“It helps if you actually move,” Salem says with a snort, dropping awfully heavily into a seat for someone who probably weighs eighty pounds soaking wet.

I stick out my tongue like the sophisticated young woman I am and slide into the seat next to him. At least his obnoxiousness is a decent distraction from the hell of my brain.

Spoke too soon. While Salem may be a soul-sucking void, I catch a now-familiar blond head walking past me as I pull out my preferred pens. Apparently, I don’t get even one single period of freedom before I have to stare my newest bad choice in the face.

Well, metaphorically speaking; I’m still two rows behind him. But I hate it all the same.

Before I can come up with a good reason I must switch sections immediately, a birdlike woman marches right up to the whiteboard and stabs “Mrs. Frank” on it with a firm hand of black dry-erase marker. She’s wearing an absolutely pristine white shirt with a gray flannel skirt and the most severe loafers I’ve ever seen on someone who wasn’t playing a prison guard in a movie.

“Alton, Kayla?”

Well, no pleasantries, then.

I crane my neck for a glimpse of the girl saying “Here,” eager to put faces with names so this place can stop feeling so alien. Apparently, I’m not the only one with that idea, and I feel bad when all the prying eyes make her shrink a little in her seat, hiding her cheeks with a curtain of box braids.

“Burke, Lucas?”

“Yes, ma’am. It’s a pleasure.”

Ugh, truly, he can go fuck himself. I never used to think in swear words, but two days at Camden and I’ve already learned that sometimes, you just need them. It’s truly annoying that his accent and dimples are as cute as they are; Sierra would call him a-fucking-dorable. And she’d say it in the same tone she used to use about Craig, like he was a sweet child who probably looked like a Ken doll under his jeans.

Maybe that’s why she just had to sleep with him. I stifle a snort, not realizing I’m scratching a groove into the desk with my pen until I’m staring the blue ink straight in the face. She had to know if he was all doll parts.

I lay the pen quietly on the wood and focus on the whiteboard, letting the names of my classmates drift around me and trying to recenter myself. I’ve played Why Did Sierra Do It? at least once a day for the last four months, and it’s a stupid and pointless game. Sierra slept with my boyfriend for the same reason she did everything: because she wanted to.

Which brings me back to the question of the day: What do I want to do to kick off my year of badassery?