Stay With Them Tonight

Monday morning, I stayed in bed until 7. I knew an hour would be plenty of time to get ready. I could slip in school quietly when everyone was already there, get my schedule, and run off to my first class. The school was about three miles away, so it wouldn’t take long to drive.

Want a ride to school? Ryan texted me at 7:15, after I had gotten out of the shower.

Sure. Kells too?

Yea. Come over at 7:45?

Ugh. That early?I whined.

If u want to get there on time, then ya.

Okay then. C u soon

I texted Kelly that we would pick her up and went and ate scrambled eggs and sausage. I wasn’t sure if Jason was coming, and I really hoped he wasn’t.

I was dressed in dark jeans and a random shirt with an AX7 jacket. I grabbed my jacket and made it out the door at 7:44. I walked across the lawn and saw Ryan and Jason sitting in what I knew to be Ryan’s sporty red car. He had driven it the morning I babysat, to go to work or wherever. There was still so much I didn’t know about them.

Ignoring my internal questions about them, I got in and sat behind Ryan, who was driving. When Kelly slid in beside me, she looked excited. “We’re upperclassmen! Are you nervous?” She was positively bubbly. Her dark hair was down today, in huge ringlets, and she was wearing a flattering form-fitting shirt and a denim skirt.

“Hold up a sec. You guys are juniors?” Jason asked.

“Yeah, are you guys seniors then?” I asked.

“Yes, Captain Obvious. How was she in a class with Ryan then?” He didn’t say Kelly’s name, and I frowned.

“Because Kelly is a math nerd. She got in an honors math class.” I didn’t know why I answered for her, I was just pissed that Jason had even entered the conversation. Ryan laughed at my attitude.

“You better back off, man. I don’t think she likes you too much.” Ryan suggested.

“Oh, I think she likes me just fine.” He heavily implied something I did not want him implying.

“What was that, Stupid?” I kicked his arm. Hard.

“Ow, shit.” He rubbed his arm. I smiled. I had gotten him to stop smirking. Kelly looked over at me as we pulled into the parking lot. I waved my hand, showing her it was nothing.

My stomach was in tiny knots while Ryan parked, and the reassuring smile he gave me didn’t help. When I got out, he put a hand on my shoulder, leading me forward. Jason looked over at me, but I ignored him.

The school was on the small side, but had some money. It had something like fifty total classrooms, as compared to over a hundred at my old school, but still had the main sports teams and nerd teams and clubs and all that. The building was indoors, set in a 3-story “U” shape of hallways, so from the outside it was square. We walked in, and the offices were right in front of us.

We got our schedules, and Ryan’s hand dropped from my shoulder. It was somewhat of a relief, because I couldn’t afford to lose Kelly over him. On the other hand, I needed the support. I took Kelly’s arm in mine as we compared schedules. She was the first to spot something we had in common.

“We have English together! It’s the second to last period!”

“And Chemistry! Eek, that’s first period. I groaned.” I had Chemistry at eight with Kelly, then History at nine, English at ten with Kelly again, and Algebra at eleven.

At noon we had lunch, which the whole school had together, and then I had my elective classes; PE MW, Intro to Cinema TR, and a computer class F. The electives were each an hour and a half long. It could be said that I would be bringing along my schedule for a while.

“C-H-E-A,” I said to myself over and over as we walked to class. “Like ‘cheat.’” We walked in and found seats towards the back. We looked at each other, and I hoped there were a lot of new students here. I felt so odd. I looked around, and saw Greg walk in the door. He smiled at me and came over. Kelly looked at me, slightly wide-eyed.

“Hey, Greg,” I said. Kelly said hi too.

“Hey, Kelly, right? And you never gave me your name,” he said, speaking to me again. He sat at the science table right next to us, on my side.

“Hm. I wonder if I should.” I narrowed my eyes. I smiled when he looked puzzled. “I’m Allie.”

“And you know my name.” He grinned. “So you’re new?”

“Yea. Actually I’ve always lived here, I just moved across town and switched schools.”

“You mean I could’ve met you before this?”

“Maybe.”

The teacher walked in, a young female who talked briskly and told us what we would be doing this year.

She called out role, and as always, I was the first person called. “Allen Anderson.” I raised my hand. A few people giggled at the name. It was both old-fashioned and predominantly a male name, so I always got a few people who thought it was the funniest thing in the world for a girl to be named Allen. Really, I didn’t see anything special about it.

“I actually go by Allie,” I told her. Greg looked over at me, thankfully smiling slightly in a nice way.

“Nice name.” The teacher snapped at Greg, and he smiled sheepishly while restlessly tapping his fingers.

Kelly looked like she wanted to talk to me the whole class, but couldn’t because of the scary teacher. And I also had a feeling that the person she wanted to talk about was sitting three or less feet away from me.

When the bell rang, she jumped up. We started walking towards my class which was the closest, but it seemed Greg was going in the same direction as us, and we wound up at the same classroom.

“Talk to you in an hour,” she said, walking off towards her class.

“So,” Greg said as we walked in, “I guess we have the same class again.” He grinned. I grinned back, feeling ridiculous and giddy. This guy was very attractive, and I couldn’t help but be happy he was talking to me.

We sat at the same table, which had three seats, and a girl came and sat on his other side. Looking over, I saw that it was Rachel. How many guys was she into? She pulled her chair close to him, wearing a short dress with a lot of cleavage. I resisted rolling my eyes. What was she going to do if it rained again? And those little flip-flops did not suit the puddles we had everywhere.

“Omigod, hi, Greg! I’m so glad you came to my party last week!” She giggled like a baboon, putting her hand on his arm. He smiled back, but in a polite way. She flickered her eyes over to me, her expression slightly cooling.

“Oh, hi. You were at my party too, right? Hanging onto Ryan like that?” she smirked. I thought she and Jason might make an evil amused pair. I would have to ask if they had ever gone out later. Let’s face it: he was a man-whore, she was a slut. The two naturally attracted.

“Sorry, but I think you were the one slobbering over him. You were so hammered!” I said, artificially sweet. “Let’s try this again,” I said, trying to give her a chance to redeem herself a little bit. Like, restart on better footing. “I’m Allie,” insert part genuine smile, part warning smile. “You’re Rachel, right?”

Luckily, she got the clue, and deflated a little bit. She was still way unfriendly, but a little bit better. “Yeah.” She hesitated before saying something else nice. “So . . . are you new here?”

We talked on shaky ground like that for a while, Greg entering in, while also paying attention to the normal first-day-of-school crap the teacher had to go through. He said today was the only day that we would be just talking, and starting tomorrow we had better be prepared to take notes.

In an offhand topic, he asked who was new this year. I slightly raised my hand, and was relieved when three others did, too. A few people smiled at me, and I didn’t get as many odd stares when he called out the attendance.

**** *

In English, Kelly talked my ear off about how Greg was super-hot and it was awesome he would take an interest in me. And I started to wonder why, slightly tuning out my best friend. My face was striking in a wow-you-don’t-see-that-very-often way, especially with my light green eyes and white-blonde natural hair, but not much else was that interesting. I had very normal features, in my estimation.

I went through Algebra thinking this, but the teacher kept pulling my attention back to her. She was that interesting, and the class period was spent with a relaxed mood throughout the other students. It would be interesting to see how my most stressful class paired up with my most understandable teacher. Hopefully, she would help my mental math block.

At lunch, Kelly introduced me to her friends, and in particular, I liked a quiet girl named Katie. She was friendly but shy, and had a fantastic sense of humor. I sat between her and Kelly. She was short, with longer black hair and pale skin. Her eyes were completely black, and I guessed there was some Asian heritage somewhere in there.

I was hopeful as I walked into PE. The day had been great. I looked over to find the teacher, and my eyes landed on a familiar hear of dark wavy hair, in a group of lazy-looking sport guys, most of which happened to be attractive.

I had learned that this school was popular for people who played sports, and all of the teams were really good. This meant that most of the guys (girls too) here were either on sports teams or wanted to be, and we had a lot of athletic students. I was adequate and pretty good at volleyball, but going to this school was going to be unnerving.

I thought of all of this while I stared daggers at the back of the curly brown hair, and he seemed to feel it. He turned with a surprised expression, which turned into an amused expression. I hadn’t checked with Ryan or Jason for matching classes this morning, completely caught up with Kelly. It turns out I had one class with Jason. And I still had two elective classes later in the week that he could potentially be in.

Great.