It wasn’t that Ally didn’t like high school, exactly, but she’d seen exactly what was going to happen from her first moment at Howard High–except falling for Phillip. She was probably the only girl in the school who didn’t expect falling for him. Even Oakley Pine, who no one considered a suitable match for the school heartthrob, had sparkling and softened eyes around him.
Ally had known all of it and pretended not to hear the little flirty comments that the others would kill for. Despite her best efforts, within a month, Phillip was standing in the courtyard with a homecoming proposal poster and flowers.
Zinnias, to be specific. Ally’s favorite.
Still, the agreement to go to homecoming had been more a pity date than anything. She couldn’t embarrass someone in front of the entire school. And it certainly helped that the “someone” had a smile that had melted colder hearts than Ally’s. She had expected him to be a boring date, not one who opened car doors and asked her to dance with a little bow like something straight out of Pride and Prejudice.
Oakley always stared at her like she was speaking Greek when she mentioned Jane Austen. Girls like Ally–girls who had highlights and wore crop tops and kept up with makeup trends–shouldn’t talk about classic literature like they knew what they were talking about.
Ally knew how she looked. She saw what groups she automatically gravitated to in a crowded room. Contrary to the gossip periodically circling about Oakley, Phillip wouldn’t date someone who wasn’t from that group of girls. The ones examining their makeup in the school bathroom mirrors. The skinny, blond cheerleaders who flirted with the football players.
In fact, that was why Ally was currently on her fifth re-read of Pride and Prejudice. She may not have been a baronet’s daughter, but there were rules of etiquette she couldn’t deny. In Jane Austen, only the heedless girls married outside their station.
So Ally curled her hair. She joined the cheerleading team, despite having far too much on her plate already. She gossiped. She flirted. And she dated the school heartthrob.
Her only little faux paus was being kind to Oakley. Oakley was–or at least used to be–Phillip’s best friend, and that had long ceased to be gossiped about by the popular crowd. She told herself that their awkward attempts at conversation were because she couldn’t snub someone her boyfriend so obviously cared about.
But really, Ally knew that if she didn’t do something to escape the rigid high school hierarchy, she might give up on all of it and just be.
Be who?
In case Ally couldn’t find herself, she did everything she could to belong in the heavy silks and sparkling jewels of the upper class. Even if, in this situation, that looked more like short skirts and bronzer.
