NoAverageAngel
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- Posted: Tue, 06 Oct 2009 03:22:39 +0000
It's supposed to be a short book. Still working on title. But here's the first chapter and I would appreciate and love feedback.
Chapter 1 New
IT WAS MONDAY; FIRST DAY OF THE NEW SEMESTER AT MY
Wretched high school: York High School.
I have been living here my whole life…well, most of it anyways.
I still went to Florida to visit my father, but otherwise, since I’ve moved to the small town of New Castle, New Hampshire when I was four; my life has always been the same.
Now, I stood in front of the mirror, twelve years later, while I put on my contacts. The sun streaks from my window did something bizarre to my eyes; they were usually very dark, but right now, as the sun shone directly into them, the black turned into a chocolate brown I’d never seen before, despite that this was weird enough; there was a dark blue ring around it…
“MARI! I’M LEAVING!” My mother shouted from the front door, I assumed, pulling me from the odd moment. I shook my head and put in my other contact, while my mom said; “HURRY UP, YOU DON’T WANT TO BE LATE! BYE!”
The door slammed and I sighed.
Of course not; why would I want to be late to the most miserable, boring, repetitive part of my day?
As I hurried to leave the house I tripped over a floorboard. Ugh, great. I would have to fix that. This place was more messed up than the forest. It was said that this house was over 100 years old. How fabulous.
As I got into my Ranger, I suddenly began to feel…anxious?
I mentally rummaged through my head while I started the engine. Huh. No tests, I mused, no papers due, no baseball games…weird.
After two minutes, the butterflies in my stomach started assaulting me. I couldn’t handle it. I turned on my radio and put on a CD of rock music. It was what I listened to in order to keep my head busy with the instruments loud noise echoing around my car.
The whole 3-miles, the butterflies continued to attack my stomach as if they wanted to break free, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t concentrate on anything else for long besides my mind’s unauthorized musing…
Finally I arrived to school, I planned to park in the spot I always did, the last one, the one nearest to the gate, to be able to leave school as soon as the bell ringed and head to baseball practice.
But it was taken.
In my spot, there was a corvette. I had heard about this specific corvette. It was a Corvette ZR1. It was fast and powerful; just my type of car.
But this wasn’t what caught my attention.
As I parked my car in the spot next to the corvette, I saw a girl getting out of the car.
Ok, so girl didn’t even begin to describe her. She looked more like a Greek goddess.
She was tall and slim, fair-skinned with slightly flushed cheeks, perfect features, and clothes that fit that image perfectly well. She wore a khaki coat, unbuttoned so that it revealed a gray shirt, with a white scarf over it and gray jeans that were hidden after her knees by high heel, white boots. Her hair had to be all the way down to her calves--or so it looked since it was up in a pony tail--and hung in jet black ringlets, which bounced with her every step. Her walk was so graceful; she might have as well been dancing…well, not really. She would’ve made a ballerina look like a klutz.
I realized my mouth had been dropped open when the girl looked over at me through my open window with a curious expression, I quickly closed my mouth, it was a surprise my jaw hadn’t hit the floor, and looked away. Her gray eyes seemed slightly intimidating, yet when I met her gaze, something flickered inside of me, a new instinct I didn’t recognize, yet it was familiar all the same. I shook my head and took a deep breath.
I quickly strapped my bag over my shoulder, grabbed my keys from the ignition and got out of my old Ford F100 Ranger—it wasn’t the fastest car, which I didn’t really like, but it’d been the Ranger or nothing—I slammed the door shut and, merely out of curiosity, turned to see the girl gone, I turned back and had just finished manually locking my car right when the bell rang.
Dang it! I couldn’t be late again to Algebra, especially not on the first day back from break!
I ran through the rain, feeling the water seep through my high tops as I run through puddles, while mentally bursting a string of profanities that would have gotten me in trouble if I had said them out loud, though I still earned a few shouts from security and teachers when I got into the building for running in the halls.
When I arrived to my Algebra 2 class, I wasn’t out of breath, just annoyed that my new shoes were wet, but I’d made it without being late. I jerked out of my jacket and hung it on the back of my seat; as soon as that was done I quickly took my seat next to my best friend, Christopher Chang.
He was the jock, the guy every girl wanted to go out with, which I usually laughed at since I didn’t really see him as Christopher, hottie jock, Chang. I saw him as Chris, the dork I had known since the second grade. We’d met in the first grade, but had been rivals then; I was the best girl baseball player and he was the best guy player, I had managed to beat him on the first day of baseball, so we never really liked each other. Until we were seen as the most valuable players in our little league baseball team and started acting as a team to become undefeated champions up until this day for our school… so we were tied by baseball, and a whole lot more later on.
Thus, I only ever saw him as a brother.
Not that I couldn’t see what every girl went on about, he was pretty good looking.
His hair was in a stylish-kind-of-messy-spike do and was dark brown. His eyes were ice-blue, with a sapphire-colored circle surrounding them—I stopped dead at that thought. He had the same peculiar ring around his eyes as I did…huh.
My brain went back to its original thinking before it’d been derailed by the eye thing.
He was slightly tan, tall—maybe 5”9--and muscular, but not too muscular, had a not too deep-voice, and whenever he smiled, a dimple would show up in the left side of his face. He had a great sense of style, he wore a rolled up long sleeved shirt with a button up shirt—that had the buttons opened—on top of it. He wore jeans and converses, and the same identical necklace I wore, a yin yang necklace he had gotten me on my thirteenth birthday.
“Hey Andreea,” Chris said pulling me out of my reverie.
Andreea was my middle name; it was Romanian, thanks to my parents’ homeland they were completely crazed about keeping every costume to the point. Names included. Chris was the only one who ever called me Andreea, he claimed that the name Mariana was too girly for me, which offended me at first but I learned to get over it.
“Hey Chris” I answered in a dull voice while I took my folder out of my bag.
He chuckled, so I looked up to see what was so funny. He was staring at the top of my head, and I usually knew what that meant…my hair was really messy. I stuck my tongue out at him for a second and he snickered. According to him, I looked like a five-year old girl whenever I did that, which he found amusing compared to my usual boyish nature. I, on the other hand, got irritated at the thought.
I pulled my long, dark brown hair—which would sometimes become black—into a messy ponytail; ugh, well, at least it was better than a haystack.
“I see you did shopping over winter break,” he said in mock shock. And I knew why; it was because I was rarely one to shop.
He wasn’t precisely right—though that was basically his way of saying I missed you, how was your break?—I didn’t shop at all. I was wearing new red high tops, with skinny jeans and a white baseball shirt with red sleeves, it was all given to me for Christmas; it had actually been one of the few gifts I’d enjoyed since the rest of the presents had been to girly for my liking.
“Missed you too Chris” I muttered.
He smirked at me showing his dimple.
The teacher came into the classroom and like that the whole class fell silent. Mr. Baddigan wasn’t one of the…nicest, teachers we had. Actually he wasn’t nice at all. The slightest of whispers earned you detention!
I settled into my patient, look-like-I’m-paying-attention mode, and blankly stared straight ahead. Mr. Baddigan started going over the curriculum for this quarter and I think only a minor part of my brain was registering it. The rest of my brain was thinking about the scene I had seen this morning.
The girl looked like an exotic princess from India—besides the fair skin—or someplace similar. And the weird feeling, that was definitely bugging me…what had that been?
Chris kicked me and I jumped a little.
My head snapped up towards him and I found him with his face down and eyes focused on something between our desks, which were pushed together like the rest of the class. My eyes averted to where a big blue folder sat open, with over thousands of papers in it, I sighed quietly and scanned the note quickly.
What’s up?
I looked for my pencil and quickly wrote;
Nothing really.
I went back to looking at the front of the room, but from the corner of my eye I thought I saw Chris c**k his head to one side with his eyebrows raised. Chris and I wrote notes since the 6th grade, so we knew how to write notes or communicate silently through body language when we couldn’t write.
I picked up my pencil again and wrote:
I know. I know Chris. You didn’t literally mean what’s up. It’s just…have you seen the new girl?
I elbowed him slightly since he had gotten absorbed in the lecture.
He looked down and quickly picked up his pen and scratched out the words
Sure, I think everyone has, Andreea…why?
Ok, don’t get me wrong…but there’s…something weird…about her. I don’t know…or maybe it’s me. She walked past my car on the way to the building and her eyes were intimidating…not in the way to make you scared but rather in the way that puts on a light switch in the back of your brain, you know?
Chris looked up when he was finished reading and met my gaze, his eyes were excited yet somehow dimmed by something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I stared back curiously with one eyebrow raised. As I said before, Chris and I were good at this silent communications so I instantly understood that he felt the same way…but that there was more, and he knew I was curious to know what that something else was, he ripped his gaze away and his hand flew across the page and he scribbled illegibly since he was now eager to tell me his thoughts.
Yes I know, right?! Kind of scary, well, I don’t know…I had an urge to protect her the second our eyes met. As if…don’t think I’m crazy Andreea, but as in I was meant to protect her from something or someone.
I stared at Chris in amazement when I had finished reading. So I wasn’t the only one who had felt that way…
Huh; interesting.
We were quiet the rest of the period…but it looked like this conversation wasn’t going to end that easily…
When the bell rang, Chris and I quickly took our things and we both rushed out the door, eagerly waiting to talk about our epiphany.
***
“So why do you think we want to protect her?” Chris murmured—so only I could hear—on the way to our Chemistry class.
I deliberated as we walked; and since I really couldn’t come up with anything that made any sense, I decided to make a joke of it but there was nothing funny about this weird situation.
“Maybe we want to protect her from the fake friends she might get during her minimal popularity for being new,” I murmured mockingly; Chris laughed a short laugh, showing the dimple on the left side of his face, and I smiled back.
Abruptly, his face went smooth and his ice-like eyes dimmed and went serious, like that, my smile faltered, because I realized he found this to be just as serious as I did.
We both looked down to the floor, I waited for Chris to speak, but he didn’t. The silence grew uncomfortable by the time we got to class and stood outside the door, I looking down and he with his eyes closed; so I took the jacket that was in my right arm and switched it to my left to place my right hand on his arm and murmured “Sorry Chris, I just…don’t know why this is, it’s confusing and doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense to me.”
I looked up at him—since I had no other option because he was a foot taller than me—till he finally opened his eyes and patted the hand that was still on his arm, I took it as a sign that he understood just how I felt, he knew I was trying to lighten the mood to make the seriousness go away, and smiled at me half-heartedly.
The warning bell ringed and I dropped my hand. We walked quietly into class, and he left me to go take his seat next to his lab partner, Matthew Johnson, I sighed quietly and took my seat at my now empty lab table since my lab-partner, Christina Snow, had moved to California over the break.
I took out my notebook and pen, ready to take notes on whatever lecture Mrs. Jensen planned to bombard us with. Some people thought of the lady as a mental person…I honestly found her to be a very nice teacher, of course I despised her lectures, but she had something very grandmotherly about her.
I looked over to where Chris sat; he was frowning down at his table. Ugh. I hated it when I put my foot in my mouth. I would have to find a way to fix that… I begin rummaging in my head, thinking of ways to make it up to Chris; I was momentarily pulled out of my reverie when the bell ringed. I was quickly able to focus back to what I was doing before.
Class went on, and I didn’t get a chance to talk to Chris. When the bell ringed for third hour, we both walked out and left with a barely ‘See you in Gym’.
In French it was hell! It dragged on ever so slowly so that every minute felt like an eternity.
Finally, it was time for gym. We’d been playing baseball, which was awesome for all the students who played baseball, naturally, and horrible for the other, who were let off the hook and had been allowed to play soccer instead.
But Coach Amador wouldn’t let Chris and I play on the same team, which we naturally found fun and fair, today on the other hand; it would complicate things. I didn’t know if I’d be able to talk to Chris.
I dressed in my gym clothes as quickly as possible and went to the gym. The coach was just taking roll, after he called my name; I craned my head to look for Ch---damn it!
Great.
Of course the source of the fight appears.
The new girl, whose name was still a mystery to me.
I went up to my friend Nicole. She was one of the few girls who were willing to put up with me and my boyish ways.
“Hey Nicole,” I said in a cheerful tone that was most definitely faked, but she bought it.
“Hey Mariana, What’s up?” She answered in the same tone and a huge smile on her little face. Nicole was very short. I’d say 4”9 or so, but I never had the nerve to ask. She always wore very girly clothes, her hair was a little below her shoulders and was styled into individual curls that were brown. She looked sort of like Barbie-doll to me.
“Do you know the name of the new girl?” I asked her casually, knowing she would have every detail about her.
She was the sort of person who was basically the gossip reporter. She could basically write an autobiography of everyone in the school--including me. And by the way her brown eyes lit up as soon as I asked my question; she could also tell the new girl’s.
“Her name is Rosamaria Avramidis. She moved here from Australia. She lives with her father, Regan Avramidis. Apparently they move around a lot; she’s sixteen and a single child.” Nicole grimaced as if this affected her, “I couldn’t find much about her. Apparently she wouldn’t really talk to anyone,” She shrugged, unperturbed…or so she pretended to be. It was easy to see this made her feel off balance. She could usually have a person’s life story down in a matter of minutes. This was truly a shock.
“Oh,” was my brilliant response “huh…umm…thanks Nicole!” I was just running off when I remembered my original quest. “OH! Nicole?” I asked as I flit back to her side.
“Yes?” she asked, curious.
“Have you seen Chris? I need to talk to him…” I asked, hesitantly.
She laughed at my tone, I guessed. “Yes. He’s right over there by the doors,” and she pointed toward the doors that led to the field; as soon as I looked towards the doors, my phone vibrated in my gym shorts.
I checked, and sure enough it was Chris; it read:
Come here. We have to talk.
I sighed and waved Nicole goodbye while simultaneously running towards where Chris waited.
“Hey Andy…sorry I acted like that. It was…” he stopped when I put my hand up to stop his apology.
“Don’t even worry about it, anyways; I got more info on the new girl!” as soon as I said that, his eyes went from troubled and repentant, to curious and excited.
“What did you find out?” He asked in a low, but eager, tone.
I quickly rushed over the info Nicole had dished out to me minutes before. But we didn’t get to talk much besides that because Coach Amador sent us to start the games.
I made my way to the field to stand with the baseball players. I overheard, on my way to the field where all the guys were gathered, Coach telling the new girl to stay put and watch for today
I joined in just as captains were being called out by Coach Reed.
“Lazzari! Team one captain!” Coach Reed yelled. I smiled. Coach must have been really lazy today because he never chose me as captain during Gym; he only did during the baseball season because I was the best.
“Chang! Team two captain!” Coach shouted. Chris smirked at me when some boys cheered and begged to be on his team. I rolled my eyes and he caught that so he winked. Ugh. He had this thing of mocking me whenever I did something childish like rolling my eyes or sticking my tongue out at him. It really irritated me.
We chose our teams, and started playing.
Chris was up to bat for his team during the third inning, and my team was winning. I was pitching, my pitches were very powerful today, and barely anyone had actually hit the ball.
Then again, Chris was just as powerful today.
He’d gotten two strikes and one foul by my fourth pitch, but that one pitch was all it took to change the course my life—and Chris’s—was on right now.
“Come on, Lazzari! Is that the best you can do? You’re pitching like a girl!” Chris taunted.
Before I went for the pitch, I threw a comeback at him; “Two things Chang. Number one, I am a girl. And two, in about thirty seconds, you’ll be eating your own words.” I smirked at him.
As I went for my fourth pitch, in hopes of striking Chris out, an event occurred.
I was aiming low, it gave me more power somehow, the smug batter was smirking at me and I believe I probably had the same smug expression plain on my features.
To my utter disappointment, Chris hit it all the way to the outfield. I groaned and yelled commands at my team; “RICHARD DON’T D--” Crap!
I didn’t get to finish my command to him because just on the other side of the field, where everyone who was playing soccer was hanging out, a ninth grader had a bat in his hands, and in a ridiculous attempt to impress his friends, the bat flew out of his hands and was flying towards where the new girl stood, all but obliviously to the metal bat that would hit her right in the face.
Chris and I looked at each other in panic which quickly melted into fury towards the dim witted freshman.
I didn’t think twice. I ran hopelessly across the field with Chris flanking me.
Wretched high school: York High School.
I have been living here my whole life…well, most of it anyways.
I still went to Florida to visit my father, but otherwise, since I’ve moved to the small town of New Castle, New Hampshire when I was four; my life has always been the same.
Now, I stood in front of the mirror, twelve years later, while I put on my contacts. The sun streaks from my window did something bizarre to my eyes; they were usually very dark, but right now, as the sun shone directly into them, the black turned into a chocolate brown I’d never seen before, despite that this was weird enough; there was a dark blue ring around it…
“MARI! I’M LEAVING!” My mother shouted from the front door, I assumed, pulling me from the odd moment. I shook my head and put in my other contact, while my mom said; “HURRY UP, YOU DON’T WANT TO BE LATE! BYE!”
The door slammed and I sighed.
Of course not; why would I want to be late to the most miserable, boring, repetitive part of my day?
As I hurried to leave the house I tripped over a floorboard. Ugh, great. I would have to fix that. This place was more messed up than the forest. It was said that this house was over 100 years old. How fabulous.
As I got into my Ranger, I suddenly began to feel…anxious?
I mentally rummaged through my head while I started the engine. Huh. No tests, I mused, no papers due, no baseball games…weird.
After two minutes, the butterflies in my stomach started assaulting me. I couldn’t handle it. I turned on my radio and put on a CD of rock music. It was what I listened to in order to keep my head busy with the instruments loud noise echoing around my car.
The whole 3-miles, the butterflies continued to attack my stomach as if they wanted to break free, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t concentrate on anything else for long besides my mind’s unauthorized musing…
Finally I arrived to school, I planned to park in the spot I always did, the last one, the one nearest to the gate, to be able to leave school as soon as the bell ringed and head to baseball practice.
But it was taken.
In my spot, there was a corvette. I had heard about this specific corvette. It was a Corvette ZR1. It was fast and powerful; just my type of car.
But this wasn’t what caught my attention.
As I parked my car in the spot next to the corvette, I saw a girl getting out of the car.
Ok, so girl didn’t even begin to describe her. She looked more like a Greek goddess.
She was tall and slim, fair-skinned with slightly flushed cheeks, perfect features, and clothes that fit that image perfectly well. She wore a khaki coat, unbuttoned so that it revealed a gray shirt, with a white scarf over it and gray jeans that were hidden after her knees by high heel, white boots. Her hair had to be all the way down to her calves--or so it looked since it was up in a pony tail--and hung in jet black ringlets, which bounced with her every step. Her walk was so graceful; she might have as well been dancing…well, not really. She would’ve made a ballerina look like a klutz.
I realized my mouth had been dropped open when the girl looked over at me through my open window with a curious expression, I quickly closed my mouth, it was a surprise my jaw hadn’t hit the floor, and looked away. Her gray eyes seemed slightly intimidating, yet when I met her gaze, something flickered inside of me, a new instinct I didn’t recognize, yet it was familiar all the same. I shook my head and took a deep breath.
I quickly strapped my bag over my shoulder, grabbed my keys from the ignition and got out of my old Ford F100 Ranger—it wasn’t the fastest car, which I didn’t really like, but it’d been the Ranger or nothing—I slammed the door shut and, merely out of curiosity, turned to see the girl gone, I turned back and had just finished manually locking my car right when the bell rang.
Dang it! I couldn’t be late again to Algebra, especially not on the first day back from break!
I ran through the rain, feeling the water seep through my high tops as I run through puddles, while mentally bursting a string of profanities that would have gotten me in trouble if I had said them out loud, though I still earned a few shouts from security and teachers when I got into the building for running in the halls.
When I arrived to my Algebra 2 class, I wasn’t out of breath, just annoyed that my new shoes were wet, but I’d made it without being late. I jerked out of my jacket and hung it on the back of my seat; as soon as that was done I quickly took my seat next to my best friend, Christopher Chang.
He was the jock, the guy every girl wanted to go out with, which I usually laughed at since I didn’t really see him as Christopher, hottie jock, Chang. I saw him as Chris, the dork I had known since the second grade. We’d met in the first grade, but had been rivals then; I was the best girl baseball player and he was the best guy player, I had managed to beat him on the first day of baseball, so we never really liked each other. Until we were seen as the most valuable players in our little league baseball team and started acting as a team to become undefeated champions up until this day for our school… so we were tied by baseball, and a whole lot more later on.
Thus, I only ever saw him as a brother.
Not that I couldn’t see what every girl went on about, he was pretty good looking.
His hair was in a stylish-kind-of-messy-spike do and was dark brown. His eyes were ice-blue, with a sapphire-colored circle surrounding them—I stopped dead at that thought. He had the same peculiar ring around his eyes as I did…huh.
My brain went back to its original thinking before it’d been derailed by the eye thing.
He was slightly tan, tall—maybe 5”9--and muscular, but not too muscular, had a not too deep-voice, and whenever he smiled, a dimple would show up in the left side of his face. He had a great sense of style, he wore a rolled up long sleeved shirt with a button up shirt—that had the buttons opened—on top of it. He wore jeans and converses, and the same identical necklace I wore, a yin yang necklace he had gotten me on my thirteenth birthday.
“Hey Andreea,” Chris said pulling me out of my reverie.
Andreea was my middle name; it was Romanian, thanks to my parents’ homeland they were completely crazed about keeping every costume to the point. Names included. Chris was the only one who ever called me Andreea, he claimed that the name Mariana was too girly for me, which offended me at first but I learned to get over it.
“Hey Chris” I answered in a dull voice while I took my folder out of my bag.
He chuckled, so I looked up to see what was so funny. He was staring at the top of my head, and I usually knew what that meant…my hair was really messy. I stuck my tongue out at him for a second and he snickered. According to him, I looked like a five-year old girl whenever I did that, which he found amusing compared to my usual boyish nature. I, on the other hand, got irritated at the thought.
I pulled my long, dark brown hair—which would sometimes become black—into a messy ponytail; ugh, well, at least it was better than a haystack.
“I see you did shopping over winter break,” he said in mock shock. And I knew why; it was because I was rarely one to shop.
He wasn’t precisely right—though that was basically his way of saying I missed you, how was your break?—I didn’t shop at all. I was wearing new red high tops, with skinny jeans and a white baseball shirt with red sleeves, it was all given to me for Christmas; it had actually been one of the few gifts I’d enjoyed since the rest of the presents had been to girly for my liking.
“Missed you too Chris” I muttered.
He smirked at me showing his dimple.
The teacher came into the classroom and like that the whole class fell silent. Mr. Baddigan wasn’t one of the…nicest, teachers we had. Actually he wasn’t nice at all. The slightest of whispers earned you detention!
I settled into my patient, look-like-I’m-paying-attention mode, and blankly stared straight ahead. Mr. Baddigan started going over the curriculum for this quarter and I think only a minor part of my brain was registering it. The rest of my brain was thinking about the scene I had seen this morning.
The girl looked like an exotic princess from India—besides the fair skin—or someplace similar. And the weird feeling, that was definitely bugging me…what had that been?
Chris kicked me and I jumped a little.
My head snapped up towards him and I found him with his face down and eyes focused on something between our desks, which were pushed together like the rest of the class. My eyes averted to where a big blue folder sat open, with over thousands of papers in it, I sighed quietly and scanned the note quickly.
What’s up?
I looked for my pencil and quickly wrote;
Nothing really.
I went back to looking at the front of the room, but from the corner of my eye I thought I saw Chris c**k his head to one side with his eyebrows raised. Chris and I wrote notes since the 6th grade, so we knew how to write notes or communicate silently through body language when we couldn’t write.
I picked up my pencil again and wrote:
I know. I know Chris. You didn’t literally mean what’s up. It’s just…have you seen the new girl?
I elbowed him slightly since he had gotten absorbed in the lecture.
He looked down and quickly picked up his pen and scratched out the words
Sure, I think everyone has, Andreea…why?
Ok, don’t get me wrong…but there’s…something weird…about her. I don’t know…or maybe it’s me. She walked past my car on the way to the building and her eyes were intimidating…not in the way to make you scared but rather in the way that puts on a light switch in the back of your brain, you know?
Chris looked up when he was finished reading and met my gaze, his eyes were excited yet somehow dimmed by something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I stared back curiously with one eyebrow raised. As I said before, Chris and I were good at this silent communications so I instantly understood that he felt the same way…but that there was more, and he knew I was curious to know what that something else was, he ripped his gaze away and his hand flew across the page and he scribbled illegibly since he was now eager to tell me his thoughts.
Yes I know, right?! Kind of scary, well, I don’t know…I had an urge to protect her the second our eyes met. As if…don’t think I’m crazy Andreea, but as in I was meant to protect her from something or someone.
I stared at Chris in amazement when I had finished reading. So I wasn’t the only one who had felt that way…
Huh; interesting.
We were quiet the rest of the period…but it looked like this conversation wasn’t going to end that easily…
When the bell rang, Chris and I quickly took our things and we both rushed out the door, eagerly waiting to talk about our epiphany.
***
“So why do you think we want to protect her?” Chris murmured—so only I could hear—on the way to our Chemistry class.
I deliberated as we walked; and since I really couldn’t come up with anything that made any sense, I decided to make a joke of it but there was nothing funny about this weird situation.
“Maybe we want to protect her from the fake friends she might get during her minimal popularity for being new,” I murmured mockingly; Chris laughed a short laugh, showing the dimple on the left side of his face, and I smiled back.
Abruptly, his face went smooth and his ice-like eyes dimmed and went serious, like that, my smile faltered, because I realized he found this to be just as serious as I did.
We both looked down to the floor, I waited for Chris to speak, but he didn’t. The silence grew uncomfortable by the time we got to class and stood outside the door, I looking down and he with his eyes closed; so I took the jacket that was in my right arm and switched it to my left to place my right hand on his arm and murmured “Sorry Chris, I just…don’t know why this is, it’s confusing and doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense to me.”
I looked up at him—since I had no other option because he was a foot taller than me—till he finally opened his eyes and patted the hand that was still on his arm, I took it as a sign that he understood just how I felt, he knew I was trying to lighten the mood to make the seriousness go away, and smiled at me half-heartedly.
The warning bell ringed and I dropped my hand. We walked quietly into class, and he left me to go take his seat next to his lab partner, Matthew Johnson, I sighed quietly and took my seat at my now empty lab table since my lab-partner, Christina Snow, had moved to California over the break.
I took out my notebook and pen, ready to take notes on whatever lecture Mrs. Jensen planned to bombard us with. Some people thought of the lady as a mental person…I honestly found her to be a very nice teacher, of course I despised her lectures, but she had something very grandmotherly about her.
I looked over to where Chris sat; he was frowning down at his table. Ugh. I hated it when I put my foot in my mouth. I would have to find a way to fix that… I begin rummaging in my head, thinking of ways to make it up to Chris; I was momentarily pulled out of my reverie when the bell ringed. I was quickly able to focus back to what I was doing before.
Class went on, and I didn’t get a chance to talk to Chris. When the bell ringed for third hour, we both walked out and left with a barely ‘See you in Gym’.
In French it was hell! It dragged on ever so slowly so that every minute felt like an eternity.
Finally, it was time for gym. We’d been playing baseball, which was awesome for all the students who played baseball, naturally, and horrible for the other, who were let off the hook and had been allowed to play soccer instead.
But Coach Amador wouldn’t let Chris and I play on the same team, which we naturally found fun and fair, today on the other hand; it would complicate things. I didn’t know if I’d be able to talk to Chris.
I dressed in my gym clothes as quickly as possible and went to the gym. The coach was just taking roll, after he called my name; I craned my head to look for Ch---damn it!
Great.
Of course the source of the fight appears.
The new girl, whose name was still a mystery to me.
I went up to my friend Nicole. She was one of the few girls who were willing to put up with me and my boyish ways.
“Hey Nicole,” I said in a cheerful tone that was most definitely faked, but she bought it.
“Hey Mariana, What’s up?” She answered in the same tone and a huge smile on her little face. Nicole was very short. I’d say 4”9 or so, but I never had the nerve to ask. She always wore very girly clothes, her hair was a little below her shoulders and was styled into individual curls that were brown. She looked sort of like Barbie-doll to me.
“Do you know the name of the new girl?” I asked her casually, knowing she would have every detail about her.
She was the sort of person who was basically the gossip reporter. She could basically write an autobiography of everyone in the school--including me. And by the way her brown eyes lit up as soon as I asked my question; she could also tell the new girl’s.
“Her name is Rosamaria Avramidis. She moved here from Australia. She lives with her father, Regan Avramidis. Apparently they move around a lot; she’s sixteen and a single child.” Nicole grimaced as if this affected her, “I couldn’t find much about her. Apparently she wouldn’t really talk to anyone,” She shrugged, unperturbed…or so she pretended to be. It was easy to see this made her feel off balance. She could usually have a person’s life story down in a matter of minutes. This was truly a shock.
“Oh,” was my brilliant response “huh…umm…thanks Nicole!” I was just running off when I remembered my original quest. “OH! Nicole?” I asked as I flit back to her side.
“Yes?” she asked, curious.
“Have you seen Chris? I need to talk to him…” I asked, hesitantly.
She laughed at my tone, I guessed. “Yes. He’s right over there by the doors,” and she pointed toward the doors that led to the field; as soon as I looked towards the doors, my phone vibrated in my gym shorts.
I checked, and sure enough it was Chris; it read:
Come here. We have to talk.
I sighed and waved Nicole goodbye while simultaneously running towards where Chris waited.
“Hey Andy…sorry I acted like that. It was…” he stopped when I put my hand up to stop his apology.
“Don’t even worry about it, anyways; I got more info on the new girl!” as soon as I said that, his eyes went from troubled and repentant, to curious and excited.
“What did you find out?” He asked in a low, but eager, tone.
I quickly rushed over the info Nicole had dished out to me minutes before. But we didn’t get to talk much besides that because Coach Amador sent us to start the games.
I made my way to the field to stand with the baseball players. I overheard, on my way to the field where all the guys were gathered, Coach telling the new girl to stay put and watch for today
I joined in just as captains were being called out by Coach Reed.
“Lazzari! Team one captain!” Coach Reed yelled. I smiled. Coach must have been really lazy today because he never chose me as captain during Gym; he only did during the baseball season because I was the best.
“Chang! Team two captain!” Coach shouted. Chris smirked at me when some boys cheered and begged to be on his team. I rolled my eyes and he caught that so he winked. Ugh. He had this thing of mocking me whenever I did something childish like rolling my eyes or sticking my tongue out at him. It really irritated me.
We chose our teams, and started playing.
Chris was up to bat for his team during the third inning, and my team was winning. I was pitching, my pitches were very powerful today, and barely anyone had actually hit the ball.
Then again, Chris was just as powerful today.
He’d gotten two strikes and one foul by my fourth pitch, but that one pitch was all it took to change the course my life—and Chris’s—was on right now.
“Come on, Lazzari! Is that the best you can do? You’re pitching like a girl!” Chris taunted.
Before I went for the pitch, I threw a comeback at him; “Two things Chang. Number one, I am a girl. And two, in about thirty seconds, you’ll be eating your own words.” I smirked at him.
As I went for my fourth pitch, in hopes of striking Chris out, an event occurred.
I was aiming low, it gave me more power somehow, the smug batter was smirking at me and I believe I probably had the same smug expression plain on my features.
To my utter disappointment, Chris hit it all the way to the outfield. I groaned and yelled commands at my team; “RICHARD DON’T D--” Crap!
I didn’t get to finish my command to him because just on the other side of the field, where everyone who was playing soccer was hanging out, a ninth grader had a bat in his hands, and in a ridiculous attempt to impress his friends, the bat flew out of his hands and was flying towards where the new girl stood, all but obliviously to the metal bat that would hit her right in the face.
Chris and I looked at each other in panic which quickly melted into fury towards the dim witted freshman.
I didn’t think twice. I ran hopelessly across the field with Chris flanking me.
© Copyright Angie Cardona. No stealing or copying permitted.
