Change of Heart

Staring into the mirror, my reflection stared back. The same blank stare that I wore myself. I slowly leaned forward, getting as close to the bathroom mirror as possible, and began to line my eyes with liquid black eyeliner. "Lyric!" I heard my little brother's voice scream through the door. I ignored him as I perfected the "raccoon look" that I was trying to get just right. When I had finally finished my makeup, I began working on my hair. "Hurry up!" He continued to scream. "You're going to be late for school!"

I held the hair straightener up to my chocolate brown hair with one hand, and opened the white door with the other. "What time is it?" I asked with a normal tone of voice, a door no longer dividing us.

He stared back at me with a shocked look for a few moments. Then Malcolm counted on his fingers, why I didn't know, but he did. "Six-fifty."

My heart skipped a beat and I began to panic. No way was I going to miss the bus on a Monday. "Okay, I'm done. I'm done." I quickly pushed the red power button on my straightener until I heard a beep and ran for my backpack and shoes.

"Bye!" I yelled to my mother and Malcolm, who didn't go to school because of his age, three and a half years old.

I hated the bus, especially the people who rode the bus. For some odd reason, God himself had decided to plant me on a bus with every single obnoxious, popular person that went to my school. Could you say hate me? Yeah.

I stepped slowly in my black All Stars as I walked to the very end of the bus, dragging my satchel behind me while ignoring stupid jeers from the other high schoolers, and sat in the one-seater.

The bus ride felt like it took forever, but arriving at the high school was no less relieving. Ninth through twelfth graders flocked to the tiny high school, which was technically too small to hold as many students as it did, it seemed as if near-fatal bus accidents were a possibility everywhere.

I repeated my actions from earlier as I tried to squeeze my way off the bus, just barely making it through the brown leather seats. Walking into the building I tried to go as unnoticed as possible as I made it to my locker. I wasn't in the mood for conversation at seven o'clock in the morning.

Barely making it to my first hour, Trigonometry, I slammed my small body onto the chair connected to a desk and began to stare aimlessly at the chalk board. "Okay everybody," my teacher started talking but I instantly silenced her out. I was planning on doodling and writing pages of notes to my friends that hour, bu it didn't work out that way; because then she came into the classroom. It was Stella, Stella Blank. Apparently she had transferred into my first hour, and it just happened to turn out for her to sit in the desk next to me.

I pushed a bobby pin into my brown bangs, getting my hair out of my eyes, and stuttered out a quiet, "h- hey."

She looked at me with her mossy green eyes as she leaned back in her seat. "Sup," she said. Her voice, her voice was perfect. Absolutely fucking perfect. Indescribable, what I heard. I couldn't even explain what that simple 'sup' did to me. It was like a switch was flicked in my brain, which opened a gate to my stomach, allowing millions of butterflies to flutter in.

"N- nothing much. Y-you?" I asked.

She sighed in my direction and whispered, "it was just a 'sup,' not a whole conversation starter." My lips fell into a frown as I looked down at the notebook that sat in front of me. So, she thought I was a loser, that was just... Awesome.