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Chapter 2

"Oh god, I feel claustrophobic already," Aria sighed.
It was a cloudy day. The skies were so full of grey clouds that for a second I forgot what color the sky actually had. With all the many clouds I felt trapped, as if I was in confined space. Almost as if I was a prisoner somewhere.
So I could definitely understand and also pity my friend Aria today, who unluckily was incredibly claustrophobic.
"Maybe if we get inside you won't think of it like that," I said and nodded towards the huge entrance to the school. That was when I saw Marcel walking towards us. He looked as he usually did; clean and ironed brown office trousers with a white tucked in shirt and big glasses that made his eyes look a tiny bit bigger than they actually were. For a second, I was just as happy as always to see Marcel, who I would call my best friend, but then I noticed that he didn't wear that smile on his face that he usually does every morning. I felt as if a knot made by my stomach was being tied as I imagined all the terrible things that could be the reason to this very unusual non-smiling Marcel. Maybe the bullies had done something to him again?
Oh, why was it always him? Why couldn't they just leave him alone? Marcel was worth just as much as everyone else.
He had reached us and I immediately asked him what was wrong. He looked at me, confused.
"Nothing? Why would something be wrong?" he asked and wrinkled his eyebrows.
He looked quite convincing. Maybe nothing was wrong? I mean he didn't smile, but he didn't really look like as if he was suffering from something either.
"I just... I thought...," I said but I didn't have time to finish my sentence because the school bell rang. The three of us started to walk towards school instead, and since I didn't really know how to finish my sentence I forgot about it. Aria walked a little bit behind us, only cause she didn't want to show that she was friends with Marcel. No one wanted to do that, except for me. No one even wanted to be seen with Marcel, and me and Aria were the only ones that had made an effort to get to know him. Well, I wasn't really the one that had gotten to know Marcel (only because I was so shy) but he had got to know me first. I'm glad he did that. Aria had gotten to know Marcel through me. But as everyone in this school, Aria had become obsessed with the thought of being popular. She didn't want to be seen with anyone as "nerdy" as Marcel.
But she was kind and had a loving heart and that was why (no matter how hard she tried) she still couldn't completely stay away from her friends, us.
That was probably why she wasn't in the "main popularity group" in school, which I was thankful for that she wasn't . But I guess she's somewhere in between. She, just like Vanessa, always knows the latest rumors and sometimes Aria is the rumor. Unlike me, whom most people in this school has not even acknowledged.

As we stepped into the school I looked over at Marcel. He looked nervous and constantly looked at his surroundings, and eyed every person that stepped inside the building. Almost as if he was looking for someone. I didn't ask about it, cause he looked nervous as it was. Maybe he was nervous to bump into the bullies? He had probably lied out there on the field, because I started to suspect that he might have been made fun of by some bullies after all.

Marcel, Aria and I split up for the first lesson. Marcel had French, while me and Aria had English. The second Marcel left, Aria stepped closer to me and started to walk beside me. We walked towards the lesson but stopped as we noticed a big crowd outside the classroom. There were people in the crowd that I knew for sure hadn't English as a first lesson. I noticed it was mainly girls that were in the crowd. They stood in different groups and whispered stuff to each other, and now and then they looked in the direction of the classroom door. Since the door was partly made of glass everyone could see in, so it must be something going on inside.
"It's him," Aria said excited. She suddenly grabbed my hand and started to walk zig-zag through the many groups of girls, until we reached the classroom door.
I, as many other people, tiptoed to look through the glass window on the door.
A boy stood there. A guy. The first thing I noticed about him was that he was tall. He wore black skinny jeans, dark brown boots and a black t-shirt. I could spot a few tattoos on his left arm. I only saw his profile.
He was talking to our teacher and seemed to look very concentrated as he did. Mrs Harper, our teacher, gave him a few papers and made a gesture towards the door. I looked at Aria. She looked very curiously at him, just like everyone else. Why did they do that?
"What is it?" I asked Aria.
But Aria didn't have time to answer as the classroom door suddenly opened. I immediately moved aside to let the person through. I looked up and noticed it was that boy. As he stepped out he noticed all the curios faces that waited for him. I was only a couple of inches to his right. He didn't notice me, but I still moved out of the way a bit further. That was when I could se his face better. He had a concentrated wrinkle between his eyebrows, and his green eyes looked dead-serious. It looked like he had those kind of eyes that switched color depending on the light.
He didn't have one single flaw on his face. His lips were in the perfect shape and had the perfect natural shade of pink. His eyebrows, eyes and nose was in the perfect distance from each other, perfectly planted on his face, and his jaw lines were perfectly visible.
Suddenly it occurred to me that he looked extremely familiar. Almost so much that I felt stupid to not know why he looked so familiar.
He didn't move for a while, but then he ran a hand through his hair. His hair was dark brown and curly, except for the hair that was pulled back so that his forehead was visible. His hands were quite big with rings on them; one on his ring-finger and one on his middle-finger. He also wore a silver neckless with a cross. On his chest I could spot the beginning of a couple of more tattoos that were hiding behind his black t-shirt.
It wasn't until now that I noticed the big tension in the hallway air. It felt like everyone had just stopped breathing the moment he came out of the classroom, as if everyone had gotten under some kind of spell. He looked beautiful, but there were a lot of boys who did, and I wondered what was so special with this boy that had made half of the girls in this school to come and watch him.
It occurred to me that this was probably Harry Styles. The one that Vanessa had talked about yesterday at dinner.
Suddenly, he started to walk away. He looked a bit irritated, but not enough to actually be irritated, or for someone to even call him that. He walked past everybody through the corridor, and before he stepped out of the building he threw the papers away, that the teacher had given him, in a trash can that stood by the entrance door. And then he was gone.

Chapter 1

Mom stared at Vanessa as if her very first child was a lunatic. Vanessa had namely just asked if H₂O was a molecule and mom was surprised that Vanessa didn't know the answer to that question. But Vanessa didn't seem moved by mom's surprising look and just shrugged. Then again, my sister was used to that look mom gave her, maybe cause she always asked questions that a student from middle school could've answered without hesitation. And my sister was right now in her last year of High School.
"I've said it before and I will say it again, if you don't pull yourself together and do better in school I am sure that you're going to have to re-do this year. Cause with those kinds of questions I can assure you that you won't get into any college at all. And you would want to end up in a college, right? And a good college too, am I right?" Mom said and looked strictly at Vanessa, who just kept looking away.
"Yeah..," Vanessa mumbled while looking down at her feet.
"Yeah? I thought so. Look at your sister..." As mom spoke I swallowed. I didn't like to be compared to my sister. Mom always made it sound like I was worth more than my sister, and that I wasn't. She continued "... She always listens in class, studies in time for tests and always turns in well written papers and essays to the teacher. And what results does that give, you may wonder? Top grades is what it gives. I mean I would be surprised if Sophia doesn't get into Brown," mom said and did not look away from Vanessa. But Vanessa just sighed.
"Who the hell is Brown? You know that Sophia is a 17 year old virgin right? I doubt she has even kissed a boy, and you expect her to get into someone?" Vanessa spoke and put extra pressure on the last two words as if that was something to extreme for her to handle.
Mom looked liked like as if she was about to go crazy. But Vanessa was completely serious with her question. When Mom didn't answer my sister's question (I guess she was to busy with trying to keep her calm) Vanessa turned to me for an answer. She always did that, as if I had every answer in the world. She used to call me "her personal Wikipedia".
"It's a college," I explained. "Brown University."
"Oh okay, good to know. Will definitely be sure to remember that. And I probably will use it a lot too, since I will probably talk a lot about schools and stuff like that with my friends. Because it's so so so much fun," Vanessa said ironically with no tone of excitement in her voice.
Mom sighed and put a hand to her head and started to massage her scalp.
"You give me headaches," she said in a very tired tone that also told me and Vanessa that mom wanted to leave the subject.
Vanessa just shrugged and sat down at the dinner table, next to me. She put up her phone and started texting. She had missed a lot during those 10 minutes that she hadn't been on her phone.
Mom went back to what she was doing, and took out her casserole from the oven.
"Sophia, sweetie, can you go get your dad and tell him dinner is ready?" She asked as she turned off the oven.
I nodded and got up from my chair and quickly went upstairs. Dad was always working, so he had his own little office upstairs. That office used to be Vanessa's room, but when Mom and Dad's room got overrun by all Dad's working papers, Vanessa had to move in to my room. And that was alright with me. My room was too big before, and I like to have company, even though my sister is either constantly on her phone or out with friends.
I knocked on the door.
"Mom says dinner is ready," I told him.
"I'll be down in a minute, Sophie," I heard dad say from the other side of the white door.
He always calls me Sophie, and I like that because no one else has ever given me a nickname before, except my sister calling me 'Wikipedia'.
I walked downstairs again.
"He said in a minute," I said as I walked into the kitchen.
"Let's start eat then, we all know that when Dad says 'in a minute', it actually means in half an hour," Vanessa said, still not taking her eyes off the phone.
Mom seemed to think about what Vanessa had just said. After a while she spoke;
"You're right."

"But seriously though, is H₂O a molecule?" My sister asked as she ate part of the casserole that was on her plate.
Mom looked very irritated.
"Fine I'll just look it up on Google or whatever," Vanessa said defeatedly.
"It's a molecule," I said to help out my sister. This way Vanessa wouldn't need to take out her phone again and mom wouldn't have another reason to start an argument with her.
"Thanks, sis," she said and petted me on my head, as if I was a dog or something. But I was glad she appreciated my help so I smiled toward her as soon as she put down her hand from my head.
Suddenly Vanessa's cellphone beeped, as in a text-message-beep. She took out her phone and read the message. Her phone beeped again, and she continued reading. A smirk spread across her face.
"Put that phone down," Mom said and looked at the cellphone until Vanessa had put it down.
My sister rolled her eyes, almost as if mom didn't understand anything.
"It's just the girls. They're talking about this new boy that starts in our school tomorrow. Rumor has it, he's really hot. I've heard of him before of course, he's very popular," Vanessa explained.
She was always the first one to know the latest rumors, and I was probably the last, unless I heard them from my sister.
"Are you talking about me?"
I turned around in my chair and watched dad walk in with a smile on his face. He took as seat and started to put food on his plate.
"Ew no. Anyway, his name is Harry Styles, and he is 18 but he's going to start in Sophia's grade because he failed a year at high school."
Harry Styles, his named sounded familiar.
"Doesn't seem like a very smart boy," Mom said and continued her eating.
"Well I don't know. I've just heard a lot of rumors about him."