Surviving a YA Romance Novel

I am an extra in a trashy Young Adult romance novel. When the innocent, "not-like-other-girls," low-income scholarship student transferred to our elite private academy... I was studying. When the scholarship student screamed at the "Big Four" billionaire heirs, calling them leeches on society... I was studying. When the billionaire heirs took turns falling in love with the scholarship student... I was still studying. It wasn’t until midterms, when I snatched the rank of Valedictorian right out from under the scholarship student's nose, that things went sideways. Carter Vance, the heir to the most powerful family in the city, dragged me into a dark storage closet. He locked the door and told me he was going to keep me in there for three days to teach me a lesson. I calmly pulled out my encrypted phone and made a call. I told you, this is a YA romance novel. Who doesn't have a secret hidden identity these days? Three minutes later, the entire school was surrounded by a hundred tactical helicopters... ... Carter Vance stared down at me with the classic, arrogant smirk of a bad-boy billionaire. "Let me tell you something, Penny... Penny what again?" He blanked. The air was quiet for three seconds. I helpfully reminded him. "Penny Bucks." Carter furrowed his brow in disgust. "What a tacky name." He paused. "If it wasn't to get justice for Chloe, I wouldn't waste half a breath on a girl like you." I nodded, looking completely understanding. He was the male lead in a cheesy romance novel, after all. Why would he bother remembering a background character's name? In his eyes, I was probably barely even scenery. I was reincarnated into this world at birth, only to eventually realize I was living inside an overly dramatic, cliché YA novel. The plot revolved around the turbulent, star-crossed love rectangle between the four billionaire heirs and the poor scholarship girl. And I was just a throwaway line in the book: [Ever since Chloe transferred here, the former number one student became the eternal runner-up.] Yep, that's me. The eternal runner-up. But I believe in making my own destiny. I lived ten years in my past life, and ten years in this one. I have twenty solid years of academic grinding under my belt. Other people get reincarnated into novels and start wild romances. I got reincarnated and immediately started doing AP calculus practice tests. The Valedictorian spot? It was mine, guaranteed. So, when the entire school was obsessing over the billionaire heirs... I was studying. When the mean girls teamed up to bully Chloe... I was studying. When the four heartthrobs fell for her one by one... When they hugged her in the rain on the football field, confessed their love on the school roof, and secretly held her hand in the library... I remained completely unbothered, crushing my SAT prep. They were having earth-shattering romances. I had achieved a state of academic zen. Until the day midterm grades were posted, and my name was hanging brightly at the absolute top of the list. Carter's tone was vicious. "Do you have any idea that because you stole Chloe's number one spot, she cried all night?" He backed me into a corner, exuding that oppressive aura unique to fictional alpha males. "She is so kind and works so hard. Why do you have to target her?" I couldn't help but interrupt. "I'm sorry, but if I recall correctly, Chloe ranked 84th in the grade this time." "Besides me, there are 82 other people ahead of her." Carter froze for half a second before his face flushed with rage. "Whatever! That number one spot belonged to Chloe! You stole her rightful place, and that threw her off, which is why she got 84th! This is all your fault!" I mentally applauded his absolute lack of logic. The next second, he shoved me into the school's old utility closet. The heavy metal door slammed shut, and the lock clicked loudly. "You're staying in here for three days. Let's see if that teaches you a lesson," his voice dripped with condescension through the door. "Maybe next time you'll remember your place before you try to steal the top spot." After Carter's footsteps faded, I looked around the dim closet, which was piled high with broken desks and dusty gym equipment. As I was figuring out the best way to break out, my encrypted cell phone rang. "Penny, my girl! Number one again?! Hahahaha, that's my daughter for ya!" The voice on the other end was booming with energy. "Your uncles heard you got Valedictorian again, and they went absolutely nuts. They just hauled out a hundred crates of C4, waiting for you to come home so we can blow 'em up and celebrate!" "Oh, hey, you want your mom to come pick you up? She just got her hands on a discontinued heavy assault rifle, she's dying to show it off." A drop of sweat formed on my forehead. I quickly brushed him off, insisting I would make my own way home, practically begging them not to come to the school. I hung up the phone, shaking my head with a heavy sigh. Honestly, my parents were a handful. If they found out I was currently locked in a closet by a high school bully, they would literally level the entire campus. Sure, I might be an extra in the plot. But this is a crazy fictional universe, remember? My grandfather is a literal Godfather in the underworld. My dad, Tony "The Bull" Bucks, inherited the syndicate. My mom is the number one assassin on the global hit list, charging a cool $100 million per contract. They met, fell in love over a mutual appreciation for violence, and had me—their precious, one-and-only baby girl. As my dad likes to say: Our family has been thugs and mobsters for ten generations, just to finally produce one genius who knows how to read books. I remember back in elementary school, when I brought home a perfect report card for the first time. My parents looked utterly terrified. They thought I cheated. They thought I threatened the teacher at gunpoint. They even briefly suspected I was switched at birth. They refused to believe I earned those grades myself. It wasn't until later, when they realized I hated sports, hated fighting, and just wanted to lock myself in my room and read... And when I became fluent in eight languages before puberty... They finally accepted the truth. When I took the high school entrance exams and scored the highest in the entire state... my parents almost passed out. That night, my dad was so hyped he surrounded the headquarters of a rival gang and blew it up like a fireworks show just for me. My mom went out and assassinated the top ten targets on the global bounty board, just so she could give me a "perfect ten" congratulatory gift. However, my only request to them was this: Once I started high school, they were forbidden from revealing my identity. They had to let me study in peace. Every time people found out who my parents were, they would shake like leaves around me. I finally had the chance to just be a normal, background-character nerd, and I wasn't going to let them ruin it. Thinking of this, I walked over to the closet door and crouched down. Click. Click. The lock popped open. When you grow up in my house, picking a standard padlock is child's play. That afternoon, I showed up to class right on time. I sat in my seat and opened my textbook like nothing had happened. When Chloe saw me, her eyes instantly turned red. She glared at me for an entire period, looking incredibly wronged and stubborn. During the break, she finally couldn't take it anymore. She ran over, stood at my desk, and twisted the hem of her skirt. "Penny Bucks, I admit you're smart. But remember this: that number one spot belongs to me, and I will take it back." I looked up at her with absolute sincerity. "Well, besides me, you'll also have to beat the other 82 people ahead of you." Chloe froze for a second, then covered her face and ran away crying. I shrugged and went back to my practice problems. Not long after, Carter marched over, his face like a thundercloud. He was wearing a custom-tailored dark grey shirt, looking every bit the brooding rich boy. "Penny Bucks, I underestimated you. I guess you didn't learn your lesson?" He reached out to grab my arm. Just as I was about to dodge, another hand reached out and blocked him. Julian. The heir to the massive Sterling tech empire. He smiled, looking sophisticated and elegant, but his eyes were full of calculation. Julian looked down at me. "Penny, I'll pay you. Give the number one spot to Chloe. How much?" I tilted my head curiously. "How much are you offering?" Julian's arrogant smile widened. "Name your price. The Sterling family has bottomless pockets." I thought about it, then held up a hand, spreading all five fingers. Julian raised an eyebrow, his smile deepening. "Five million? Fine. It's yours." He turned to mock Carter. "Carter, don't always use brute force. Use your brain. Why get your hands dirty when money can solve the problem?" I didn't rush to accept the deal. Instead, I asked a question. "But the scholarship prize for being Valedictorian is only five thousand dollars. Why don't you just give the five million directly to Chloe? Doesn't she just want to be first so she can get the money?" Carter let out a cold laugh. "Chloe isn't a gold digger like you. The five thousand she earns through her own hard work means more to her than anything. You clearly don't understand how pure she is." I nodded slowly. "Well, I didn't actually want five million." Julian frowned. "Then what do you want?" "I want..." I slowly lowered four of my fingers, leaving only my middle finger standing straight up. I mouthed two words silently. F—k. You. Julian's face instantly turned beet red. His sophisticated smile vanished, replaced by a dark, furious glare. "Penny Bucks, don't push your luck." I stepped back. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the homeroom teacher walking down the end of the hallway. So, I took a deep breath and screamed at the top of my lungs. "MR. DAVIS, I NEED TO REPORT A BRIBE! JULIAN STERLING JUST OFFERED ME FIVE MILLION DOLLARS TO THROW THE EXAMS FOR CHLOE!" Hearing this, everyone in the hallway turned to look at Chloe with weird, judgmental eyes. "Wow, she's supposed to be a smart scholarship student, but she needs a billionaire to buy her grades?" "Shhh, keep it down, or she'll get her sugar daddies to come after you." Chloe was sobbing so hard she could barely breathe. She yelled at Julian through her tears. "I haven't sunk so low that I need to buy my grades! You guys are insulting me!" She turned and sprinted down the hall. Julian chased after her, desperately trying to apologize. Carter stood next to me, grinding his teeth. "You little b—ch, Penny!" Just then, Liam, the heir to the Hawthorne real estate dynasty, leaned against a pillar in the hallway. He spoke in a slow, lazy drawl. "I have an idea." He smirked, his flirty, playboy eyes glinting with a careless kind of malice. "This bookworm has clearly never been on a date in her life." "Why don't I go after her? Once she actually falls for me, I'll dump her hard. She'll be too busy crying to study. Let's see how she gets first place then." The other guys exchanged a look, a sinister light flashing in their eyes. I, of course, had no idea they were plotting this. After school, I pushed open the ten-foot-tall wrought-iron gates of my family's estate. The moment I stepped into the living room, a dozen heavily armed, terrifying mob enforcers turned to stare at me. Any one of them could give a normal person a heart attack just by looking at them. But the second they saw it was me, their faces broke into massive, goofy grins. "Hey! If it isn't our genius niece!" "Little Einstein! Come let Uncle Frankie look at ya. You look skinny! Are they not feeding you right at that fancy school?" I greeted them one by one. "Hi Uncle Frankie, how's the hitman business? Getting lots of orders?" The man with a massive scar across his face laughed heartily. "Thanks to you bringing us good luck, Penny! We got seven big contracts last month, I've been busy!" "Uncle Sal, I heard you cleared out three rival hideouts last month? Are you getting enough sleep?" The normally terrifying enforcer smiled so hard his eyes disappeared. "Word travels fast, kiddo! Don't worry about me, your uncle's still got it!" After I finished the rounds, my parents finally pushed their way to the front of the crowd. They were both sporting blindingly bright, rainbow-dyed mohawks. Standing next to each other, they looked like two giant, violent Skittles. My mouth twitched. "...What is going on with your hair?" Tony "The Bull" Bucks scratched the back of his head, giving me a goofy, innocent smile. "Your mom said this is the 'Rainbow Unicorn' look. She said it's what the cool teens are into these days." "You like it, sweetie?" I forced a tight smile. "It's very... unique." I slung my backpack over my shoulder. "I'm going to go study. Finals are in a month." My dad sighed heavily, yelling at my retreating back. "Man, this kid is perfect in every way, except she works too damn hard!" "She's nothing like me and your mother. Back in the day, we were busy getting into street fights, skipping class, and making out under the bleachers." Uncle Frankie slapped him on the back. "Oh, shut up, you're just bragging! You got a genius kid, be grateful!" The rest of the crew agreed, and the living room erupted into booming laughter. I went upstairs to my room. As soon as I set my bag down, my phone buzzed. It was a friend request on Snapchat. The note read: [Hey, I'm Liam Hawthorne. Can we get to know each other? I feel like you're really different from other girls.] I stared at the screen for three seconds, a slow smile spreading across my face. Then I turned around, opened my bedroom door, and yelled down the stairs at the top of my lungs. "DAD! I'M GOING TO START DATING!" The living room fell dead silent. Tony's eyes went wide, his rainbow mohawk practically standing on end. "WHAT?! WHICH PUNK KID IS IT?!" I ignored him, slammed my door shut, and accepted Liam's friend request. For the next month, Liam "courted" me. Every morning, there was a hot latte on my desk. After school, he was waiting by my locker. On weekends, he took me out on dates. During evening study hall, he sat right next to me. He never opened a single textbook, just stared at me with eyes full of deep, manufactured affection. We were inseparable. He dragged me around from morning till night, giving me absolutely zero time to review for finals. Meanwhile, he completely iced out Chloe. Chloe tried to talk to him a few times with tears in her eyes, but he brushed her off coldly. The school's gossip forums were blowing up. [Did Liam Hawthorne ditch the scholarship girl for the Valedictorian?!] [The end of the Cinderella era?] Chloe's fan club cursed me out behind my back, calling me shameless. I pretended I couldn't hear them. Finally, finals week ended. The day before grades were posted, Liam asked me to meet him on the school roof. When I got there, Carter, Julian, and the fourth heir, Mason, were all waiting. The four of them stood in a protective wall around Chloe. Liam had his hands in his pockets, his chin tilted up arrogantly. His tone was lazy and cruel. "Penny, we're breaking up. The game is over." He turned to Chloe, his voice softening instantly. "See? I told you everything with her was fake. I was just messing with her." Chloe smiled through her tears, though she muttered, "I don't care who you like." Liam turned back to me, no longer hiding his malice. "Penny Bucks, I don't like you at all. Every single day I spent with you made me sick to my stomach." "I only did it to drain all your study time. Let's see how you manage to get first place now." He paused, his voice dropping colder. "It just goes to show, you're just another superficial, desperate girl. You took the bait the second a rich guy showed you some attention." He stared at me smugly, waiting for me to break down in hysterics. Instead, I burst out laughing. "Is that right?" I tilted my head. "Sure, let's break up." Liam clearly didn't expect me to be so calm. He froze for a second. "Keep putting up a brave front. Let's see if you're still laughing when the grades drop." Right on cue, everyone's phones buzzed simultaneously. It was the automated text from the school administration with the final class rankings. "The grades are out!" Liam gave me a triumphant smirk and unlocked his phone. The next second, the color drained from his face. Everyone stared at the rankings in absolute shock. My name was still sitting comfortably at the absolute top of the list. 745 points. An undisputed, flawless victory. And Chloe's name? She had plummeted to 200th place. Even worse than her 84th place finish at midterms. The moment Chloe saw her grade, she went paper-white. Massive tears rolled down her cheeks as she covered her face and ran away. Liam stared at his screen, his knuckles white from gripping his phone so hard. "How is this possible? I was with you every second of the day! You literally had no time to study..." I looked at him, a hint of genuine pity in my eyes. This past month, when he dragged me to the arcade to play games, I had an earpiece in, listening to AP Chemistry lectures. When he kept me on FaceTime late into the night to play co-op video games, I was doing calculus equations on a notepad just out of frame. Multitasking is a skill I have perfected over two lifetimes. Even when he was sitting next to me whispering sweet nothings into my ear... I was mentally translating his sentences into Latin vocabulary words. I reached out and patted his handsome cheek, sighing like I was actually going to miss him. "Thanks for the free meals, Pretty Boy. I had a lot of fun this month." Liam stood frozen for two solid seconds. Then, a furious, humiliated flush crept from his neck all the way to the tips of his ears. In a fit of impotent rage, he kicked over a nearby trash can. "PENNY BUCKS!!!" I ignored him and walked away. Behind me, I could hear the other three guys ruthlessly mocking him. Finally, Mason spoke in a slow, dark tone. "You guys play too many games. If you want to solve a problem, you have to do it permanently." He raised a hand and slowly dragged his index finger across his throat. The other three exchanged a look, the mockery fading from their eyes, replaced by cold agreement. Carter nodded. "If Mason makes a move... she's finished." The day I picked up my scholarship check, I walked out of the school building and dialed my dad. "Hey, Dad. I'm officially on summer break." Tony's booming, joyous voice came through the speaker. "Atta girl! My baby girl took first place again! I've already got a massive banquet set up for you!" "Oh, and it perfectly lines up with your Grandpa's 80th birthday! A bunch of your uncles are flying in. I'm gonna make sure everyone knows Tony Bucks’ daughter is a literal genius! Hahahaha!" I was about to reply when a sudden, sharp pain exploded in the back of my head. My vision went black. The phone slipped from my hand and hit the concrete. As my knees buckled and my consciousness faded, the last thing I saw was Mason's cold, indifferent face. He looked down at me crumpled on the ground, then turned to the men behind him. "Take her. Dispose of her." From the phone on the ground, Tony's voice drifted up. "Hello? Sweetie? Why'd you stop talking? Hello?" Mason leaned down and picked up the phone, intending to just hang it up. But on a whim, he lifted it to his mouth, a cruel smirk playing on his lips. "Are you Penny's dad?" "Your daughter messed with the wrong people. Tell her to be smarter in her next life." The line went dead silent for two seconds. When Tony spoke again, his voice dropped an octave. He sounded like a completely different person. "Who is this? What have you done to my daughter?" Mason felt a rush of adrenaline. He leaned lazily against the side of his car. "Like a bottom-feeder like you could do anything about it if you knew." "But whatever, I'll let you know who ended her. Your daughter is in the hands of the Sterling family." He hung up the phone, tossed it casually into the grass, and climbed into the backseat of his luxury sedan. "Drive." The car started and rolled out of the school gates. But less than three minutes later, the driver slammed on the brakes so hard the tires screeched. Mason, who had his eyes closed in the backseat, was thrown violently forward. He snapped his head up, furious. "What the hell are you doing?!" The driver's voice was shaking uncontrollably. "Mr. Sterling... we can't go anywhere." Mason looked out the windshield, his pupils shrinking to pinpricks. A hundred black tactical helicopters hovered in the sky, completely blotting out the sun. Every single exit ramp and side street was barricaded. Rows upon rows of heavily armed men in black tactical gear repelled down from the choppers, raising assault rifles. "EVERYONE STAY EXACTLY WHERE YOU ARE. NOBODY MOVES."

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