"I'm ugly", said Darcy as she combed down her short black curls. " I wish I looked better".

"You are beautiful just the way you are missy", Joana remarked as she handed her the hairpins. She has been looking after Darcy since she was only a month old and now she was more of a friend than a maid. Joana's simplicity and loyalty never failed to amuse Darcy, and she considered her to be her best friend, one who accepted her without ever judging.

"You're getting late for school", she reminded her, as Darcy unwillingly pushed herself to leave the comfortable luxuries of her home and set out into the cold damp streets, which wound it's way through a cold city to a yet colder institution.

Acalanes Union High School.

She got admitted her four months back, when they shifted to SF from Montara.

The sun was hot enough even in the early morning and Darcy found herself sweating under her full sleeved sweat shirt and black mask. It was uncomfortable, yes, but was better than showing off her scalded skin, a nightmare which she was only too happy to hide.

Kicking a half crashed coke can all her way, Darcy reached the school gate, hands in her pocket and head hung low. But the moment she spotted Dick Sexton in the corridor, she threw a subtle glance at his shoes. A smile forced it's way onto her face when she saw they weren't those deep blue sneakers which he claimed to be his favorite. They wouldn't be of course. For the first time Darcy felt glad that she kept chewing gums in her pocket 24×7.They came handy to chew on when bored.

And sometimes to stick on the soles of new shoes.

The way Dick insulted her last week by deliberately spilling his black tube paint on her dress wasn't something Darcy would forget so easily.

Darcy wasn't necessarily someone who went about taking revenge for trifle matters, but she had inherited her father's temper-- one which was dangerously short. Yet, instead of expressing her anger by violent actions, Darcy was one who took revenge with a cool, calculated mind.

Putting her things inside, Darcy slammed the door of her locker shut, ignoring all the dirty words etched on it. Only four months into this school and already her locker seemed like a canvas in the children's nursery, cramped with "black", "pseudo-negro" and "ugly bitch" scrawled in untidy hands.

But she was used to it. The only fact that bothered her was that she wasn't born like this. Her mother died when she was five, yet Darcy knew from the photograph by her bed that she too, like all others in her family, had been fair and pretty.

She had inherited their American complexion as well, but a brain cancer at the age of twelve had changed her life, and mostly, for bad. She had never been strickingly beautiful, but painful and recurring chemotherapies had scalded her skin, disfiguring her face to make it look sickly and always tired. She didn't care much about it back in Montara but it seemed as if the people of San Francisco were a bit too much into superficial appearances than inner virtues.

Their Maths teacher being absent, Darcy decided to sneak into the school library. Back at home, power cuts had become more common than her mood swings, and it's was difficult to work on her book that way.

For all those tough days and tear-stained nights, Darcy had kept breathing only for her book. Just another day, she would tell herself, fighting the strong urge to hold a knife against her wrist and end it all. And now that she's almost done with her writing, the hell of construction work had to start, due to which she wasn't getting internet connections at home at night, the only time when she could work in peace without Joana or her best friend Eva knowing about it.

As she peeped in, she noticed that the librarian was missing (which wasn't unusual) and she gladly sat down at one of the computers meant for students.

Having connected with the school Wi-Fi, she logged into her Wattpad account.

anonymous_ds_

Works followers
6 3.4k

She started at her page for a while, and then slowly a smile crept on her face. Last week, Eva had told her that she'd overheard Mariot and her gang discussing who anonymous_ds_ was.

" The name in the bio says 'Daleena Sullivan' Must be someone from the South", she had heard Chris suggest.

" More from the East. Asian at the most", Bella had argued.

And that's how Darcy knew that her followers included her school mates too.

Wouldn't it be great if Mariot herself carried out the challenge?

She would have pondered on this for sometime more, had it not been for the boy who entered the library, obvious of Darcy sitting in a corner behind the computer.

She peered over the screen to look at him properly. Although she came here only 4 months ago, she was already quite familiar with all her classmates, seniors and juniors included and she could swear that she had never seen this guy before.

Wait, was it-

Elrond Collymore?

Eva had already informed her about this new guy who apparently got admitted in the middle of the term last week ( something quite unusual, and unusual incidents occur rarely at Acalanes). Eva has always been an excellent news gatherer and a full time gossiper, and she didn't forget to inform Darcy of this guy when she was down with fever last week.

She scrutinized him as he went about from desk to desk, obviously searching for something. Darcy peeped from behind her computer, taking in hazel brown eyes, a shock of dark hair roughly styled, wearing an oversized yellow hoodie even in this warm weather. His hands were shoved inside the pockets of his ripped denim all the time he went about searching, oblivious of Darcy's observant gaze.

Darcy's hand was still held upon the mouse, the cursor pointing on the word 'publish' when suddenly he started walking towards her direction.