A little bird told me that one longstanding relationship at Nouveau is about to fall apart at the seams. Who will the heartbreaker and who will be heartbroken? Stay tuned for the fallout.

yours truly,
Queen B.

***

"So Kennedy," Alden smirked suggestively, letting the words vibrate on his vocal chords. He stood with his back rested against the row of lockers, fingers smoothing out the creases in his blazer. His soft brown eyes met mine momentarily, and the grin plastered on his face only increased in width.

"So?" I merely repeated after him, tucking a strand of loose hair between my ear.

"So tell me again how you ended up in a closet with Griffin King over the weekend." Curiosity drenched his voice and found a home in the way his eyebrows arched on command.

"It's not what it sounds like, Alden," I replied defensively, shoving two spiral notebooks into my bag. "How many times do I have to tell you nothing happened?"

"Until nothing turns into something." Alden shot me a redolent glance, tilting his head at an angle. Dark brown hair cascaded across his forehead. His eyes flickered from mine to the watch secured around his wrist, glancing at the time. "Six minutes for a passing period really isn't enough."

"Trust me, I know."

He laughed, his eyes smiling with the gentle magnetic pull of his lips. "Don't even get me started on the teachers that keep you after the bell because they want to make your lives as miserable as theirs."

"At least you don't have to wait in ridiculous lines for the bathroom," I responded, kicking my locker shut. The tip of my beloved ballet flats absorbed most of the force, my toes curling from the impact. "Are you headed to English now?"

Alden nodded, running his fingers through his dark hair. A soft sigh escaped his lips as he stood upright, the ends of his untucked button down curling underneath his fitted blazer. "I'm pretty sure there's a quiz on Macbeth today. Wish me luck, Ken."

"You don't need it," I promised with a sincere smile as he clutched his overfilling binder under his arm and started heading toward the English wing parallel to the senior locker bay.

The hallways gradually emptied while I slung my bag over my shoulders. Voices continued to travel through the thin air without a problem, pieces of conversations sliding through one ear and out the other. With more words than I could physically harbor, I was the master of unsolved crossword puzzles by the time I walked through Mrs. Choi's door.

Elspeth strolled into calculus behind me, only a couple of seconds remaining on the clock plastered to the wall in the back. Her ebony ponytail bobbed from side to side as she headed directly for the back of the room. I quickly glanced around the tables before I sat down next to Becca at our usual spot by the window. In Mrs. Choi's classroom, desks were arranged by pairs in neat rows that faced the whiteboard covered in three dimensional surfaces.

"Did you really have to tell Alden?" I whispered to Becca under my breath, slightly frowning.

"About what, the closet?" She turned toward me, her lips parting as a result of confusion. "I actually didn't say anything about Griffin to Alden. What are you talking about?"

I watched Becca carefully from the corner of my eye. She crossed her legs, straightening the pleated skirt that covered her slender thighs. Reaching behind her ear, she adjusted her diamond earrings. I waited patiently for an irregularity -- a simple quiver of her perfectly glossed lips or a gentle twitch of her almond shaped eyes -- but it never happened. The definition of composure was permanently tattooed onto the back of Becca's hand.

"Are you sure you don't want to become a lawyer like your parents?" I teased as I pulled my backpack onto my lap, riffling through papers in a folder for last night's homework assignment. "You'd be really great at it, Bex. You almost had me fooled."

Students passed their homework forward as Mrs. Choi walked around the classroom, wearing a countenance of disappointment on her face. She merely floated from one side to the other, weaving her way in between desks. A stack of graded tests rested in her arms, red ink bleeding through the pages. The air reeked of utter despair.

"I wasn't the one who told Alden. He must've found out from someone else," Becca addressed my accusation with an eye roll.

"And who would that be?" I paused and lifted the corner of my test discretely, feeling my stomach throwing itself in a series of somersaults. "The only other person in the hallway that night was Nate, and they're not exactly best friends right now."

"They've never been best friends, Ken." Becca scooted her seat forward and flipped her test over. Her face scrunched up as she gleaned over the letter circled in the corner. It was uncharacteristic for her to receive anything less than an A, her perfect transcript documented proof of that.

"I wonder why," I let my voice trail off, turning my attention to the morning announcements being broadcasted live. "It's never made sense to me."

"Nate's probably just jealous because Alden has better hair than him. You know how competitive he can get." Becca laughed lightheartedly, twirling a pen around her fingers. "Don't tell him I said that, though."

"Maybe that's because they're both in love with you."

She raised her brow, drawing her lips back into a thin, skeptical line. "Are we even talking about the same Alden right now? You know, the one who almost tripped walking up the stairs this morning?"

"How many boys do you know named Alden?"

"Do you remember when Alden said he wouldn't even kiss me if we were the last two people on this planet?" she asked, her frontal cortex mired with a collection of memories from the past. "I know there's a thin line between love and hate, but I'm pretty sure it still exists."

"That was freshman year. We all said stupid things when we were fourteen," I pointed out, my own mind conjuring up distant memories.

"It's a good thing we're not fourteen anymore," Becca responded, shifting her eyes to the television where the announcements were being projected. "Wait, look who it is, Ken."

As the camera panned out, heads gradually turned toward the flatscreen. The effect was like a wave rushing toward the beach to kiss the shoreline. Twice a week, the morning announcements featured a segment on a member of the senior class. This morning, Griffin sat across from Fabian Velasquez.

Fabian was one of the few students Nouveau recruited for athletics our freshman year. With sun-streaked caramel hair and hazel eyes, his specialties included hurdles and tackling other football players. More times than not, his name got lost behind the scenes in the coverage on Connor and Erik.

"Good morning, Nouveau," he greeted, "I'm Fabian Velasquez and this is the Senior Segment. We have Griffin King here with us today, the newest addition to our student body and senior class."

There were remnants of a Spanish accent in Fabian's words, his heritage deeply rooted in his voice. Griffin sat opposite of him, smiling sheepishly at the camera. I never pictured him to be camera shy. A set list of questions rested on the wooden table between Fabian and Griffin.

"So Griffin, how do you like Nouveau so far?" Fabian read directly off the script, making brief eye contact every couple words.

"I knew you were going to ask this question," Griffin responded, cracking a small smile. A soft chuckle left his lips and danced around the room, flirting with people's eardrums. "Nouveau's been great so far. It feels like home already even though we haven't even finished the first quarter."

"We're barely five weeks into school, and yet you've already managed to make your mark. Something tells me this isn't your first year on the field. How long have you been playing football?"

"Does tossing a foam football around in kindergarten count?" Griffin joked, ruffling his golden hair with one hand. His smile could shatter the television screen into a million pieces. "But I was just kidding. I started playing football freshman year at Kingston. It wasn't something I really planned -- it just happened."

Everyone at Nouveau knew that more than ninety percent of the students at Kingston dedicated their time after classes to a sport. They strived for nothing short of excellence. This was how they trained state champions and college bound athletes.

"How far into the playoffs do you think we'll get this year?" Fabian asked, the topic of football keeping the attention of the male students in class.

"I think we have a great chance at making states this year," Griffin replied simply but confidently, his judgment valued not only by his peers, but Coach Roy. "We have a pretty good team, don't you think, Fabian?"

"I can't believe we're still undefeated at this point," he agreed, shaking his head in pure amazement. This was almost unheard of in Nouveau's history. "Out of curiosity, what's it like being the governor's son?"

"There's really nothing different about it," Griffin admitted, shrugging. "Except for when it's campaign season, then things get a little crazy here and there."

From what I'd heard from my grandparents, the Kings relocated to Brighton a couple months prior to the commencement of the school year in preparation for the upcoming campaign season. Governor King was aiming for reelection, his office set up on the northeast side of town. Advertisements with his name ran on TV in the evenings, his chiseled face plastered on signs across the entire state. Griffin's parents were rarely ever in Brighton for more than a week, focusing their campaign efforts in rural New York rather than the city.

"And finally, the question everyone has been wondering," Fabian cleared his throat and said, building up the suspense. "Why did you decide to transfer to Nouveau, Griffin?"

The question took Griffin by complete surprise, and look on his face said it all. His electric blue eyes hardened and jaw tightened as words escaped him infinitely. I watched his throat physically constrict, drawing out the silence that felt like an awkwardly oversized sweater. A couple more seconds passed before he was able to say, "There are a lot of reasons why I decided to transfer to Nouveau. I guess sometimes you just need something. Change can be good."

"What do you think Griffin's hiding?" Becca asked, curiosity coating her vocal chords. Her eyes were still glued to the television screen in the front of the room. She always jumped at the chance to play detective. "There's obviously something there. Don't tell me you didn't notice how strange he was acting."

I turned my head, trying to avoid the sunlight shining through the window. "What did you say, Becca?"

"'Change can be good?' People only speak in cliches when they don't how else to respond," she said, reapplying her chapstick. "Why do you think Griffin transferred?"

"I don't know," I answered honestly, scribbling my name onto the top righthand corner of the worksheet Mrs. Choi was passing out. "Why are you asking me that? I know as much as you do."

"Because I wasn't the one in the closet with him on Friday night," she argued, shrugging suggestively. "Who knows what you guys were doing in there? It seemed like you two were in there for an awfully long period of time."

"It was barely ten minutes!"

"Seven minutes in heaven, Kennedy," Becca mused. "A lot can happen in ten minutes."