Falling for Hadie (2 page)

I nodded, used to this kind of reaction. Over the years, we’d encountered plenty of people who were fascinated with us because we were twins. As soon as they found out this little fact about us, you could see their brain working as they tried to find similarities in our appearances.

“I can see the resemblance,” she said, as her eyes glided between Becky and me.

Well, obviously.

“So, can we see the principal?” Becky asked with a yawn. I could tell she was already over the conversation.

The lady nodded, still eyeing us with interest. “Just go right in. The principal is waiting for you.”

Glad to get away from her gawking, I opened up the door to the right and we stepped into the small office.

An aging man was leaning against a large desk speaking to two girls who had their backs to us. The man straightened up as we entered and approached us in two long strides. He stuck out his hand and Becky and me shook it in turn. “Lincoln and Rebecca Bracks? The twins?”

I groaned inwardly as Becky nodded. “Yep, the twins,” she echoed dryly.

“I’m Principal Lawson and this is Askance Logan and Hadie Swinton. They’re going to be your buddies for the week.”

Both girls turned around and my stomach dropped. The girl on the left was very attractive, like she belonged on the pages of a magazine instead of in this small town high school. She had dark brown hair in curls that would’ve made her look cute if she didn’t have a sneer on her face. She was tall, slim, with eyes as blue as mine.

When her gaze fell on me, her eyes glittered. The look she was giving me made me feel like I was a piece of meat.

The other girl I recognized all too well. It was the girl who’d spilled her coffee on me only minutes ago. She’d taken off her sweater and was wearing a tan colored shirt that had a light coffee stain on it, though it wasn’t too obvious since it was only a shade darker than her shirt.

She shot me a look of pure loathing that surprised me. I wondered what her deal was. Did she hate me that much for knocking into her?

The other girl flipped her long locks over her shoulder as her eyes zoned into me. She flashed me a flirtatious grin. “Call me Kance.”

“And you can call me Becky.” The glee in my sister’s voice was evident. She had finally found the type of girl she wanted to be friends with.

This Kance girl was of no interest to me. I knew plenty of girls like her. I’d dated plenty of girls like her and they were mostly the same. Obsessed with their appearance, being popular, and boys. They had no depth or substance to them and they made me yawn.

On the other hand, the coffee assailant was another story. It was impossible to ignore that look she was giving me, as though I’d done something to personally offend her. She was intriguing, and so was that name of hers.

“You’re Hades?” I asked, wondering who the heck would name their kid that. “Like the God of the Underworld?”

“How nice. You know basic Greek mythology,” she retorted, and then said one word that made no sense to me. “Hadassah.”

My eyebrows shot up. “You’re a hairdresser?”

Her bottom lip curled. “That’s my name. Ha-DAhs-sah. That’s where my nickname, Hadie, comes from.”

Wow. No wonder the poor girl was in such a bad mood. If my parents had named me Hadassah, I would’ve sued them.

Kance smirked at our exchange. “Hadassah is such a
precious
name.” It was pretty obvious that she meant otherwise. “I can’t imagine why Bennett didn’t stick around to play with you.”

Whoa. What was that all about? Who was this Bennett guy?

Ignoring Kance completely, Hadie crossed her arms and turned to Principal Lawson, her face a mask of fury. “Sir, are you sure there’s no one else who can do this?”

Principal Lawson frowned and shook his head. “I’m sorry, Hadie. You volunteered for this, and it may not be enjoyable for you, but at least it counts towards extra credit.”

Great. So the weird-named girl was doing this for extra credit. And they were talking about me like I was some annoying chore that had to be taken care of.

I cleared my throat to remind them that I was still standing here. “I don’t need anyone to babysit me. Just give me my schedule and a map and I’ll be fine.”

Principal Lawson looked like he was seriously considering my request, but he ended up shaking his head. “I’m afraid that’s not the policy of our school. We want you to feel as welcome as possible.”

“I’d be more than happy to take care of Lincoln,” Kance jumped in.

“I’m sorry, Askance, but I’ve already assigned you to Becky. Hadie is Lincoln’s buddy for the rest of the week.”

Becky seemed thrilled by this. “Trust me, Link is a total bore. We’ll have way more fun together, Kance.”

Kance gave Becky a look as though she highly doubted this, but plastered a fake smile on her face. “Sure, we are.”

Hadie turned to me in surprise. “You named yourself after a boy who dresses in green and rescues princesses?”

I gave her a non-committal shrug which seemed to infuriate her even more, because she physically turned away from me as though she couldn’t stand to look at me.

Principal Lawson sighed and began heading out of his office, motioning for all of us to follow him. What I couldn’t understand was why the heck he’d assigned Hadie to look after me. The girl was anything but welcoming.

This was going to be the hardest week of my life.

Hadie

I was trying my hardest not to make eye contact with Lincoln as Lynda, the office assistant, handed him his schedule and information on how to sign up for extra-curricular activities.

Kance and Becky had already left, with Kance openly fuming that she hadn’t been paired up with Lincoln. Honestly, I could care less who I was paired up with. Beneath Lincoln’s looks was probably a lying, cheating, back-stabbing jerk.

My ex-boyfriend, Bennett Anderson, had been exactly the same. He’d acted sweet, told me he loved me, but then I’d found out he was sleeping with someone else.

All males were the same and Lincoln was no different. I hadn’t wanted to be his buddy for the week, but I had no choice. I’d signed up for this, not thinking that Bennett and I would have a bad break up over the weekend at Kendall’s party.

It didn’t help that Bennett had been in the popular crowd. It actually made things a lot worse. When I’d gone to get my books this morning from my locker, someone had written ‘whore’ on it in permanent marker. I’m not sure what made me a “whore” exactly, but I guess getting into a fight with Bennett was a requirement.

After telling Principal Lawson about it, and trying to get out of showing the new guy around for the week, he’d thought it was a good idea for me to keep up appearances and go about like everything was fine.

But I didn’t want to keep up appearances. I wanted to go home, crawl into bed and never go back to school again. I’d never been as humiliated as the moment when I’d caught Bennett making out with the other girl at the party. She didn’t go to our school—she was from Penthill High—so at least I didn’t have to see them together every day at school.

Still, things were bad enough.

People that had spoken to me while I’d been dating Bennett now avoided me. This morning when I’d waved at a bunch of girls, who’d been quite chatty with me last week, they’d pointedly looked the other way. No one wanted to associate themselves with the boring bookworm who wasn’t dating the popular football player. I wasn’t good enough anymore.

I’d seen Ashton Summers treated the same way when she fell from her social pedestal. Now, the same thing was happening to me. And all because I’d been cheated on and confronted Bennett about it in front of other people.

“Are you going to show me around or are you going to stand there staring into space all day?”

The sound of Lincoln’s voice roused me from my thoughts, and I shot him a withering look. “Try and keep up then,” I said, my tone sour. “I have a fascinating English class to get to after this.”

It was a stupid thing to say because, with his long legs and quick gait, Lincoln could easily keep pace with me.

“You find English fascinating? Your life must be pretty boring.” His tone was light and amused.

I glared at him. “Anything is more fascinating than you at this point.”

Lincoln’s eyebrows shot up at the hostility in my voice and he snapped his eyes to the front, his mouth set in a tight line. I wasn’t sure if he was angry or not, but I couldn’t help feeling bad at the way I’d treated him.

It was his first day at school and out of all the people at Statlen High he’d gotten stuck with me. Still, he was just another dirtbag guy, and I had no time to waste on them. Especially guys who were like Lincoln. The jock type. The Bennett type. The type of guy that knew he looked good.

To be fair, Lincoln did look good. He was tall and muscular, with short, dark brown hair that complemented azure eyes. I bet he thought he could get any girl into bed just by blinking at them. Well, this was one girl who wasn’t interested.

I led him back outside and across the courtyard. “The courtyard is where the seniors sit during lunch.” I nodded towards the metal benches that were positioned in the center of the area. “The jocks and cheerleaders sit there, so don’t even go there unless you get an invitation. Although, I expect they’ll welcome you with open arms.”

Lincoln didn’t say anything, which really annoyed me. He probably thought he was too good to talk to me. Or maybe I’d made him angry with the way I was acting.

I continued speaking as though his silence didn’t faze me. “If you enter the C building and walk past the rooms, you’ll find the cafeteria and the field. You can have lunch there too if you want.”

I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye and found his expression inscrutable. He really didn’t say much, and here I was babbling on like an idiot. Maybe I was boring him or maybe he didn’t care what I had to say. Well, fine. I wasn’t going to go out of my way to talk to him if he was going to be like that.

“Where do you eat lunch?”

“Huh?” I was so surprised that he’d spoken that his question didn’t register immediately.

“You heard me.”

His curtness rubbed me the wrong way. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I eat on the field.”

“Where’s the pole?”

“What pole?”

“The one that’s stuck up your…”

My mouth fell open and I stared at him, outrage and embarrassment growing in the pit of my stomach. “Don’t speak to me like that, you insufferable…”

“
Jock
?” Lincoln supplied, a teasing lilt to his voice.

The embarrassment only grew, overshadowing the outrage. My insult to him this morning had been absolutely ridiculous, and judging from the smile lingering around Lincoln’s mouth he thought the same thing.

“Hadie!”

The familiar voice of my best friend, Mariah Brand, reached my ears, but I was too mortified to turn around. I stood there, immobilized, staring at Lincoln with balled up fists, contemplating whether to respond to him or to burst into tears because I was so stressed out from everything that was going on.

“Hadie, didn’t you hear me calling?” Mariah asked as she reached me.

I turned to find that my two other best friends Estella Markson and Lana Buckley were also with Mariah. At her five-foot-seven height, Estella easily towered over the three of us. We were always telling her that she should become a professional model, and not just for her height. Estella was freaking beautiful with long honey-brown hair and large amber eyes.

Mariah—or ‘Ray’, as we affectionately referred to her as—was about an inch taller than me with a mass of ginger curls, light brown eyes and a smattering of freckles across her nose. Lana was Mariah’s cousin—their mothers were sisters—so she also had the same shade of brown eyes and red hair, but instead it fell dead straight down her back. She spent a lot of time with a straightening iron.

“Sorry,” I responded, my voice flat as I continued to glare at Lincoln, “I was just showing the new guy around.”

In perfect synchronization, Lana and Mariah’s eyes shot to Lincoln and they stared at him with their mouths slightly open. And stared, and stared, and stared.

Estella, who was closest to Lana, elbowed her sharply in the ribs before turning to Lincoln, an easy smile on her face. “Hi, I’m Estella. It’s nice to meet you…” Her voice trailed off as she waited for him to introduce himself.

“Lincoln,” he said and looked Estella over like every other red-blooded male did. I waited for him to check her out again, but instead his eyes flickered over to Lana, who was still gaping at him. How embarrassing. “And you are?”

“Lana,” she said, a confident smile on her face.

Even though Lana and Mariah were both boy-crazy, Lana was the one who wasn’t afraid to go up to a boy and ask him out. Mariah was the one who fan girled behind-the-scenes and fantasized about the guy.

Now that Lana had recovered from the dirty thoughts she had probably been having of Lincoln, she elbowed Mariah to snap her out of whatever had transfixed her. Okay, it wasn’t a mystery what had transfixed her. Obviously, it was Lincoln.