“Show me to the front office?” Gracing her with my sexiest smile, I let her grab my hand and lead me towards the front entrance. On our way there, I saw Gianna walk up to a blonde guy smiling at her. He immediately pulled her into a hug and kissed her. For some reason this really bothered me. Maybe it was a protective brother thing. Bitch or not, she was my stepsister now. I shook the feeling off, taking on a who cares attitude about it. It didn’t matter to me who kissed those lips.
My classes sucked just as much as they did at my last school. My English teacher last year was fresh from college and not bad to look at. The one I had this year had hips almost as wide as the doorway to her classroom. I had a couple classes with Gianna, not sure if it was a good or bad thing. She didn’t seem like the type to let me photocopy her notes.
She didn’t show me around even after the classes we had together. The idea of ratting her out to Julie crossed my mind. Hannah was more than eager to help me out and I wondered what else she was eager for. At lunch time, I found out the guy Gianna kissed was her boyfriend Josh and that they’d been going out for almost a year. I sat at the same table as Gianna and this Josh guy, but at the opposite end. It seemed as though I’d been inducted into the popular crowd. As if I gave a shit. I’d piss off more than one of these girls before long. Gianna ignored me, but my ego was nurtured by several of the other girls.
Gianna was a favorite topic amongst our classmates once they found out who I was. I learned more about her during the forty-five minutes of lunch than I did the day before being in the same house as her. No wonder she was such a prissy bitch. All of her peers practically worshipped her. In this shallow society of high school, she outshone the other females, and there were a lot of pretty girls here. This was why half my friends were older.
Her boyfriend was no different than the rest. He stared at her as if entranced and seemed to only take his eyes away from her to look at his food. Once though, he caught my eyes and gave me a dirty look. Oh, so it was like that? Josh, in his Abercrombie shirt, perhaps didn’t like that his girlfriend had a stepbrother living in the room next door. Tough shit.
Actually quite a few guys stared at her like Josh did. Gianna’s behavior puzzled me, however. She mostly sat there picking at her food and looking up every once in a while to answer a question. Now that I thought about it, I was doing the same thing as these dumbasses, staring. Fuck that! I was going to stop examining Gianna and start planning when I’d be getting Hannah in my backseat.
After lunch, I had one other class with Gianna. Did the girl ever smile? When the last class of the day was out, I met Gianna at her Jeep and she drove me home in silence before going back to the school for cheerleading practice. After she took off, I hopped into my car and drove down to Denver to visit friends and hopefully find some fun.
GIANNA
With the first week of school almost over, I was dying for Saturday to come. It was the same this year at school as every other year. People still wanted to be my friend no matter how unfriendly I was. I quit pretending years ago it was my personality that drew them. It wasn’t all that flattering to be liked for the way you looked. Even when I tried to discourage them they seemed to take it in stride. I think they figured a girl with my looks was supposed to be stuck up and bitchy, so I was merely acting the part.
Sometimes I looked at some of the other girls at school and wondered what it would be like to be average-looking. Have friends at school that liked you for who you were, not what you looked like. A normal school life appealed to me. The only people I knew who liked me for who I was were what I liked to call my weekend friends. I escaped Broomfield, my mom, school and even Josh every Saturday and tasted freedom.
Did Josh like me for myself? Sometimes I wondered with him. He started saying he loved me early on in our relationship, but maybe it was the way I looked that he loved so much. Did I love him back? I wasn’t sure. If it was love, wasn’t I supposed to get butterflies in my stomach when I saw him? Maybe I should break up with him, but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Dating him kept most of the other guys away, which I liked. Lately, I’d even begun telling him how frustrated I felt about life at school. He seemed to understand.
Today was Friday and I had to cheer tonight at the first football game of the season. Josh was starting quarterback this year and he wanted me to go to a party afterwards with him. We’d been going out for a while and he’d been pressuring me lately to finally have sex with him. I knew I definitely didn’t want that. Still waiting for those butterflies. If he tried pressuring me too much, I’d have no choice but to break up with him.