Learning How to Swim

The Term "Normal" Becomes Overrated

It was Friday. I had school, but it was so different without Kara. I couldn’t wait until everything was normal again.

People stared at me in the hall. My only friends were the friends I shared with my sister. They were seniors, and I was a sophomore. Still, I heard the whispers as I walked to my history class. My sister’s name was said at least once in every little secret those people shared with each other. I tried to ignore it, hurrying to class.

I sat in my seat, just wanting to drop dead. It’d been four days, and they had just now found out where my sister was. I was thankful that they hadn’t found out earlier, but it still drove me crazy. Even the kids in my class stared at me, so I dropped my head to my desk.

“Alyssa,” someone whispered. There was a small tap on my shoulder. I looked up and saw the boy next to me staring right at me.

“What?”

I’d seen him around. His name was Steven-Cornelius Quigley. I’d never seen him without his Mohawk, so I think he shaved his head around every two days or something. It was always flawless. He had dark brown hair and the widest hazel eyes I had ever seen. He wasn’t the most popular kid, and I heard that he was a really eccentric guy, though Lila—my sister’s friend—had used a less polite term for him. I think he had a sister named Janice-Veronica. But she had graduated two years ago and seemed to have fallen off the face of the earth.

“It’s too bad about your sister. You know, Beckham and all that.” The bell rang.

“Yeah.” Why was he talking to me? He never talked to me, just like everyone else.

“The place is like a graveyard, huh. People who go there would rather bury themselves alive than spend five seconds in the place. The air isn’t too fresh either. Kara probably isn’t having the time of her life.”

“What are you getting at? How do you know about Beckham?” I asked in a whisper.

“Mr. Quigley, please leave the female student alone,” the teacher called out, staring dead at us.

“She has a name. She’s Alyssa,” he told him, not seeming to care at all.

Mr. Crosland groaned. “I know her name, Steven. Please, just stop disrupting my class and maybe you’ll pass this year.”

Steven shrugged, and then turned to me, whispering. “We’ll talk on the bus. I’ll save you a seat.”

“Steven Quigley!”

“I’ll be good now,” he told him, relaxing in his seat and running a hand through the strip of hair in the middle of his head. “Go ahead. Teach me.”