Victoria said and shrugged her shoulders.

"Yeah, but I've never seen you before," Toni said again.

"Maybe you just forgot," Victoria said. "I have to go."

"But-," Toni said and turned around to see the mystery girl walk into the building, leaving Toni alone to pick up her dropped belongings.            

Song: Radiohead - Creep (1993)

A/N - Thank you for reading! All the locations in this story exist in real life and you can look them up on Google Street View if you'd like - the school, the bus stop, and even that Starbucks place. But if you're not a big fan of scavenger hunts then you don't need to, of course. You don't have to know what the places look like to be able to understand what's going on in the story!
I've included a picture of what my character Toni looks like down here, drawn by my very good friend @movi_48 on Instagram. Her artwork is really beautiful so be sure to check her out. 
Thank you. ❤