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Category: Romance/Young Adult
Description: Young romance blooms when the daughter of a wealthy family fallen on hard times is sent to an inner city high school. There she joins an acting class, finds friends and romance, and eventually a solution to serious problems at home. Another girl in the same class, one from a disadvantaged home, competes for a scholarship to a summer theater. How she deals with jealousy and prejudice leads her life in a new direction.
eBook Publisher: ebooksonthe.net/ebooksonthe.net, 2010 ebook
eBookwise Release Date: November 2010

Available eBook Formats: OEBFF Format (IMP) [66 KB]
Words: 13279
Reading time: 37-53 min.

Chapter One

I grew up feeling miserable and scared all the time, but I thought that was the way you were supposed to feel, until Lupe Gonzalez became my best friend. First day at Grenadier High, everybody's scared I guess, but I think it was worse than usual for me.

Until then I'd gone to private schools, but my dad's construction business had some problems due to the recession so there wasn't money for tuition anymore. Not that we were poor or anything. We still lived in our big house in Meadowland. We still had the pool, the gardener and Hannah, our live-in housekeeper. My little brother, Todd had inherited my old pony Roscoe, and my sister Ashley and I still had our horses and riding lessons, and ballet twice a week. Ashley hated horses and loved ballet. With me, it was just the opposite. But we both had to participate, because our parents thought it was good for us. There was still plenty of money to keep the bars well stocked too. All three of them, the one in the pool house, the one in the family room, and the one in my dad's office-at-home.

That fall we all went to public school for the first time, Todd to an elementary near home, Ashley, who was 13, to middle school, and I got bussed to Grenadier High. I remember how out of place I felt standing there in my good wool skirt and cashmere sweater, when everyone else was wearing jeans. Some of the other kids whistled and made noises, then began to make remarks like, "Hey, you lost, or what?" and "This ain't no finishing school you know!"

I was terrified, and my stomach got that jumpy feeling it always did when my mom and dad drank too much and passed out and Hannah was away, and I knew there was no one to take care of the littler kids but me. That scared feeling always made me mad, too. So, I yelled back, "You're right -- I don't belong here. So just keep away from me, all of you!"

That brought them crowding around, making threats, and pulling my hair. I screamed and hollered and made threats back, until a tall guy in a ragged sweatshirt pushed his way through the crowd. "Lay off, chill out -- can't you see she's scared witless?"

"She don't act scared." Angelina Russo said. "She acts like she thinks her sweat don't stink." I'd only been in the school an hour and I already knew who she was -- the toughest girl at Grenadier.