My dreams had made a fool of me.

No, this year is going to be different, I reminded myself. You're not going to sit on the sidelines anymore, Molly.

Instantly, I regretted the promise I had made to be more open and put myself out there for senior year. It was a decision I had made earlier this summer when the countless years of isolation and loneliness I had endured finally got the better of me.

At the time, I didn’t think that I could take another year of invisibility.

I needed someone to see me.

Now, I wasn’t so sure.

So far, senior year hadn't been as lonely as junior and sophomore year had been, I deduced. Since Mercedes – Mercy – James's arrival in Ocean Bay earlier in the summer, I finally had someone in this town to call a friend.

"Fuck my life," Mercy, my recently acquainted (not to mention only) friend, groaned, comically banging her head against a nearby locker, and thankfully distracting me from my tumultuous thoughts.

Tossing my iPod inside, I quickly slammed my locker shut and turned to face my friend, unwilling to take one final glance at myself in the mirror like most teenage girls would.

No, sir.

I had more than enough for the day.

"Why me, god?" Mercy continued to whimper and growl. One look at her and it was easy to tell that she was all riled up. "Why fucking me!"

Feathers ruffled or not, the girl was beautiful. Physically, Mercedes and I couldn’t look any more different. She was the polar opposite of my skinny frame and sun-bleached, blonde, pixie cut hair.

With glossy, black hair that reached her butt in length, curves to die for, and a fuck-the-world attitude, Mercy exuded a lazy sort of confidence.

Forced to move here when her flaky, single mom got knocked up and hitched to the town's hotshot property developer, Mercy didn’t care about the elite in Ocean Bay, and she didn’t give a damn about notoriety.

She couldn’t be bought or won over with money and popularity and those were the personality traits that were quickly making her my favorite person in this town. She was unfazed by it all, my scars included, and I loved her for that.

"Know of any good brain surgeons around this neck of the woods, Molls?" she asked, sliding a pair of sunglasses out of her school skirt and slipping them on. "Because I'm in dire need of a lobotomy."

"What did he do now?" I eyed her up and down, my curiosity piqued. It didn’t take a genius to figure out why she was flustered. Fighting with her – recently acquired – stepbrother was her favorite thing to do in the world. Besides, I knew she had a double period of Biology with Ms. Black on Thursday afternoons. With her stepbrother. "I presume this outburst has something to do with Rourke?"

"Ugh." She held up a hand and moved for the exit, with me tagging along after her. "Please don’t talk about he-who-should-have-been-swallowed." Her face turned a bright shade of pink. "Not when I've just had to endure two classes with his smug ass perched next to me."