"Are you sure you are alr..?"

"Bye, mom!", I quipped before shutting the car door quickly so as not to give the woman the opportunity to stop me with yet another question.

I honestly loved my mother very much, but when she got something on her mind she would clutch to that with every fiber of her being like a dog to a damn bone. And the thought currently on her mind was that I was depressed for having to move across the country because of my dad's new job; which was complete and utter horse shit.

Sure, I felt a little bit bothered that I was forced to leave my old town and move, but stating that I was depressed because it was a bit far-fetched even for my mom. After all, it wasn't as if I had been forced to leave a bunch of friends behind that I would miss dearly since I wouldn't even need one hand to count just how many friends I had.

"Love you, honey! Be good and listen to your teachers!", my mother all but screamed through the rolled down window making my eyes widen and, what was surely a radioactive blush, spread through my cheeks, as every single person on the parking lot turned around at the loud voice.

I waved her down while studiously ignoring the few snickers that could be heard from the crowd of students watching her departure as I made my way to what appeared to be the main building, barely managing not to break out into a run.

Count on my mother to succeed in embarrassing me before I had even stepped one foot into the school.

I was quick to find the admissions office and get my schedule, a small smile spreading through my face at the sight of arts being one of my classes that day.

Moving hadn't bothered me at all, you see one small town and you have seen them all, but there was one condition I had given my parents, which was that my new school had to have a decent art program. Because I could live under a bridge for all I cared, as long as I could paint.

The first few classes passed by in a blur of meaningless introductions, where I was asked to stand in front of a classroom full of bored-out-of-their-minds students that couldn't care less what the new, sickly-looking boy's name was or where he came from.

They would all perk up at the teacher's announcement of a new guy in town, but when their eyes eventually fell on me they would quickly lose their interest.

I was rather thin, very pale, and shorter than most of the guys my age, which my mom still claimed would change as soon as I hit a growth spurt, but to be honest, my mother was not the most reliable person on the planet Earth so I had taken her reassurances with a grain of salt and already made my peace with being short for the rest of my life.

After all, I could have it worse, right? At least I wasn't horribly disfigured or something.

The only thing somewhat different about me was my unusually long, black hair that was tied up in a messy bun at the back of my head, a few tresses always escaping the tie and falling into my eyes no matter how many times I pushed them away.

Back in my old town, my hair used to gather the attention of girls, but if it was out of jealousy or real interest, I was never able to discern since even when some of them tried to approach me that particular ordeal always ended up with me stuttering like an imbecile until they hightailing out of there as quick as a lightning.

But here, in a small town in the middle of good ol' Texas, the looks I did get were neither ones of jealousy or romantic interest.

The girls snickered and looked away while the guys stared at me as if I was a creature from another planet, and I could already see myself spending another year alone and friendless.

The lunch period eventually came around and I suddenly found myself standing with a lunch tray in my shaking hands while facing a room full of teenagers with their eyes all trained on me.

I felt like a strange specimen being inspected under the microscope, as beads of sweat broke out across my forehead and the urge to run away and hide for the rest of the day until my mom came to pick me up grew bigger by the second.

I hated the attention, always had, especially the kind I was getting in that very moment, as the thoughts on everyone's minds became clearly visible across their faces.

Whether it was a smirk or a glare, or a hand covering a mouth as one student whispered something into the other one's ear, their eyes never leaving me, it was still painfully obvious that the official consensus found me a freak.

But, in the end, I somehow managed to ground myself, refusing to give them even more of a material to laugh about, and I made my way across the room, taking a seat at the only empty table.

I decided to keep my eyes glued to my food and eat the thing that the lunch lady had informed me was supposed to be lasagna, something I was not so sure I about.

My appetite was all but gone, but I still continued to shovel food into my mouth, desperate to do something other than expelling the contents of my stomach all over the table as my anxiety kept growing with each snicker.

But, as the minutes went by, each second crawling ever so slowly, the snickers eventually stopped and the room was once again brimming with laughter and conversation, as the rest of the student populace finally realized that this particular freak wasn't about to do something extraordinary so they grew bored.

I slowed down and actually started chewing the 'lasagna', furiously ignoring something crunching between my teeth that could or could not be of animal origin, when boisterous laughter thundering through the room drew my attention away from the fork.

My eyes searched through the crowd of heads until they stopped at a big table, bursting at the seams with jocks, all of them in their Letterman jackets with their last names written on the back.

They were all laughing while clutching their stomachs, looking at one of their teammates who was the only one sitting on the actual table.

The guy was in the middle of a story, a funny one if all the snickers were anything to go by, and I could see that the jocks were not the only ones listening in, since all the eyes in the room were turned toward the boy.

He was a big guy, blond and handsome, the definition of an 'old American boy', and as I looked around, I suddenly realized that the guy was 'the king'.

How original, I scoffed and shook my head, taking another bite of my lunch, but as I did so my eyes still traveled back to the blond as if on their own volition.

Just as I did so, the guy turned his head a bit to the side; reaching down to get his bag from the ground, and, that is how I found myself staring into a pair of the biggest and bluest eyes I had ever seen making me freeze in my seat.

After a second or two the blond blinked and then his eyes narrowed slightly, making me quickly look away, feeling an enormous flush erupting across my cheeks and hating myself for it.

Stupid genetics!

I cursed silently because I just knew that my pale skin could never manage to hide it. And blushing at the sight of a handsome boy was something that I was very much aware should stay hidden.

Thankfully a shrill noise announcing that the lunch hour was about to end sounded off, so I gathered my stuff, took the half-empty tray, and quickly made my exit before anyone else even had the time to stand up.

I breathed out a sigh of relief as soon as I was in the empty corridor walking down to my new locker. I pulled the schedule out to check what was next and a second smile of the day spread across my face as the word 'art' jumped out of the paper.

I studied the map that I was given at the start of the day and once I was sure that I was not going to get lost, I started making my way to the next lesson through the now, unfortunately, not so empty corridors.

I stepped into the classroom, my gaze traveling over the occupied seats until they stopped at the only available one in the back of the room and my eyes widened.

It was him, the blue-eyed god, and I felt my stomach flip at the sight of the blond sitting on the chair, one of his hands casually thrown around the back of it, his legs resting at the table and crossed at the ankles.

I took a quick look around again, my hands already shaking as I desperately searched for another empty seat, praying to all of the deities out there to throw me a bone and not make me sit next to him, but it proved pointless.

I closed my eyes for a second, taking in a big breath and hoping that I would not make a complete fool out of myself and fall on my face or something, as I started walking toward the blond.

"Hi. Is... is this seat taken?", I said barely above a whisper and immediately cringed at how stupid I must have sounded.

The boy looked up at the sound of my voice, and his eyes swept over me slowly, making goosebumps spread over my skin, before they settled on mine.

I immediately noticed that the guy was a lot taller than me, not that it was such a big feat, and obviously older, a senior maybe, but since this was the advanced class and they called me a child prodigy, I didn't find it strange.

His blonde hair fell in waves across his forehead, almost covering his icy-blue eyes. But what drew my attention the most was a small beauty mark in the right corner of his upper lip that soon disappeared when the blonds' mouth drew into a smile. And it was a great smile, I couldn't help but think, his teeth white and straight making me think of movie stars.

"You're the new guy, right?", he asked still smiling, and I found myself unable to look away, as I numbly nodded my head in answer.

"Can I sit here?", I blurted out in the next second, feeling my cheeks starting to warm up, yet again, as I finally averted my eyes away from him. The blond smirked and nodded and then pulled the chair out for me, making me fight the urge to roll my eyes, as I was not a girl, long hair not-withstanding.

"I am Jake, by the way. Welcome to "Springs High."