being an elite wasn’t easy. being an elite in a town like darren, was impossible.

you had known from a young age, your sole purpose in life was to be the perfect daughter. straight A’s, sociable, but not loud, and kind—but no weakness. and considering it had been all you knew, your whole entire life was wrapped around being the perfect daughter.

and to most, you succeeded. you were notorious at your school for being the ‘nice’ elite, student body president, and top of your class. you were practically every parent’s dream. though, considering you were being compared to the other elites—you were barely even half as relevant as them.

the other elites consisted of rylan moore, eric kingsley, sawyer sinclaire, and karden valdosta. all four were known for their model looks, untouchable presences, and their amazing basketball skills.

to you? they were the same boys that you had known since you were little, all of them putting on the same facade you had—why? because it was all they knew too. it wasn’t like they didn’t party, or drink, or hookup, but they had a support system around them to make sure that no one ever found out.

and that, as a role model student, pissed you off to no belief. you, even being from an elite family, had always made sure your successes were because of your own ability—not from your last name, yet that’s what kept the other elite’s names out of the press, unless they were getting praised.

a prime example would be karden valdosta.

for as long as you could remember, nobody had even come close to beating your scores on tests—except for karden. he was always right there next to you on any exam. since starting high school, both of you swapped between the second and first place spot like a cycle.

however, you knew that most of karden’s reasoning for his success was because he was a valdosta. the valdosta family was uniquely introverted for an elite family, and their mansion looked terrifyingly like the addams’ family mansion. not to mention, karden’s father was originally from Russia—which meant a terrifying accent and tone that could make a room go quiet. plus, he had black hair and chilling light blue eyes—that his heir just had to inherit.

you weren’t sure what it was, but everytime you would ever argue with karden—you could never look him in the eye. he was always so…intense when he looked at anything, especially when he was pissed.

most people at darren prep used to ship the two of you together, the ‘enemies-to-lovers’ trope, but luckily karden had been in a relationship with another elite, jennie nikols, for the past two years. technically, it was an arrangement from their parents—yet it made sure that no one even thought of the two of you dating.

yet, that didn’t stop the two of you from arguing. and when you weren’t arguing, you were obnoxiously ignoring each other.

for example, today.

on tuesday, you and karden had gotten into a heated debate during english, leading to assigned seats—and instead of ms. wyatt putting you two far away from each other, the two of you were right next to each other.

you could barely focus on the lesson, considering you were hyperfocused on not making any contact with the boy next to you. which was incredibly hard considering the ‘boy’ was a 6’5 giant, who just loved to manspread. you were sure he was doing it to piss you off. maybe it wasn’t on purpose, but it was his subconscious to annoy you in any way.

“i can feel you staring, krasota.” karden says in that annoying monotone voice, not even looking over at you—but that stupid nickname is enough for your annoyance to be mixed with anger.