Awesomeness Personified

“See you on Monday, then.” Leah smiles as we walk down her stairs towards the front door.
“Yeah,” I sigh, getting my shoes back on. “Back to the jail that’s disguised as an education.” I grin.

I may seem like I’m moaning about school but its OK actually. I’ve got no problem with the work as I know I’ve got to put the work in to get the grades at the end of Year 11, but it’s the people there who I have a problem with. Not my friends of course, there by far the best people at the place, but I just hate all the cliques and stereotypes we’re all supposed to conform to.

Take myself as an example. I do well at school so I’m a nerd but then on the other hand I like ‘alternative’ music (ha!) and wear Doc Martens to school so I’m classed as an emo/goth/greebo/punk.

I mean come on, let’s get a grip. I’m a human being not a tin of beans that needs to be labelled. How deep of myself…

“So I’ll meet you on Monday morning at eight?” Leah asks opening the front door.

“Yep, unless I’ve died from the excitement of it all.” I smile and then give her a quick hug, say goodbye and make dash down the road.

I was nearly home when I got a call from my mom on my mobile telling to pick up some fish and chips from the chip shop because, as she so nicely put it, ‘The oven’s on the blink and we’re all bloody starving.”

That’s nice isn’t it? It’s a wonder I’ve grown up to be so well adjusted and polite.
So I take a complete u-turn and head for the chip shop to get food for my ‘starving’ family, which led to where I am now standing in the queue, which a right motley crew.

The man who is being served has a lazy eye, looks about a hundred and ten and the woman in font of me keeps coughing as if she’s choking up a lung and refuses to put her hand in front of her mouth.
Great, just great.

So I decided to go off into my own little daydream whilst I was waiting to be served (Mr Lazy Eye was taking a century as he was a little on the obese side as well on the visually compromised side). My daydream basically involved me, Jay and a beautiful sunny beach in Austrailia.

But then I blink out of my daydream when a complete stranger walks into the shop.
I haven’t got a clue who the stranger, who was a teenage boy, is but I still take notice of him.
Enough notice to realise how different and out of place he looks, standing in the doorway of a grotty chip shop.

Firstly he has a slight tan, a natural looking tan which is a million miles away (and better) then the awful fake tan all the chav girls use and think they look cool with, but in actual fact the look they’ve been tangoed.

He has long surfer looking hair which is really groomed and dark brown, which piercing blue eyes, but the most odd thing about him is when he opens his mouth.
He has an American accent.

This is weird if you live in Dudley, England where everyone has Midlands’s accents.
Interesting…

I realise I’ve been staring at the American boy so quickly avert my gaze which is the moment when he joins the queue and stands right behind me.

“Hmm, what should I have?” He says quietly to himself although I can hear his accent clearly.

His accent is so cute! It’s not like a drawl, more precise and clear.

“What do you think I should have?”

It takes a few seconds for it register into my head that he’s asking me.
!!!

So I turn around to see him smiling at me friendly.

“What do you think I should have? I want to get to know the British cuisine.” He says, his accent rolling of his tongue beautifully and still smiling at me in a friendly manner.
I smile back, my brain didn’t tell me to I did it automatically. His smile was infectious and I’d caught it.

“Well chips, because well, they’re chips.” I reply.

He laughs but looks a little confused. Oh God, I hadn’t babbled crap had I?

“See that’s what I don’t get. These aren’t chips, they’re fries.” He says.
Oh I've got it. I was going to have translate it for him.

I laugh and he laughs too.

“I keep forgetting things mean different things in England than back home.”

“So are you on holiday or…”

“I’ve moved here. I move around a lot because of I’m convicted criminal.”

He says it with a grin on his face so I know he’s joking. Well at least I hope he is. I would be so grounded if my mom found out I’d be mingling with a criminal.

I realise it’s my turn to be served so I quickly ask for what I want.

After receiving the food I’m just about to go when the boy touches me on the arm.
I turn around wondering what he wants, absently wondering if I’ll make it home with the chips still hot.

“I’m Zac.” He says.

I zone out my thoughts and reply, “I’m Summer.”

We smile at each other for a moment when he asks, “Do you got to High Arcal?”

“Yeah, I’m going back on Monday.” I reply.

“Great,” He smiles sounding genuinely pleased. “I’m starting on Monday, at least there’ll be one friendly face.”

We say goodbye and I leave the shop to go home.

All of a sudden going back to school doesn’t seem so bad at all...