Chasing Ivy (Oak Hill 1)

“Oh, come on, Ivy. You’re my best friend. The least you could do is let me cheat every once in a while.”

I threw my books inside my locker and huffed. “I’m being a really crappy best friend by letting you copy off me! You’re so much smarter than you pretend to be. Why is that?” I mimicked him and crossed my arms over my chest. He glanced down at them and then flicked his eyes back up to mine.

“It’ll ruin my reputation,” he smirked.

I sighed. “What reputation? You mean the one where you act like a dumb jock who doesn’t know his thumb from his ass and lets girls fawn all over him?”

“That’d be the one,” he answered, while following closely behind me to the cafeteria.

“Stupid. You have so much potential.”

The chatter of the cafeteria grew louder as we made our way through the long hallway, passing by the clear windows of the front office. I bet if I looked at the ladies comprising most of the office staff, they’d all be craning their necks to look at Dawson. Not only did he have every high school girl drooling over his jock-like body and surfer-boy hair, he had all the grown women, too.

“You’re my biggest cheerleader, you know that?”

I rolled my eyes again but then I abruptly stopped moving my feet towards the lunchroom. Dawson kept moving, making it halfway to his table, which was already full of guys wearing their blue letterman jackets, before pausing and looking back at me.

He mouthed, “What’s wrong?”

My h

eart jumped in my chest and I instantly felt sick to my stomach. I looked from Dawson and then to another lunch table, only a few away from his.

There was my ex, Tyler Holmes, with Breanna (aka my worst freaking enemy—like, seriously, she and her parents hate me) draped over his lap. She ran her hand through his straw-colored hair the second she saw me standing in the threshold and then he, not even realizing I was standing there, swooped in for a disgusting, sloppy kiss.

My face flamed. It’d been only one week since we’d broken up and there he was, already cozying up to Breanna. I was the one who’d broken up with him, but only because he basically forced me into it.

Tyler had been talking to girls behind my back (Breanna mainly, because she always wanted what I had, she just couldn’t help but place her sticky fingers on my ex), so of course I had to break up with him. What did he think I’d do? Stick around for him to cheat on me?

Hmmph…by the looks of it, I was pretty certain he had cheated on me.

I was no longer hungry and even though Dawson was trying to get my attention, I slowly started to back away from the lunchroom. It looked like I was trying to mimic the moonwalk on my way out, foot sliding right after the other on the shiny, vinyl tile. I was not going to sit down and try to eat my packed lunch while watching Breanna stick her tongue down my ex’s throat, all just to spite me.

And I especially needed to make a fast exit considering everyone was staring at me. All except Tyler and Breanna. They were making out heavily. Where the heck are the teachers? Wasn’t that, like, breaking every single PDA rule that they had continued to ram into our brains since last August?

Ugh. Gross.

Once I was far enough away from the cafeteria, surely making Michael Jackson proud as heck of my epic moonwalk, I turned and headed straight to the doors that led to the student parking lot. Before my fingers even hit the handle, I heard a commotion. It was so loud that I instantly spun around and placed my hand on my heart.

What was that?

Then I heard the chants, “Fight, fight, fight!”

I gasped. “Oh no.”

My heart dropped and I hurriedly ran back over to the lunchroom, bypassing the puzzled looks on the office staff’s face.

“Dawson!” I yelled.

I panicked, quickly running over to him, foot getting caught on one of the stupid chairs. Dawson was standing over a wailing Tyler. His cries were so loud that I almost laughed. Dawson pulled his arm back one more time and slammed it onto Tyler’s already bloody nose, I cringed at the sound of the thump.

Breanna was shrieking, as were all her stuck-up friends, and the guys in the lunchroom were becoming even rowdier as they egged Dawson on.

I yelled once more before he could do anymore damage. “Stop it, Dawson!”

Finally, hearing my voice, he heaved back and swiveled his head over to me. He shook his shaggy hair out of his beet-red face and pushed himself off the floor.

I glanced down at Tyler’s face and my stomach lurched. His nose was gushing bright, red blood and one eye looked as if it would be bruising in a matter of seconds.