Troy High by Shana Norris

me perfectly, revealing a waistline that I had never really noticed before.
    A knock sounded on the door. “Come on out,” Elena called. “We want to see.”
    I opened the door and stepped out of the dressing room, ducking my head so that my hair fell in front of my eyes. I felt a bit embarrassed standing there being scrutinized by them.
    “Well?” I asked.
    Elena clapped her hands, grinning wide. “Oh, Cassie, you look beautiful!” she said. “You’re a Trojan princess.”
    “People at school will be amazed when they see you,” Mallory told me, nodding her approval.
    “You should wear your hair up,” Kelsey said, reaching out to twist my long hair up toward my head. “To show off your shoulders. Guys love that.”
    For the first time, as I looked at our reflections in the mirrored wall, I felt like I really was one of them. Like I actually fit in.
    I had never realized how much I had missed out on, being a loner at Troy and not having girlfriends to hang out with. It was nice having three girls fuss over me and argue about how I should wear my hair and makeup.
    Maybe, if I could learn from them about how to be agirl, the next time I kissed a boy he would want to kiss me back.

     
    After we were done at Gina’s, we headed over to the mall food court for a snack. We had just gotten milk shakes and were headed toward the benches in the center of the mall to sit, when Mallory stopped suddenly.
    “Spartans,” she whispered.
    We saw them at the same time they saw us. Lucas turned around and said something to the others with him—Greg, Owen, Ackley, Patrick, and a couple other guys from the football team—and then they turned in our direction.
    “Ugh,” Elena muttered. “I do not want to deal with him right now.”
    But Lucas sauntered toward us across the tile floor, his eyes locked on Elena.
    “Hello, traitor,” he greeted her.
    Elena rolled her eyes. “What do you want, Lucas?”
    Lucas shrugged. “Nothing, we just came by to say hi.”
    “Hi,” she said. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, we were just leaving—”
    Elena tried to step around him, but Owen moved into her path. The other guys fanned out to form a half-circle around us. Greg stood at Lucas’s side and refused to look at me.
    “We haven’t had a chance to talk in such a long time, Elena,” Lucas said. “Not without your pretty boyfriend present.”
    “We don’t have anything to talk about,” Elena said. “We broke up.”
    “No,” Lucas told her, his voice low. “
We
didn’t.
You
did.”
    “Greg,” I said, reaching out to touch his arm. “Don’t let him do this.”
    Lucas sneered at me. “What’s wrong, Cassie? Afraid?”
    Greg stepped forward between Lucas and me, facing his brother. “Hey,” he said. “Leave her out of this. Say what you want to Elena and then let’s go.”
    Lucas stared at his brother for a moment, but Greg didn’t back down. Finally, Lucas turned back to Elena.
    “After everything we’ve been through,” he said to her, “I can’t believe you would run off with the first coward who would smile in your direction.”
    “Coward?” Mallory said, stepping next to Elena. “You’re calling Perry a coward?”
    Lucas looked around. “I don’t see him anywhere, standing up for his girl. The only thing I’ve seen Perry Prince do is run away as fast as he can as soon as the action starts. He doesn’t want to mess up his pretty-boy looks. I call that being a coward.”
    “Perry was protecting Elena,” Kelsey said.
    Lucas looked back at the other guys and they laughed, all except Greg, who stood tense.
    “Keep telling yourself that,” Lucas said. “Keep pretending Perry is some great hero instead of the sniveling baby he really is.” He punched his fist into his other hand. “If he was here right now, I’d—”
    “What?” said a deep voice behind the Spartans. “What would you do?”
    Lucas and the other Spartans spun around to see Hunter standing behind them. None of us had noticed him