Ten years earlier

It was the first day of sophomore year in high school. My best friend Sigrid and I had gone over our schedules multiple times to try and maximize the number of classes we would have together, with much success. Despite our manifest differences in taste – she liked humanities and I liked sciences – we had managed to compromise and get almost all our classes together, except for three of them. I guess it made sense that she wouldn't be sitting AP Calculus.

Our first class of the day – of the year – was English, which we were both attending. We sat next to each other carefully in the middle of the classroom. Quite notoriously, the front row was for the keen students, and the back row was for the rebellious kids. The middle was safe, it wasn't giving away any inclination towards one clan or the other. I definitely was a front-row kind of person, but I already was a foreigner in this school, I didn't want to give people more reasons to ostracize me.

Sigrid and I had not really been bullied in high school, nor had we been particularly popular. We were average, and we were fine with it. We had a small group of friends, composed of the few people that were not automatically thrown off by our thick accents and broken English, all of them equally average. My experience of an American school so far had been pleasantly eventless. I had managed to stay away from the typical teen drama and I was reasonably happy with my simple life. It was, by high school standards, quite a big win.

When the bell rang to mark the start of the lesson, the chatter died down and our English teacher started speaking, detailing the syllabus and telling us that we were already behind schedule to finish it on time. The usual gist. Our teacher had been talking for at least five minutes when someone knocked on the door and entered the room before being invited in.

"Hi, sorry I'm late, I got caught up at the reception, trying to figure out my schedule and all," he who appeared to be a new student said nonchalantly.

My first thought when I saw him was, Wow, he is such a back-row student.

He had long, dark hair tied together in a messy bun. He was wearing dark gray ripped jeans, a black tank top, and a black leather jacket. If we were not in a lax, public school, he would have been dress coded at least three times. He was wearing a lot of silver jewelry, but the most noticeable piece was the rosary around his neck. His English was unmistakably British, the kind that royals speak, and the contrast between his aristocratic diction and his rebellious attire was almost comical.

The teacher grumbled, visibly unhappy about the new student's tardiness, but eventually told him to find a seat and be quiet. He wiggled his way through the occupied desks until he reached the empty one right next to mine. As he sat down and took off his jacket, I noticed two things. One, both his nipples, visible through the very wide arm holes of his tank top, were pierced with a metal ring. Two, he had a black and gray Christian cross tattooed on his left shoulder. Was it even legal? The guy must have been fifteen, like the rest of us. Surely no reputable tattoo parlor would have accepted him as a client. The sight of his pierced nipples was both fascinating and mildly sickening. I felt a shudder going down my spine when I tried to visualize the process of them getting pierced. And yet, I couldn't keep my eyes away.

"Hi," he whispered to me, startling me out of my daydreaming. "I'm Josh. Josh Paxton." He extended his hand for me to shake, his striking blue eyes looking right through my soul. His fingernails were painted black and he was wearing a myriad of silver rings.

"Er hi," I replied awkwardly and shook his hand. "I'm Abril. Abril Llagostera."

"I'll need you to write that down for me," he chuckled.

"You can call me Abby," I offered.

"Okay, Abby. It's very nice to meet you."

I blushed and murmured a quick "you too" before turning my attention back to the lesson.

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A/N: Apologies for the short chapter. Most chapters that take place in the past will be equally short. If I ever manage to get more readers than my few friends who are supporting me on this journey (and have already read the whole book), I'll publish two chapters on days like that. But in the meantime, one chapter it is.

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Love,
Charlie