Luckily for me, I was able to find my class with the help of an elderly janitor. He saw me standing in the hallway while every other student is heading to their classes, leaving the halls almost empty with me only left to wander around panicking. He was sweet enough to help me out though, with the white plain mask on, it kind of freaked him out.

I sit all the way in the back so that I'm not able to be seen by anyone, away from their eyes, away from any embarrassment.

Suddenly, someone sits in the desk that's in the other row, next to the one I'm sitting in. I pull on the hoodie, making sure that whoever this person is, does not see any part of my face or should I say, mask. I look up slightly to find that the students in my class are either talking to their friends, facing forward waiting for the second bell to ring, or they're just bored already.

The second bell rings and the teacher stand in the front of the classroom. "Hello, freshmen," she says with a big smile on her face, looking at all of us. "My name is Ms. Goodnick and welcome to English 1 honors!"

Everyone except for me said, "Hello, Ms. Goodnick..." in a bored tone.

Ms. Goodnick's big smile vanishes and turns into a frown. "You guys sound like zombies... You can do better!"

"Hello, Ms. Goodnick!" the students now spoke lively with a bit of humor in their tone.

"Thank you!" she says and began to teach today's lesson.

~ ~ ~

Somehow my four classes today went by quickly and the teachers didn't seem to care or notice my mask, which I'm pretty happy about though I still have my fake doctor's note in case they notice. The faster the school days end, the more the school days fly by.

I stand by my open locker, shoving in my books and papers from my classes inside. Closing my locker, I felt strong hands push me to the floor roughly, causing me to fall on my chin and hurt my right elbow really badly.

Well, great. Now I'm going to get a bruise...

I try to get up, using my hands to push me up, but stop to feel the pain in my elbow throb causing me to fall back down on the floor.

Students crowd around me and the other, who pushed me to the floor, making me want to curl up into a ball and cry. I look up slightly to see the crowd part for someone to pass through. It's a tall boy with dark brown hair and deep dark eyes that I noticed when he looked me in my blue glossy ones.

I watch silently as the boy clenches his fists and walk over to the one who pushed me, giving him a few hard punches on his jaw, making blood form and onto his knuckles. I hear the crowd cheer "fight, fight, fight!" as the two boys stand a close distance to each other with angry expressions.

"How could you just push a girl like that, Chad?" I hear one of them say. I believe it's the one who punched him that is taking up for me. "I know you have a big mouth that's full of bullshit, but that doesn't mean that you were supposed to do such thing!"

A deep growl escaped from who I believe that is Chad, "I didn't do it because I wanted to, Chance. I did it because someone told me to."

"And who would tell you to do that?" Chance asks when I felt someone's grip on my arm pulling me up.  I look up to see that it's the janitor, who helped me find my class today, helping me up to go to the school's nurse.

Just before the crowd parted to give me and the janitor way through, I heard Chad speak loud enough for everyone surrounding us to hear, "Saundra Brown." That name was like death to my ears.

~ ~ ~

I stand in front of the body mirror, putting mascara on along with red lipstick. I rub my lips together and smile to show my perfect white teeth and fixing my curly blonde hair. I'm wearing a white blouse, that's tucked into a pair of light blue shorts, with white buckled sandals.

Today is going to be the day where boyfriends ask their girlfriends out to the 8th-grade dance, which that is what my boyfriend is going to do, so I've decided to dress the part. My best friends are going to stare at me with excited, cheerful smiles as the crowd of people gathered around us and my boyfriend says, "Will you be my date to prom?" and I'll say, "Yes!" and then we'll kiss.

Yep, today is going to be perfect! I've waited for this my whole life, and no-one's going to stop this amazing day from happening, I thought to myself as I shrugged the straps to my bookbag onto my shoulders. 

I enter downstairs to see my mom. I walk over to her and give her a kiss on the cheek as she did the same to me. "Are you ready for school, sweetie?"

"As ready as I'll ever be!" I say with a gleaming smile, thinking of the amazing day ahead of me.

"Well, then, let's go," she says and the both of us leave the house.

I heard a knock on the door as I sit on a hospital-like bed, the nurse walks into the room with a smile as he looks at me, but it falters when his eyes land on the mask. 

He clears his throat to speak, "Hello, Ms. Hunter. Your mother is outside waiting for you, but before you can leave, I'll have to treat your bruise."

I nod my head and outstretch my hand to look at the bruise on my elbow. The nurse walks over to me and takes a hold of my elbow with his gloved hands, inspecting it. He then walks away and comes back with an ice pack and a bandage.

As he wraps the bandage around my elbow tightly, he says, "Your elbow doesn't look badly bruised, but it still needed treatment. I suggest that you keep the bandage on for forty-eight hours." 

"I took the ice pack along with the bandage in case you had somewhere else that's hurting and maybe bruised. Do you?" he says and I quickly shook my head in reply though my chin is hurting very badly, I don't want to take the mask off.

"Ms. Hunter, I'm a nurse. I can tell whenever a patient is lying," he says with a sigh. "Can you take off the mask so that I can see if there's anything else wrong?"

With a lot of thinking, I take off the mask to reveal my hurting chin. I move my hand to touch my chin but only caused it to hurt even more. Before the nurse could grab the ice pack, I did so and press it against my chin to feel the pain slightly cool down.

"Well, I guess you're good to go," he says with a smile as I got off the bed. "If you need any more help you know where to find me."

"Thank you, Mr. Anderson," I smile and he seems taken aback by me talking to him since I've been acting anti-social, which I am.

"You're welcome."

I open the door and walk down a hall to the main office, while I'm at it, I've decided to put back on the mask and pull my grey hoodie over my head. I enter the main office to find my mom standing at the desk talking to a woman who sits behind the desk. I look over to the seating area to find Chad sitting there and I internally thank myself for putting on the mask.

My mom turns around and spots me. In a hurried walk, she stops in front of me and throws her arms around me. "Oh, sweetie, I'm glad you're okay!" she says, hugging me even tighter.

She lets go of me only to scan me from head to toe. "I can't believe someone would do such thing to you..." her blue eyes that are so similar to mine starts to get teary. I hate seeing my mom cry, so with a frown that she can't see, I hug her, the only way to not see her tears fall.

In just a faint whisper, I say, "I love you, Mom."

She seems to have heard me and says back, almost the same whisper as I did, "I love you more."

We stop hugging each other when a door open to reveal Chance. He looks at me only to give me a sweet smile, but when his eyes land on Chad, it changes to a scowl. 

"Come on, sweetheart, we should get going," Mom says and starts to walk away. 

As I walk behind her, passing by where Chad's sitting, I felt a hand on my shoulder and I stop to turn around and find Chad with a sad and regretful expression.

"Look, I'm not used to saying this kind of stuff," he starts, eyebrows knitted together in frustration, "but I'm sorry. If I knew that you were... different, I wouldn't have done that. I'm very sorry. Is there anything that I can do to make it up to you?"

I first stare at him in shock, shocked that someone like him would actually... apologize? Then I smile, again, no-one's seeing it. With one step forward, I hug him. He stilled in surprise, but after a few seconds gave in.

I felt someone staring at me and so I look up to see that Chance is looking at me. I look into his eyes and so did he, unblinking. Then I blink and look away, letting go of Chad and walking away, at a quite fast pace, to meet my mother outside.

* * *

A/N:

So this is the second chapter. What do you think? 

I really, really hope that you liked this chapter. I enjoyed writing it, especially Annie and Chad's part, she's so sweet! *inserts heart eyes here*

Please leave a vote on this chapter, if you liked. And also, leave your comments for me to read. I love reading your comments!

- Tanya <3