I was awoken from a deep, dreamless sleep by my cell phone's blaring alarm, my eyelids fluttering open as the sound seemed almost muffled by my half-awake ears. Usually the alarm would prompt me to start grumbling and swearing up a storm, but not today. Silently and without complaint, I shut off my alarm and prepared to face another day of being a potential—and highly likely—victim of so-called high school popular kids.

This preparation included dressing in a pair of ordinary black skinny jeans, an Evanescence band T-shirt and a pair of bright pink converse and then applying black and purple eye makeup. I tended to go for a gothic look most of the time and completed it by wearing black lipstick and metallic purple eye contacts. A scene style of sorts is what I chose for my hair, as per usual.

Huh...my streaks are fading, I realized as I glanced at the reflection of my black hair. The streaks were multicoloured, a mix of platinum blonde, neon pink, lime green, purple and blue. It was something I got redone every once in a while—usually with help since I admittedly struggled to apply hair dye on my own.

A knock sounded on my bedroom door. "Alex? Are you almost ready to leave?"

I inwardly groaned. It was my elder sister Abigail, whose apartment I'd been living in for the last three years following our parents' untimely deaths. "Yes, Abi, I'll be out in a minute," I called back before checking my bag to ensure nothing was forgotten.

"Well, hurry up. Your friends'll be here soon. Destiny called already."

"Alright, thanks."

Destiny Corday was a good friend of mine and had been for the past few months. She, like me, listened to a lot of rock and heavy metal music and preferred to wear makeup in darker colours—although she often went for shades of dark blue. She could be a bit closed off from other people at times, but it was mostly due to social anxiety. She was more outgoing when it was just us and the rest of our group, truth be told.

Despite coming off as the outsiders of our school, we had a fairly sizeable friend group, some of which played music together as a band. Aband that, up until three years ago, I myself had been the lead singer of. Ichose to leave for...personal reasons. I didn't really want to think about it,though.

In any case, it was pretty laughable, when I thought about it, that the group of bullies that targeted us was so much smaller than ours.

I exited my room not too long after Abigail walked away, presumably to return to her laptop. She'd recently picked up a job that required her to work from home sometimes, so she was often busy. I took a couple of Nutri-Grain bars from the cupboard, stuffing them into my bag for later, and gave a quick "Bye," to Abigail before taking the elevator down to the first floor to await my friends' arrival.

Soon enough, a silver minivan pulled up in front of the building and I approached it just as Destiny rolled her window down. Three Days Grace was blaring from the radio. "You'll have to get in the back; Lana's hogging the passenger seat today," she said, "Oh and hi, by the way."

I chuckled as I climbed into the back seat next to Andrew Kolowitz, a boy in my grade with black hair and brown eyes. "Hey, Des."

"So, you excited for another day of the boring hell we call school?" asked Andrew, his voice full of false enthusiasm.

"Nope," I replied, mimicking his tone. Andrew was one of the musicians of our group, the others being Nicole Rosenburg, Bridgette Muse, Kate Amity, Josh McNeal and Scott Freeland (most of whom were not in the van with us right now; the only ones that were being Andrew, Scott and Kate).

Kate Amity was instantly recognizable from her baby blue hair and love of crystals, as a fire opal on a gold chain could be seen around her neck on a daily basis. She was also a practicing Wiccan, though not many people knew that since she didn't bring it up much. She and Scott were together, which was actually a fairly recent development, and we all thought they made an adorable couple. Scott himself was a bit of a kleptomaniac, a habit Kate was trying to break him of, but he was a pretty good guy otherwise.

Lana Roland sat in the passenger's seat with her earbuds in, clearly tired from a lack of sleep. She was a bit of an insomniac, so this wasn't abnormal for her. She loved music like the rest of us and had tried to start a band of her own once, but it hadn't worked out. The other members lost interest and started hanging out with the 'popular' crowd and as such, didn't really want to associate with any of us for fear of being judged or bullied themselves.

I'd never gotten to know those kids well, but they were each recognizable to me by a few distinct traits. Cassidy Randle was a quiet pianist who enjoyed horror movies and, unlike so many others, she detested meaningless gossip. Sean Perry seemed like he was trying to become an Andrew 2.0 with his jokes and sarcasm...and wasn't always very successful, though he had his moments. Elizabeth Saunders was, to be blunt, extremely full of herself and believed she was always right about everything even if you proved her wrong. She was basically first-year Hermione Granger without any redeemable qualities. How Lana had put up with her, I couldn't even begin to tell you. And Mickey Richards was pretty much Sid Phillips from the first Toy Story without the violent tendencies.

But the real character of that group was Leanne Parker, who we dubbed the Alpha Bitch after a common TV trope. She was what I thought of as your stereotypical popular girl; blonde hair (with blue highlights), girly fashion sense, snobby attitude, the works. She took every opportunity within her grasp to come after us for one reason or another. A lot of the time her reasons were honestly really petty.

Leanne's best friend was another one of Lana's former band members, Nancy Harding. She was just as ruthless-yet-petty as Leanne was nowadays and run-ins with her were always unpleasant. She used to be one of the nicest people Lana knew, and now she was basically a Leanne clone.

When we pulled up at the school, we were a bit early so we had to wait outside for a few minutes. We chose a secluded spot to wait for the first bell as the rest of our friends began to arrive. And soon enough, they did.

"What's happening, everybody?" called Nicole, jogging over to us and plopping down next to Destiny on the ground. She wore faded blue jeans with a fair few holes in them, coupled with a black T-shirt and a neon pink leather jacket. We liked to joke that she was our human highlighter, something she took great pride in. Her hair was dyed a startling mix of lilac and sky blue, and on her feet were black flats patterned with treble clefs. A bass clef tattoo stood out on her left wrist and a silver barbell could be seen in her right eyebrow.

"Just avoiding Leanne and her friends. You know, nothing new," responded Scott, draping an arm around Kate with a grin.

"Loving the hair," added Destiny as Nicole was joined by Bridgette and Josh.

"Thanks," replied Nicole, "I got that done on Tuesday. Bridgette, we should go get yours done!"

Bridgette smiled and shook her head. "No thanks; I like my hair this colour. I don't know that I could pull off those vibrant colours like you and Kate do, but I appreciate the offer."

"Well, hey, if you ever change your mind I can get you an appointment. The lady who does my hair is really good friends with my Dad. If you ask me, they should just hook up already."

Josh raised his eyebrows. "Wait, they haven't? I thought he asked her out ages ago."

"He planned to at one point but he chickened out, the wimp," clarified Nicole with a shrug.

"Wimp, huh? Let me guess—you're talking about yourself, aren't you, Rosenburg?" a new voice sneered over the sound of our chuckling. Leanne Parker had finally spotted us, her band of assholes stationed around her as usual.

"If any of us were really wimps, Leanne, you wouldn't have that mark on your cheek from where Alex punched you last week," Nicole responded smugly.

"Oh, she knows I'm going to get her back for that," said Leanne, "don't you, Alexandra?"

"It's Alex," I said tonelessly, "and you can feel free to fuck off anytime now."

Leanne gave her long blonde hair a flip over her shoulder as Scott ripped open a bag of Tostitos chips, completely ignoring Leanne and her posse. "No, I don't think I will, Carmen, but it was a lovely try." She turned to Lana, who was leaning against a tree listening to her music and doodling in a little notebook she carried with her, yanking out one of her earbuds. "Hey, Lana, how'd you sleep?" she taunted.

"I slept just fine, thank you," snapped Lana, taking her earbud back from Leanne. Scott offered Lana some chips, which she accepted with a soft smile.

"Hey, Freeland, you feel like sharing those chips with us?" Nancy piped up, taking a step in his direction and placing her hands on her hips.

Scott smirked and replied around a mouthful of chips. "Not really, no."

"Well, that's just too bad." Hearing that, Mickey reached forward in an attempt to snatch the chips away, but Scott pulled his hand back before they could be taken.

"You want 'em, you can go get your own, assholes," he told them calmly. As he finished his sentence, the bell gave a loud ring.

"Fine, whatever. You probably stole those, anyway. See you all in music, losers." Leanne and her friends all began walking away.

We all got to our feet, too, and made our way to our first period class, which in my case happened to be math, the thing I despised (for the most part; I enjoyed math related to business or money well enough). Sean was in my class, as was Elizabeth, but the two of them were easy enough to ignore.

Second period was a spare for me, during which I hung out with Lana in the library. I'd just checked out my favourite book for the thousandth time, and when Lana saw that she grinned. "The Outsiders again?" she asked, examining the book's cover.

"Hell yeah. You know, I still get upset every time I read the last few chapters," I admit, "Johnny and Dally are my favourite characters. It's always my luck that the ones I root for are always the ones who end up dead one way or another by the end of the story."

Lana chuckles. "Yeah, I know what you mean. As for this book, though, I have to say I like Dally, Two-Bit and Ponyboy the most, although Cherry's pretty cool, too." When she mentioned Two-Bit, I could tell by the look in her eyes that she was reminded of her best friend since birth, Jessica Kaitlyn. Jessie didn't go to our school anymore, but I knew her through Lana and she was similar to Two-Bit when it came to her endless supply of wisecracks and jokes—which she was actually awesome at, unlike Sean Perry. Lana missed Jessica a lot.

At lunch, we found a way to shove two tables together so we could all sit with each other. I'd been expecting Leanne to show her face again, but thankfully she didn't...yet.

Then came the highlight of my day, which was music. Everyone who was in the band was there, since they'd all signed up to be. Once a week a few of us were meant to sing a song of our choosing for the rest of the class, and Mr. Peterson chose who got to go each week. Once we got through everyone, the exercise stopped unless someone felt like singing again.

Leanne and I were both selected to sing today, as was Nicole. Leanne went first, and although one would expect her to suck at singing, she was actually pretty good, though I hated to admit that. She sang 'Blank Space' by Taylor Swift, and the only negative thing I could say about her performance was that she needed to cease the incessant flipping of her hair before I cut off her hand with a rusty old hacksaw.

As she sat down, Mr. Peterson called on me to sing next. I rose and went to stand at the front of the room, loading up my selected song on my phone—sans earbuds. "I'm going to sing 'Whisper' by Evanescence," I told the class just as the song began. I got through the first and second verses without interruption, but halfway through the second chorus I could hear Leanne whispering shit into Elizabeth's ear about how 'God-awful' my singing was.

"That was probably the lamest song I've ever heard," she said when I finished singing, "Congrats on putting everyone to sleep, though."

"I'm sorry, Leanne, but are you really that much of an amoeba that you're mistaking applause for the sound of snoring?" I smirked with superiority, gesturing to the rest of the class, who were indeed clapping loudly for me. I could tell by Leanne's expression that she was torn between anger and confusion at what my insult meant. Guess someone didn't pass their science classes, I thought.

"Girls, let's leave the drama outside of the classroom, shall we?" suggested Mr. Peterson calmly, allowing Nicole to go next as I returned to my seat. Nicole performed a stunning cover of Paramore's 'Misery Business' and she sounded so much like Hayley Williams when she sangthat if you closed your eyes, you'd almost swear the real Hayley was there with you.

People applauded for her, too, and Leanne scoffed. "Really, it wasn't that impressive," she muttered coldly. Sometimes I wondered if that girl had even a shred of humanity within her.

After sitting back down, Nicole turned to me. "Alex, I have a, er, question for you," she said to me quietly, "The others and I were wondering...now that you're, you know, singing again...would you want to re-join the band?"