Familiar Faces in the Oddest Places

Going back to school after the weekend sucks. Mondays usually all just suck. This Monday was proving no different as I was at my locker and I couldn’t get it open.

“Come on, please open,” I said under my breath. I put in the combination as precisely as I could and went to pull it open but it wouldn’t. I tugged on it with all my might and nothing, something in my locker must be preventing it from opening.

“Do you need help?” Alistar asked as he came up behind me.

“Yes, my stupid locker won’t open.” I kicked it just to show how stupid it was.

“Let me try.” Alistar moved me out of the way. “What’s your combination?”

“I don’t know if I should tell you that.”

“Then I guess you’ll never get your locker open.” He started to walk away before I grabbed him and pulled him back.

“No, it’s 32, 7, 25. But that’s not the problem. Something inside is making it stuck.”

“Okay so it’s 32,” he said while turning the dial.

“7,” I said. He turned it to 7.

“Then 25.” He put it in and went to open it but it was stuck. He yanked on it with all his might and boom my locker opened sending my stuff spilling out on to the floor.

“Thanks so much,” I said with a hint of sarcasm. “Mondays suck.” I bent down to pick up my notebooks and papers that went flying.

“Sorry, but at least I got it open.”

“Yeah, thanks.” This time it was totally sincere. Alistar helped me pick up all my shit and I just shoved it all back into the locker, grabbing the stuff I needed for today.

“You know this might not happen again if you cleaned your locker,” Alistar suggested.

“I try to but that takes so much time and then it gets all disorganized again. Besides I can still find everything I need this way.”

“Whatever works for you.” Alistar shrugged. “So I have something I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Okay, what is it?” I closed my locker and turned to face him.

“Well…” Alistar trailed off and in that time before he started again a girl from my math class, Taylor, came up to us.

“Do you know what that quiz in math is on? I can’t remember what the teacher said it was
on,” Taylor asked me.

“We have a quiz in math?” I forgot all about it. Just another sucky thing to add to this Monday.

“Yeah. So you don’t know what it’s on?”

“No, I didn’t even know we had a quiz,” I said frantically.

“Oh well. I have to go figure that out.” Taylor went off to wherever to try and figure out what the quiz was on.

“I have to go, too,” I said to Alistar. “I have to go study for that quiz next class period.”

“But you don’t know what it’s on.”

“It’s probably just on what we learned recently. Taylor doesn’t have too much common
sense but I’m sure she’ll find someone to tell her exactly what’s on it.”

“Then I’ll see you later.” Alistar almost sounded deflated. I rushed to my homeroom to get
some study time in so I didn’t totally flunk the quiz. It wasn’t until lunch time that I realized that Alistar wanted to ask me something and I had just run out of there.
--

Lunch is the only time during school that you can relax and hang out with your friends. Today when I went to our usually table Sasha was sitting there along with Trey and Alistar. Some of the time all four of us sat together but there were other times when Trey and Alistar went to go sit with their friend. Sasha was sitting next to Trey on one side of the table while Alistar was on the other side so I took a seat next to him.

“How do you think you did on that quiz?” Alistar asked when I sat down.

“Pretty good. It wasn’t that hard. I forgot, what were you going to ask me this morning before I just ran off.”

“Yeah Ali, what were you going to ask Sage?” Sasha said with a smile on her face.

“Um.. nothing. I forgot. It wasn’t that important.”

“Oh, okay. I’m going to go get a drink from the vending machine.” I got up to go get a water from the vending machine.
--

Sasha kicked Alistar under the table.

“Ow what was that for,” Alistar said holding his leg.

“You know. I thought you were going to ask her out. We talked about this, remember?”

“You were going to ask her out and you chickened out?” Trey shook his head. “Man it’s not that hard.”

“Coming from the guy who my sister asked out. You didn’t have enough balls to ask her out. She asked you out.”

“Hey,” Trey shouted offended. “I was going to ask her out but she beat me to it.”

“We aren’t talking about me and Trey. We’re talking about you and Sage. Sage can’t ask you out. She’s an even bigger chicken than you so you have to do it. Soon.” Sasha gave Alistar a pointed look.

“I will. It just has to be the right moment.”

Sage then came back to the table with a wrinkled dollar in her hand but no drink.
--

I stuck my dollar into the slot in the vending machine but it just spit it back out. I tried to smooth it out as best as I could before sticking it back into the machine. It whirled and I thought it was going to take it but then it came back out again. Just another thing to hate about this Monday. I tried one last time before giving up. I walked back to my table.

“Does anybody have a bill that the machine will take because it obviously doesn’t like mine.” I held out my dollar bill.

“Sorry, I’m broke,” Sasha said while emptying her pockets.

“Me, too,” Trey replied.

“I might have one.” Alistar reached into his pocket and pulled out a wallet. He skimmed through it before pulling out a crisp dollar bill. “Here.” He handed it to me.

I smiled as I traded my crumby bill for his. “Thank you.”

“No problem.” As Alistar replaced his wallet I went back over to the vending machine and stuck the new dollar in. It went in and, wait for it, it stayed in. I then punched the button of the drink that I wanted and waited for my drink to come out. The machine whizzed and plunk my water dropped out from it at the bottom. I picked it up and went back over to the table.

Trey had his hand wrapped around the back on Sasha’s back and she was smiling. I was glad that my best friend was happy. I sat down and started eating my lunch. We all talked about random things until the bell rang. Trey and Sasha shared a goodbye kiss before going there separate ways. Sasha and I walked together to our science class, where we were lab partners.
--

“So we put this into the tube and if it changes color, it had whatever that stuff is,” I asked with the dropper in my hand.

“Yeah,” Sasha said. I squeezed in two drops and watched as it turned black.

“So it has glucose.” We marked our data. “So you and Trey are doing good so far?”

“Yeah, I’m so glad that we finally got together. We’re going out on our first date this Friday,” Sasha gushed.

“That’s great. Now if only Alistar would ask me out.”

“Trust me, he will.”

“I hope so.” We continued doing the experiment for the rest of the period. I only spilled and dropped some of the stuff two times.
--

I couldn’t have been happier than when Monday was finally over with and I was leaving school. Alistar had offered to drive me home, which was one good thing; I didn’t have to wait for the bus. I got into the back beside Sasha.

“Today just totally sucked.” I leaned back in the seat as Alistar pulled out of the school parking lot.

“It wasn’t that bad of a day for me,” Sasha commented.

“Well, that’s good news…for you,” I said gloomily.

“Stop complaining, there’s always tomorrow,” Alistar replied from up front.

“Yeah, and who knows what could happen tomorrow. Right, Alistar?” Sasha and Alistar shared a look that obviously meant something but I didn’t read too much into it.

“You never know.” Was Alistar’s replied. The rest of the ride was pretty boring. When we arrived at my house I tripped getting out of the car.

“Just great,” I yelled as I caught myself from face planting into the driveway.

“Are you okay?” Both Sasha and Alistar asked.

“I’m fine.” I got up and brushed the dirt off of me. My hands were a little scraped up and were stinging but I’m pretty sure I’ll live. “See you guys, tomorrow. Thanks for the ride.”
--

As soon as I walked inside my mother insisted that I go clean my bedroom. She had to pick today of all days to finally decide that my bedroom needed cleaning. I hadn’t been here all weekend but it was still a mess. I figured I could put cleaning it for a little while. My mother thought otherwise. So to top off my horrible day I spent the next twenty minutes cleaning, organizing, and vacuuming my room before I did my homework.

My dad was late for dinner which caused my parents to get into a fight. This in turn caused dinner to be practically silent, not that the disgusting meatloaf my mother made could be classified as dinner. When I finally went to bed, I couldn’t have been happier than to just put this whole day behind me.

Mondays were not my favorite day.