TWO DAYS BEFORE

Avery Lang was a dangerous person to have as an enemy. That, I could admit.

She was Rockwell's undeniable head, the queen bee, the centre of the social solar system. She was also the leader of the most elite clique in Rockwell: the Liars. I'd never expressed any desire to join them, but I didn't want to get on their bad side either. Bad things happened when one got in trouble with the Liars, especially their ruler.

I mostly tried to stay away from them, even though many of the people close to my level of intellect resided in that group. They were all bad news, especially Avery Lang. I'd known that since eighth grade, when Miles Morellis called her a slut. A week later, photos of his crossdressing were plastered all over the school along with terrible messages written on the bathroom walls. Miles had tolerated the bullying that came after for perhaps two months before he finally hung himself in his family's five-storey mansion. It had never been discussed, and the Liars had received no repercussions, but it was obvious how the photos had circulated. There had been other stories, but I never bothered listening to them. Gossip was for the fools.

Now, judging by the look on Avery Lang's face, I was about to become a story for all those jerks to spread around.

At her side, Brittany Yee looked as if she was completely freaking out, her mouth gaping open in the most ridiculous way like she was about to scream but had forgotten how to. But Avery's face was a mask of deadly calm. It only made her intimidating beauty more terrifying than it already was. She looked like a cold, stone-carved warrior---or an ice-lit cadaver. The only hint to any emotion was the scowl that lingered upon her heart-shaped lips and the spots of crimson that had appeared upon her otherwise colourless cheeks.

In that moment, I knew I'd just jumped from the frying pan into the fire.

And the fire was hot as hell.

Not knowing what else to do, I straightened my bowtie with a careful cough, slowly starting to back out of the classroom. "I'll just...go now. Didn't mean to interrupt," I said, hoping they were in a good enough mood to let me leave without further discussion.

Then all hell broke loose.

Brittany instantly broke down, clawing at her best friend's---secret girlfriend?---perfectly-pressed blouse. "What if he tells someone? What if Josh finds out?" she wailed. From what I remembered, Josh was her boyfriend and another Liar: a tall, blonde, steroid-hyped jock with more than two brain cells in his head, surprisingly. From what I also remembered, Brittany Yee never cried, but then again, I supposed she'd never been caught in the scandalous act of kissing her best friend before. She was a pretty crier, though, no running makeup or snotty nose.

Avery did no such thing. She shot her hand out, grabbing me by the back of my bowtie and yanking me so close I could smell the citrus-scented perfume that some boys bragged about having seen in her bedroom. I could feel the anger and hatred radiating off her in waves, her onyx eyes gleaming like hot coals despite her impassive expression.

I hated to admit it, but she was no fool.

"What did you see?" she hissed, her voice low and dangerous. She tugged at my bowtie harder, making me choke and snatch at my throat. She was going to pull both my throat and my bowtie out of shape! "What did you see?"

"Uh, ah..." I wasn't very good at lying. I'd spent too many years telling the truth to lie properly. Although I believed lying was for heathens, beasts, and murderers-in-training, I would have given up half my knowledge to lie properly there and then. I could afford to give up half my knowledge; that would make me just a regular genius rather than a terribly precocious one. I was alright with simply being a regular genius. There would be no point in having so much brain if I was going to die at seventeen, anyway. "Um..." I despised stuttering---it was for the weak and the inept, bumbling fools I knew. Yet, paralysed by fear, I joined the ranks of the weak, inept, bumbling fools.

She released me suddenly, sending me flailing back, wheezing and clutching at my ravaged neck. I managed to loosen my bowtie enough to rub at the reddened indentations surely adorning my throat. Avery didn't give me time to breathe, darting past me and slamming a long arm across the doorway to block my exit. The cold air of the air-conditioner whistled its way down my spine, making me shiver. For once, I didn't see any way to think myself out of this situation.

"You're the kid everyone's looking for, right?" she asked, her lip curling like I was some repulsive insect she couldn't wait to squash under her shoe. I fixed my face into what I hoped was a courageous, unafraid expression but probably looked like I was constipated. "What's your name? You busted Nat's drug rep."

And then I remembered---Nat Evans was a Liar.

I gulped, quickly retying and straightening my bowtie. I pushed my glasses up on the bridge of my nose, attempting to mask my fear. "Well, in my defense, he wasn't doing the right thing, and they needed to sober up---"

Her hand slammed against the doorframe, hard, mere centimetres from the side of my head. "I asked you a question. When I ask you questions, you answer. What's your name?"

"Uh---Canterbury---Canterbury Swayze," I blurted, trying not to stammer. Then, I was ashamed to say so, I whimpered, "Please don't kill me."

Avery's wrathful gaze burned into me as she stared straight at me. Her ebony braid curled around her neck, a black mamba ready to strike. I was close enough to see the thin streaks of kohl that winged her eyes, making them appear humongous and even darker than they were, striking against her corpse-white skin. "Liars don't like rats, Canterbury," she whispered, spitting my name out like it was a curse. "They especially don't like it when said rat pokes their whiskers where they don't belong."

Then she tore herself away from me, stalking over to the sobbing Brittany with feline grace and wrapping her arms around her surprisingly tenderly. I lingered for a second or two, too shocked and terrified to move, watching as Avery gently stroked her best friend's platinum hair and held her in her arms, holding her up as Brittany nearly crumpled to the floor. When she turned back to me, her flawless features twisted into a snarl, I ran for my life.

I was a big chicken, that I would not deny. I valued my life over anything---for if I was gone, the world would have lost one of the greatest geniuses to walk its surface. And for the sake of discovering the cure for cancer or something like that, I kept myself generally safe. But in the span of less than two weeks, I'd accidentally turned myself into an endangered species. It wouldn't be just Nat baying for my blood now---Avery Lang would surely not let my unfortunate timing go.

My first thought was blackmail. Obviously, neither Avery nor Brittany wanted Rockwell's chattering halls gossiping of their secret. But I was bright enough to push that aside, knowing that if I ruined their reputation, they would ruin my life---and worse, they would make me do it by my own hand like they had done to Miles Morellis. I was not easy to manipulate, but I knew even I had a breaking point.

Still, to put it in the words of the lower-class morons, I was screwed.

So, I did what the lower-class morons would do: I hid in the bathroom until the final bell rang.

☆☆☆

"Never seen you not in class before," Ette remarked breezily as he picked me up from one of Rockwell's side entrances, the one where all the band members hung out before traipsing off to practice. Most of the band members may have been complete cretins, but at least they didn't care about school affairs. They couldn't be bothered to even glance at the kid in the maroon bowtie who was trying his best to blend in with the flaky white wall.

I folded my arms over my sweater-vest with an exaggerated sigh. "I didn't have a choice."

"I see." Ette snuck a peek at his reflection in the side mirror, brushing his wavy blue hair back with a careless hand, the other still resting on the wheel. The first thing he'd done upon turning eighteen in January was getting his driver's license. "When Ms Abby asked questions, you could have heard a pin drop. I never realised how unannoying Literature was without your presence."

"Unannoying is not a word."

"See what I mean?" Ette reached over, flicking a button on the radio. Rare instantly blared out, him tapping a finger on the steering wheel along with the beat. I hated Selena Gomez---in my opinion, she didn't do very much with that punctured voice of hers---but for some odd reason, Ette and most of Rockwell loved her.

Another reason why they were imbeciles.

"I know what you're going to say, so I'll stop you right there before you insult one of the queens of pop music," Ette said. "Because if you run your mouth too much about how you can't stand Selena, I might actually have to kill you. Or at the very least, break your nose more than it already is."

I rubbed the sensitive cartilage, which, from my look in the bathroom mirror, had deepened from red into a shade somewhere between fuchsia and violet. "It's not broken," I replied. "Just a little tender."

Ette snorted, slamming his hand down on the dashboard as the song modulated into Justin Bieber's Yummy. That song was the only one Ette and I had the same opinion of---in layman's terms, it sucked. He flicked the dial, changing the station to one that played some Korean song---no doubt by some plastic surgery-enhanced boyband. I never quite understood the appeal of Korean pop, but Ette loved it. He nodded, before turning his eyes back to me---instead of to the road, where they belonged. "That's the biggest understatement of the year," he deadpanned dryly. "You look like you walked into a truck. Just your face, though."

"I wouldn't actually walk into a truck, though, and if I did, my glasses would be broken too---"

"Fine, then the truck walked into you." Ette whacked the steering wheel to the side in a dangerously sharp turn that made me lurch into the passenger door and clutch at the seatbelt strapped across my chest.

"Trucks can't walk."

"I don't care." I didn't doubt his words one bit. Ette never cared about much. He mostly cruised through life with his strange philosophy of 'If the people don't want me, I don't want them either' and zero ambition. Then again, Ette was one of those people---the ones who kept their heads down and tried not to get hit, the ones who silently rebelled but still attempted to conform to social norms. "We can call it personification if it makes you feel better about your shitty personality."

I winced. "Language, Ette!"

He took his right hand off the wheel to flip his middle finger at me in a very obscene gesture that should have been outlawed. "Fuck you."

While I spluttered with indignation, Ette grinned lazily. "Shut up, Canterbury, or I'll leave you by the side of the road."