Vegas Boys

School wasn't so bad.

Although it must have been four or five times the size of my old school easily, this new high school wasn't as different as I'd been expecting it to be. The teachers seemed nice enough and all of my classmates were eager to get to know me--they were practically falling all over themselves to be my friend. It reminded me of Brendon, and I wondered more than once if everyone here was so overwhelmingly friendly.

As I slid a piece of pizza onto my tray at lunch, I reminded myself that four of my classes were already over and tried to feel relieved. Just two more to go, I told myself reassuringly. It didn't make me feel any better.

The seating dilemma didn't occur to me until I'd already turned away from the food lines and stood facing the enormous cafeteria. Every single table was at least half full, and I had no idea where to sit.

Luckily, the decision was made for me.

"Kelsey!" said a voice just behind me, and I whirled around to see Brittany from my English class beaming at me with too-white teeth framed by too-pink lip gloss. "You should sit with us." I couldn't argue--she already had a vice grip on my arm (her long applique nails dug into my skin painfully) and was steering me towards the back of the cafeteria.

Brittany and her friends claimed the cafeteria's prime seats: their table was in the very back, dead center, right by all the monstrous windows that looked out over the soccer field. I should have been relieved to have found such a good place to sit, where I appeared to be wanted, but I tensed up the moment I sat down.

I found myself being watched closely by six or eight pairs of blue eyes--natural or colored contacts--and I looked down at my tray as I gave automatic responses to their questions. They wanted to know where I was from, what I was doing here, did I have a boyfriend, did I straighten my hair, and if I did, what straightener did I use? The kinds of questions you'd expect from a bunch of giggling cheerleaders.

Because that's what I'd been dragged into: the cheerleader's circle. They seemed genuinely interested in me, but I couldn't imagine why, and I couldn't shake the feeling that maybe I was just playing jester for the day.

"Oh my God, your hair is so pretty," gushed the girl sitting across from me, a platinum blonde wearing so much glittery eyeshadow that I was momentarily distracted. "What color is that?"

I was so confused at first that I couldn't even think of anything to say--I just stared back at her expectant gaze, wondering what she could possibly mean. There was no way she was asking me what color my hair was. No one was that stupid.

Then, as I noticed her dark roots contrasting sharply with the rest of her hair, I realized that she thought my hair was dyed.

"Oh, this is my natural color," I replied finally.

"Oh, really? It's gorgeous." The blonde beamed at me; her teeth were blinding.

"Thanks," I said quietly, looking down at my half-eaten pizza to escape her gaze.

One of the other girls started to relate some little anecdote about a hair-dyeing fiasco she'd recently survived, and for a few seconds, the others were completely absorbed in her story. I took the opportunity to lean back in my seat a little and try to relax. I wished I hadn't sat down here; I'd rather just sit alone, even.

Staring around the cafeteria, my heart gave a strange little lurch as I spotted none other than Brendon Urie himself.

He had just returned from the lunch line and was pulling out a chair at a table several tables away from mine. There were three or four other boys already sitting down at the table, most of them wearing shitty band T-shirts and dirty Converse; one of them said something to Brendon and he laughed, his big white teeth gleaming in the fluorescent lights.

My brain was screaming at me to look away, but I couldn't. Something trembled deep inside of me and I knew then why I had been avoiding him: because my mother was right--he was dangerous. I had made him dangerous. I knew this, and yet I couldn't escape him. I was the deer and he was the headlights.

No, his smile was the headlights. He was the truck.

It was such a disposable moment--lunchtime on the first day of school in a raucous high school cafeteria. But it felt like a turning point to me. In that moment, that moment that should have been so insignificant, I knew, somehow, that he was bound to destroy me.

And yet I couldn't stop myself.

Brendon looked up and caught me staring at him and gave me a little wave, grinning. I was so caught up in all those other thoughts that I automatically waved back, and he smirked in triumph.

"Do you know him?" asked one of the cheerleaders a little shrilly.

I turned back to the girls at my own table, abruptly jerked out of my brief reverie. "Um--sort of. He's my neighbor."

"Oh, lucky you." The girl who'd asked the question snorted and exchanged amused looks with the other girls at the table.

"...What?" I asked stupidly, obviously not in on the joke.

She just shook her head.

"What?!" I repeated again.

"Oh, calm down, Kelsey. It's not like we're laughing at you, or anything," said one of the other girls.

"...You're laughing at him?" I asked quietly. I wasn't exactly Brendon's best friend, but somehow the thought made my stomach churn with a cocktail of various negative emotions.

This time they all burst out into giggles. The girl on my left--I think her name was Heather--gave me an obnoxious look of faux-sympathy and patted me on the head. "It's okay, hun," she said in a purposely sickly sweet voice that made me want to slap her, "it's your first day."

They all laughed again and I waited until they were entrenched in a discussion of some soap opera I never watched to glance over at Brendon again. His whole table was quiet, and it only took a second for him to turn and look at me again. He smiled a little and turned back to his food.

I hated the way I felt so bad for him.

-----

I was so lost in thought as I got everything I would need for my next class--drama--out of my locker that I didn't even notice the hulking football player slouched against the lockers until I'd shut mine.

I jumped, startled, and he laughed. "My bad." He didn't look apologetic at all.

"It's okay." The closest person besides us was five or six lockers away, and his light blue eyes were fixed on me, but I couldn't believe he was here to see me, so I started to walk off.

He surprised me again by stopping me, laying a wide, weathered hand on my arm and pulling me back a little. "I'm sorry--I'm Matt." Matt beamed at me, and I couldn't help but feel my stomach flip once or twice.

"I'm Kelsey," I managed to choke out.

"So I hear." He wouldn't stop smiling--please stop smiling, I begged him mentally. "You're new here, right?"

"Right."

"Welcome to Vegas." His charming grin had shifted into something a little more seedy and I was uncomfortable.

"Well, thanks, but, um...I really need to get to class," I blurted out nervously.

He accepted the excuse. "Yeah, sure, sure. I'll talk to you later, okay?"

Somehow, it sounded like a threat.

"Okay. See you." I hurried off before he could even offer me a goodbye in exchange.

I was so distracted by my own questioning thoughts that I barely found my way to my drama class. Why had some random football player, who I'd never seen or heard of before, introduced himself to me? Had someone put him up to it? Or was he truly interested in me?

Why did everyone here like me so much? I couldn't get rid of them even when I wanted to.

'They're probably just fascinated because you're new,' I told myself, but surely there were better things to gossip about than me in Las Vegas, Sin City? It made no sense.

After all, I'd been mostly ignored at my old school. I was beginning to think I liked that better.

I was the last one to arrive in drama class. The late bell rang just as I closed the door behind me, and I grinned sheepishly back at all the wondering eyes turned on me--everyone else was already in their seats and ready for class to begin, and evidently I'd interrupted the teacher. She smiled at me, but it was a strained smile, and I knew that she probably would have made some biting comment had I not been the new kid.

I was making my way over to the only empty desk, mentally cursing that stupid football player--what was his name? Matt?--for making me late, when I happened to look up and see, yes, Brendon Urie, of all people.

'Of course,' I thought sarcastically. Who else? I mean, come on. I was kidding myself to think I could get away with not having at least one class with him.

He was leaning up out of his seat a little (as if poised to spring up out of it at any second), bouncing up and down, and raising his eyebrows as high as they would go, giving me an overly-delighted face that was meant to make me laugh and very nearly succeeded: the sight of him, trembling in his seat, beyond excited and overjoyed, among all the other zombie-like students was absolutely hilarious. I rolled my eyes at him as I slid calmly into my own seat.

The teacher continued in her lecture about the general requirements for this class, going over the very basics that everyone should have known since kindergarten, probably. There was half an hour left of class when I felt something on my shoulder; there was nothing there, so I tuned back into what the teacher was saying. I felt it two more times and then gave the boy sitting to my right a questioning glare--he jabbed a thumb back at Brendon's seat, and I turned to see Brendon smirking triumphantly as he threw another little ball of paper at me.

I rolled my eyes again and turned back to the teacher.

A few minutes later, the guy who'd given Brendon away before tapped me on the shoulder and handed me a little shred of paper, folded up into quarters. I hid my hands under the desk as I unfolded it. On the dirty, torn scrap of paper was written, in messy boy's handwriting: "I [heart] penises."

I wadded it up into a ball and threw it at Brendon's head; he was whispering to the boy sitting next to him, so he didn't see it coming and looked around in surprise as it hit him squarely in the back of the head. Glaring at me, he bent down to pick up the ball of paper, and unwadded it. He gave me a suggestive look and a wink as he read it again, and I promptly gave him the finger in return. Brendon just laughed soundlessly and mouthed something at me.

"Mr. Urie?" asked the teacher sharply. She had been writing something on the board, and apparently noticed Brendon attempting to instigate conversation as she turned around. "Is there something you'd like to share with us?"

"Well, apparently, Mrs. Christenson," said Brendon, and I felt a stab of horror as he began smoothing out the note and held it up for the class to see, "Kelsey loves penises."

"I didn't write that!" I shrieked immediately as the whole class burst out into laughter.

"Mr. Urie," said Mrs. Christenson sternly. Judging by the weary, but irritated, look on her face, these sorts of disruptions were typical of Brendon.

He smiled a little to himself as he pocketed the note again, without the slightest trace of remorse.

"Mr. Urie," she repeated, more firmly this time.

"Okay," he conceded, sighing. "I'm sorry. I'll be good."

The class had mostly quieted by now, but I still had my face buried in my hands, my palms pressed hard against my cheeks in an attempt to cool them. I was never going to forgive him for this.

It was going to be a long semester.