Possessed

The next morning was not wet, but still rather chilly. I stood at my bus stop—some lonely street corner—in the outfit I had chosen specially for my first day of high school. It consisted of baggy jeans, a basic gray pullover sweatshirt, and my trusty red lace-up sneakers.
All in all, I thought the outfit summarized me pretty well. After all, I didn’t want to give anyone a false first impression, but it had earned a very obvious sigh from my mother.
“Scarlett… could you… try a bit harder?” she had asked.
Really, I don’t see the point in trying to impress these people. Making friends was not a skill of mine, and as for boys… well, I certainly didn’t draw them in with my looks, and the ones that did pay attention to me treated me like one of them. I had never had a proper boyfriend, but then again, seeing the way some of them treated their girlfriends and how torn up some of the girls in my old school had been after a breakup, I’m not really sure I want one.
The bus rolled in, big and familiar and yellow. It’s kind of ironic how your entire world can be unbalanced and yet things stay so typical and unfazed in the rest of society.
I stepped on, instantly glummer than before to see that I was the first passenger on the bus. The driver was an older man, sort of scrawny and surly-looking, with a large mustache.
“New student, eh?” he grunted. “I’m Mr. Larson.”
“Scarlett Barlow,” I responded. I sat down near the front of the bus, trying to be friendly to Mr. Larson.
“Nice to meet you,” he said, though not in an entirely friendly way.
We drove along quietly, the bus jerking over every bump. Despite my current situation, I couldn’t help but notice how beautiful the scenery was on this mountain. Large trees, probably hundreds of years old, lined either side of the road. We passed the large lake my mother had described. The water looked clear and crisp, and I made a mental note to myself to visit it after school today. My route to school back home certainly wasn’t this pretty; all it involved was the useless wasteland most people would refer to as “suburbia.”
It was about twenty-five minutes before the bus stopped again to pick up more students. Too bad, I thought, I was just beginning to feel comfortable. The kids stepped on the bus; an older-looking boy with a lacrosse stick slung over his back, a short girl with red hair, a pretty African-American girl and a set of tall, blonde (by the looks of it) twin boys.
Not all of the new passengers seemed to acknowledge my presence, and for this I was grateful. The redhead girl began texting on her cell phone the moment she sat down. The other pretty girl regarded me only with a slight glance, and the older boy, to whom she was obviously quite interesting, took the seat right behind her. The two blonde boys, however, seemed to notice me. They took the seat directly across from mine, watching me so warily you would think they were worried I might spontaneously combust any second.
One of the boys whispered something to his brother, and he nodded in what seemed to be agreement.
“Er… hi there,” he said almost nervously. It struck me how quiet the bus actually was as soon as he spoke. “I’m Sam, and this is my brother, Ryan. You must be the new girl… Sara?”
“Scarlett,” I corrected.
“Right,” he muttered, looking embarrassed. “Well…uh…the high school’s a bit tricky to navigate the first day. If you need any help, we’ll…”
“I think I’ll be fine,” I interrupted, knowing what was coming next. “Thanks anyway, though. But…” I said, catching their disappointed looks, “It would be nice to have someone to sit with at lunch.”
The twins both looked more cheery in an instant. “Excellent,” said Ryan. “You can sit with us and our friends. You’ll meet Caleb soon, he rides this bus, you know.”
Surprisingly, I didn’t feel any better after meeting the twins. I hadn’t just made two new friends; I had had two new friends forced upon me. And what was worse was that they were nearly identical, so even now I had forgotten which one was Ryan and which one was Sam. Still, I tried to make myself feel better by thinking that I at least know two (although technically one; as they both looked just alike) familiar faces when I walked into the cafeteria.
The bus rolled to another whiny stop and I looked out the grimy window to see who was boarding. There was a cute boy who looked about my age and two girls, one who was eyeing the boy hopefully and another who looked like she thought she had a lot of better things to do than to go to school. To my surprise, the nice-looking boy made a beeline for my seat when he boarded the bus.
“Excuse me,” he said with a smile. “Mind if I sit next to you? I usually sit there.”
“Oh…” I said, flustered. “I’m sorry, I’ll move…”
“No,” he said with another friendly smile. “It’s okay, stay where you are.” He took the seat behind the twins, still smiling at me. “It’s Caleb, by the way.”
“That’s Scarlett,” said Sam (or at least I think it was Sam) eagerly. “She’s new.”
“Pleasure,” Caleb replied. “We don’t get new students often.” I smiled shyly, but didn’t say much else. Caleb was still watching me interestedly. I studied him from the corner of my eye: he had light brown hair that fell to just over his eyes, which were also brown, and a cute button nose. He also had pale freckles that jumped over his nose and seemed a bit on the tan side for someone living in the mountains.
The bus stopped once more to pick up another boy, but he didn’t welcome me like the twins or Caleb. Finally, we jolted to a halt in front of Sullivan County High.
The building was small for a high school and made of bricks. Out in the student parking lot were many students mingling around. I was amused for a brief second to see a lot of boys in trucker hats.
“You have science first period?” asked Caleb; Ryan and Sam faithfully in tow. It was clear he was the leader of their group.
“Yeah,” I said, dazed, as I tried to absorb the dozens of faces watching me pass. “I guess you do too?”
“Excellent,” he said, distractedly.

______________________

Science and world government had been a total blur. Of course, I had had my three new “friends” helping me along, but all of them already had their own lab partners for science and I had been forced to work in a group of three with two girls who looked at me like I smelled unpleasant. In world government, I had been completely alone while the boys left for P.E. I knew what that meant: I would be taking gym class alone too.
“HEY! Scarlett!” one of the twins called from across the cafeteria. “Over here!”
I gratefully headed over to their table, where he, his twin (who I’m guessing is Sam) and Caleb were sitting. Along with them were a few people I didn’t know, including a girl with loads of curly black hair, a very pretty girl with auburn hair, and a lanky black boy. All three of them were laughing loudly at something, and I suddenly started to feel uncomfortable again.
“Scarlett!” said Caleb, hopping up from his seat. “Here, sit here, and I’ll grab another chair…”
I smiled cluelessly at the kids I didn’t know yet until Caleb returned with a new chair. “Scarlett’s new,” he explained to them. “I think she’s gonna hang with us for the rest of the year, though, right?” He grinned at me.
“Hey, Scarlett! I’m Chase,” said the boy with a toothy smile. “And this is Aimee (he gestured to the redhead) and Nora.”
“Hi,” said Aimee amicably. “So, like, where did you move from?”
“South Carolina,” I said shortly, not wanting to talk about my old home, because it was painful.
“Ooooh,” she gushed. “It must have been nice and warm down there. I’ve lived here in Laporte ever since I was born. How’re you liking Sullivan County?” She looked like she was trying to be sympathetic, so I responded.
“Well,” I began, “It’s… um… growing on me, I suppose. I think it’s better now that I’ve met some people. I didn’t think it would be this easy for me to make new friends.”
Aimee and the boys beamed. Nora, who hadn’t said a word yet, just smiled shyly. I thought about what I had just said. It was true; I hadn’t thought I could make friends this easily. In fact, in one day at Sullivan County High School, I already had almost as many friends here as I had had in a whole lifetime in South Carolina. It was almost unsettling how nice the kids were here. We don’t get new students often, Caleb had said. I guess it was quite an event when one wandered into their midst.
I picked at the chicken wrap I had bought for lunch. I had never liked school food. My old friends had always said that was why I was so skinny.
“Are you gonna drink that?” Ryan asked, pointing to my unopened Snapple.

______________________

The bus ride home wasn’t nearly as bad as the ride to school. Maybe part of it was that I was going home after one of the longest days of my life, but it could have also been because I wasn’t nervous and daunted like I had been this morning.
P.E. was a nightmare. I did have Aimee, who enthusiastically agreed to be my gym partner, but we had to complete an obstacle course, including a rope wall. I am terrified of heights, so it was completely humiliating when I almost had a panic attack near the top. I had Algebra last period, though, which wasn’t so bad. Unlike most people my age, I enjoyed math. It was the only subject where everything had only one correct answer and everything seemed to make sense.
The bus was fairly quite since there were only nine other students aboard. The older boy (whose name is Steve) was chatting avidly with the pretty black girl (Mia) and the twins were joking about something funny that had happened in Latin that day, but Caleb sat next to me quietly, like he was absorbing the (otherwise) peace and quiet.
“Nora doesn’t talk much, does she?” I said, out of the blue.
“Mmm?” he responded. “Oh, I guess not. She’s pretty shy. But she’s new to our group, so she may not be totally comfortable yet. She was Aimee’s best friend, then Aimee started dating Ryan, so she faithfully followed Aimee to our lunch table. She’s really Nora’s only friend, see. Aimee used to just sit with the cheerleaders and take Nora with her.”
“Aimee and Ryan are together?” I would have never guessed that Aimee was a cheerleader. It was major stereotyping, but the “cheerleaders are mean” typecast was burned into my mind. Now that I thought about it, though, she certainly seemed peppy enough.
“Since the beginning of this year, yeah.” I wouldn’t have normally been interested in stuff like this, but creating small talk with Caleb was almost like having my old friends back again.
Soon, however, the bus was again devoid of people except for Mr. Larson and myself. I gazed, bemused, out of the dingy bus window, watching the blur of trees and occasional houses drift by. Something about being alone again put me at ease. Despite all the overly-kind people I’d met today, I always had an appreciation for time when I could be solitary and alone.
The bus rolled to a stop where I had waited that morning and I felt the relief that I had gotten through my first day wash over me like someone had just poured a cup of warm water on top of my head.
When I reached my house, Mom was baking something. She emerged from the kitchen with her wavy hair pulled into a knot and a smudge of flour across her cheek.
“Sweetie!” she exclaimed, looking excited and anxious at the same time. “How was your day? Did you meet any new people? Was everybody nice? Did you get lost at all? Were there…” her eyes lit up “…were there any boys?”
“Mom,” I grumbled. “It was okay, I guess. Yes, I met a few people. For the most part everyone was nice. No, I didn’t get lost. Yes, there were boys, Mom. It’s a coed school.” I grinned, in spite of everything. “Did I miss anything?”
“I meant,” she sighed, “Were there any cute boys? Anyone you liked?”
“No,” I said flatly. “Not really. I’m going to the lake, Mom, it looks gorgeous.”
She looked disappointed, but said, “Oh all right, but make sure you’re home by 6:30!”