Challenge The Proud

The New Girl

"It all sounds like a bad movie!" - Challenge No.27

SUNNY VILLE WAS a quaint little suburb where the grass was greener, trees were taller and all houses appeared to have a fresh coat of paint and their own unique architecture. Cassie looked out the car window absorbed by the view.

Her dad was driving, always quiet, always lost to his own thoughts. She didn't mind his silence. It gave her room to study the place she was now expected to call home. A few houses looked like miniature Disney castles. Others were downright mansions. And scattered throughout were plain, unimpressive identical one story houses. Cassie unwittingly began assigning personality types to each home they passed.

The snob with its tall windows, perfect bushes and decorative statues. The shy with a low roof, one story and small, few windows. It was fun, until they reached the High School. Its Gothic buildings and tall towers cast a long menacing shadow. The place almost had the same mystical air of Hogwarts - which was silly.

Cassie entered the classroom and approached the teacher under the curious looks of her new classmates.

"I see you transferred from the Big Apple, New York, New York." The teacher hummed the song, doing a little quirky dance to match. "What brings you to Sunny Ville?" She abruptly asked with a wide smile plastered across her face.

Cassie cringed. "My father's job, I guess."

"And what does he do?"

"He's a doctor."

Cassie glanced to the class and met with the silence and stares she had been expecting.

"Hey, guys, this is Cassie Varmont. She's from New York - that's exciting, isn't it?" The teacher showed her to an empty seat.

The lesson finally resumed and Cassie let out a long sigh trying to figure out where she was expected to look in her English textbook. Luckily, the girl sitting next to her offered to help and flipped the pages to the current lesson.

"I'm Kandy with a 'K' like Kamel," she whispered with a wide smile.

"That's not how you spell... Nevermind," Cassie shook her head and smiled back at the nice girl.

After the first period Kandy offered to walk with Cassie to her next class.

"How do you like Sunny Ville?"

"It's alright, I guess."

"Want to come to the mall with me and my friends this weekend?" Kandy exuded enthusiasm.

"I guess..." Cassie frowned looking sideways at the giddy girl, unable to hold back a smile.

"Awesome!"

"Yep!" Some of Kandy's cheerfulness rubbed of on Cassie. She certainly hadn't expected to make friends this quickly.

Her locker was supposed to be somewhere around that long hallway and Cassie kept a close eye on the numbers. A girl in a cheerleader outfit was leaning against the locker marked with the number Cassie had been assigned to. Why was the girl wearing her cheerleader uniform outside the gym? Weird but not unheard of.

"Excuse me -"

Kandy grabbed Cassie's arm and pulled her away before she could politely ask the cheerleader to step aside so she could use her locker.

"Are you crazy?" Kandy's wide eyes spoke to her fear and confusion. "You don't talk to Heather Locks."

"Why not?"

"Because she... Because she's Heather Locks!"

The cheerleader was giggling with a bunch of other girls wearing their cheerleader uniforms. She looked pretty normal.