If there was ever a time that Mai was actually thankful for living in the small town Hanstead, Nebraska, she couldn't remember. She'd been born and raised there and she'd never known Hanstead to have any notable characteristics other than housing multiple research facilities for some major corporations. There wasn't many kids that lived in Hanstead so all the children and teenagers went to the same public school that was on a road off of Main Street. Most students walked to school in the mornings and home in the afternoon on school days, unless it was a high-schooler with parents willing to spend money and buy them a car.
The Hanstead Institute of Learning was divided between the elementary, middle, and the high schools. The individual classes consisted of around ten to twenty kids per grade. Mai was starting her senior year fall and the first day back was coming up fast. There was maybe a week before Mai was forced to return to the hellhole of hormones, emotions, and drama that made up high school. Just how in every high school there is a "Queen B" that was the most popular girl in school and Mai's school was no exception.
Jennifer Wilson was the daughter of Hanstead's mayor and had been the bane of Mai's existence since the beginning of her third grade year when Mai had accidentally spilled grape juice all over the curly red haired girl's new white and pink polka dot dress. Since then Mai had been subjected to the daily torment of Jennifer. It wasn't just her either, Mai had to deal with the stupidity of Gemma Waters and Daria Jacobs otherwise known as Thing One and Thing Two. They were daughters of the mayor's brother and they followed Jennifer around like she was the Queen of the Universe. Not to mention they pretty much only had the intelligence equivalent to that of a fly.
Even though she had to deal with the Trio of Teenage Tragedies, Mai had two people that she could always rely on to defend her honor from the horrors of Jennifer Wilson. Jerry White and Melanie Hunterson were her best friends from day one of kindergarten. They'd been in her class and on the first day when they'd had show and tell they'd been the only ones to ask her anything about what she'd brought in, a dream catcher made by an old Native American her great-grandmother had met when she was a child. Until now the both of them had been her rock that kept her from going practically insane.
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