UPDATE: (I cringe at the cringe-worthy parts in this chapter)

I slammed my locker with a sigh, feeling angry, to be greeted by Holly. She was freakishly standing behind my locker door (as it was open) with her hands wrapped behind her. This was the second time it had happened.

First, when I had first got my car, Holly freaked out and demanded a ride from me right here by my locker and second, when she just did it to scare me for no reason.

And why was I angry? I was fed up with doing all this homework and work and more work all the time. I wish I could just not do it, but that wasn't even a choice. It wasn't very Victoria-like to give up studying all day for some other stuff.

"Holly!" I gushed, and placed a hand on my heart, faking a scared expression. "You scared me so bad!"

Holly rolled her eyes and then squealed really loudly. "Victoria, look at the locker right next to yours!" she said cheerfully and way too excitedly for my liking.

I peered at the locker next to mine with its peeling rusted paint and saw the random numbers for the lock. What was so special about this locker? With a confused expression, I turned back to look at her with my hands on my hips, annoyed. "So what?" I said, bitchy-ness evident in my face.

Holly jumped up and down with her hands waving about crazily. Then she stopped and took a few deep breaths, in and out, in and out.

"Ace Will is the owner of that sexy locker right next to your locker!" she exclaimed, hugging me tightly. "How cool is that?"

I stepped back and stared at her. That was him? Oh, I hadn't figured it out earlier. I scratched my head. "Ace Will is the new neighbour and his bedroom is the one across mine."

Holly looked like she was about to faint. "What? Are you serious?"

I nodded.

She screamed and I sank back, feeling self conscious. "Why didn't you tell me? I could've made you take pictures for me or I could've even spoken to him! Oh my god, this is too much to take in. Holly, take a deep, deep breath. One, two, three, four..."

I watched as Holly Hills, my best friend, calmed herself down from her little panic attack because of some really seriously hot dude.

"Are you done?" I mumbled, looking at her, annoyed.

Holly rolled her eyes and groaned. "Do I look okay? Ace might come and see me and I might be in a horrible state Vicky and- and I can't believe he's your new neighbour! This is amazing," she explained, trying to fix her hair, but only making it worse. I mean, it was perfectly fine before her panic attack. I mean it wasn't even a real panic attack. Wait, was it?

"You look so extremely fine. Absolutely charming," I stated. Holly stopped and looked at me with a frown. He gave me a smug smile and rolled her eyes.

"Aww, shut up. I already knew that."

***

"Sir?" I asked, sticking my hand up in the air. The majority of heads turned back to my seat. Why did they only do that to me and not other students? I knew I got full straight A's in every single test, but really? What a bunch of nosy idiots.

The teacher stopped and was happy, looking at me with a cheerful expression. He placed the whiteboard pen down and smiled a little. He was writing irrelevant stuff about the assembly we were going to have which Holly, my best friend, was going to present. I didn't need to know that stuff for my exams. And Holly knew all that already, if not, more.

And why the heck did the class need to know about cleaning up rubbish? It was good for the environment but couldn't they just listen during the assembly and couldn't he just let Holly explain?

"Sir?" I hummed. The students had turned back to what they were doing and the teacher smiled widely at me.

"Yes, Victoria?" he asked, a hand on his chin. He played with his little stubble of a beard while I shivered. "You may go to the bathroom."

I smile satisfied with myself.

You know me too well, sir.

I pushed my seat back and exchanged looks with Holly. She finally got the message and made a face at me. She quickly dug into her bag for her paints for this afternoon's painting session and opened it up, deliberately tilting half of it out, it trickled over her work. She spilt some onto her hands and groaned very loudly.

"Sir, I need to go to the toilet to wash my hands!" she exclaimed while I slowly made my way out of the classroom.

As I trecked along the empty, deserted hallways, I stuffed my hands into my pockets. A few seconds later, Holly shuffled out of the classroom with her hands covered in black paint. I snorted and stopped to wait for her. She caught up with me after a minute or so and sighed.

"This is gonna take some work getting off." She laughed and started to walk with me.

Holly had purposely spilt her paint to go to the bathroom with me. Because you know, Sir would never let us go to the toilets at the same time. No teacher allowed that-- even if it was for the important Holly Hills.

However, he might've if I had said, 'please Sir?'

He always accepted everything from me. Once a classmate was chewing gum in class. She happened to be one of my good friends and she got into trouble. I told Sir that I had given it to her to chew on because she was hungry and that was all I had.

Guess what he said? 'Well done Victoria, you're always very thoughtful'.

"What are you thinking about?" Holly asked me, breaking me from my weird thoughts. I snorted.

"Nothing. You?"

"I'm thinking about that Ace. But then I've got to hold that stupid assembly today after lunch. I'm mostly thinking about that. It's obviously about recycling or something like that, like what sir said. You know, there's too much litter going on around our PromWell High School. Just thought they should get new recycling bins. And then we had to inform the pupils to take good care of it and not have it tipped over by the end of the day," Holly explained.

She kept her hands in front of her, the paint dripping all the way. It left tiny puddles on a little trail.

"Cool," I said, uninterested. I didn't litter anyway.

I looked down at the paint and grinned. It was as if we were gonna get lost and she was the one breaking off the little pieces of bread but instead, this was paint that was going to cause a complaint. Or maybe not. There were a lot of cleaners here to do their job anyway.

We finally got into the toilets and while Holly tried to wash the paints off in the glass sinks I peed. It was awkward but hey, this is Holly Hills. I'd bubble bathed with her when I was about seven. When I finished, I dried my hands off in the blow drier built into the walls. I watched as Holly desperately rubbed her hands under the water running smoothly from the silver taps.

"This is hard to come off. I'm sure I picked up the paint which said something about washing off extremely easily."

I sighed and walked over to help her rub off the paints. After a minute or so of scrubbing, I sank back. It was no use, the paint was probably permanent.

"It's the wrong paint! I accidentally picked up the permanent one-- I think!" Holly started to panic and she squirted more soap onto her hands quickly.

"Thanks."

"For what?" she asked, scrubbing her hands harder.

"For stating the obvious."

Holly rolled her eyes. I took my hands out of the sink. I couldn't help her. I washed my own hands again and then dried them.

"How about I go into the storeroom and see if there's anything to help remove the paint? I mean, there's a lot of stuff in there that's kinda useful I guess," I suggested, keeping my cool.

Holly nodded, uninterested, and continued scrubbing her hands intently while I walked out of the bathroom. I skipped down the empty hallways until I reached the storeroom. The bad things about the door to the storeroom were that it was dusty and gross. And the other thing was that if you didn't hold it open, it would shut and then lock.

That was only useful if you had someone holding it for you and then you both could walk out of the room and then it locked automatically.

I sighed, and walked into the storeroom, holding open the door with the tip of my foot. I scanned the room in desperation and at last, I spotted something useful. It was Detol. I mean-- it might work.

I used my foot to keep the door open when something scared me.

"Finally!" I heard a deep, familiar voice.

I jumped in fright, letting out a shriek, and the door slid closed with a massive bang. My jaw dropped when I eventually realised I was locked inside the tiny storeroom with. I turned around to face the person.

Ace Will.

I groaned. Of course, it was Ace. Who else? Well, at least I now had the Detol.

//

Hey! Please comment under any grammar mistakes/ spelling/ other mistakes or things that don't seem right. It helps me a lot with editing! x