So the Season's Changed Your Face

I woke up Monday morning with a gnawing sensation so intense in my stomach that I weakly called for my mom, assuming that this was how it was all going to end.

She came in, wearing a fake smile which revealed her yellow teeth. “Rise and shine, Vivi!”

“Mom, my stomach hurts,” I complained, tossing a pillow over my head. “I think I’m dying.”

“Vivian Erica Ruth June,” my mom started testily, striding across the room and opening the blinds. I groaned a second time. “You’re not dying.”

“You don’t know that,” I said, though my voice was muffled by the pillow over my head. And while I doubt my mom heard me, I’m sure she knew exactly what I had said.

“Get up. Dad’s making you breakfast,” she said, even more testily than before. She threw the covers off of me and pried the pillow from my hands. “You don’t want to be late on your first day, do you?”

I trudged sleepily to the kitchen – the new kitchen that was still unpacked. Dad was wearing an apron over his slacks and work shirt, his tie slung over his shoulder. “I made eggs!” he said cheerfully, handing me a plate with two eggs, sunny side up, and a strip of bacon. Not surprisingly, Dad had arranged my breakfast to look like a smiley face.

I was too tired and too frustrated to make any remark, snarky or not, so I silently and moodily took my plate and sat at the table. Dad poured me a glass of orange juice and sat across from me. “Excited for your first day?”

“No,” I muttered grumpily, poking at my eggs.

“That’s the spirit,” he remarked sarcastically. “Cheer up. Chicago has got to be better than Phoenix.”

I looked up. “Dad, everything is better than Phoenix.”


Mom dropped me off in the parking lot. “Bye, Vivi! Have fun! Make friends! Dad says ‘Don’t take any wooden nickels’!”

I sighed and waved, hitching my backpack higher on my shoulders, inwardly hoping no one saw me get out of my mom’s car.

The walls of Barrington High School stood intimidating as ever, casting a gigantic shadow onto the parking lot. I took two steps forward before a pudgy boy with a large mole on his face ran into me. “Shit! I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said. “Didn’t see you.”

“No harm, no foul,” I said, looking into his glass-green eyes.

He looked slightly frazzled (perhaps he wasn’t used to eye contact?) and ran off without another word to me. I shrugged it off and made my way slowly to the front doors of Barrington High. I placed my hand on the door handle and sighed heavily.

I could already foresee that high school was going to be hell.


How I found my way to my first class is beyond me. There was a line of nervous looking freshmen queuing next to the door, which had green butcher paper covering the window. ‘Ms. Fawn, English 9’ adorned the paper in bold, black letters.

I joined the line only moments before the bell indicating the start of class rang through the hall and reverberated off of the gray walls. Many freshmen looked startled, as if they had never been controlled by a bell system before. While my eardrums rang, I was not at all startled. They had us trained like show dolphins back in Phoenix. I’ve been on the bell system since elementary school.

The door opened and a frail, gray haired woman stood and allowed us to enter her poorly decorated classroom. I hardly made it through the door due to a blockage at the front of the room. Everyone seemed to have stopped in their tracks. I was seconds away from telling them all to move when I caught a glimpse of the seating chart projected onto the chalkboard. I found my name and saw I was in the back row, next to a window and a person named Mike Carden.

I shuffled slowly to my seat (there was still a traffic jam at the front of the room) to find that Mike Carden was none other than the very same boy who plowed into me no less than five minutes ago.

“We meet again,” I said, sitting down and placing my backpack on the floor next to me.

“Hey, sorry for running into you this morning,” he apologized quickly.

“It’s okay, seriously,” I assured him. “Only one apology was necessary.” I paused for a moment. “I’m Vivi. I suppose you should know my name, seeing as we’re going to be sitting next to each other for the time being.”

“Mike,” he smirked. “What middle school did you go to? Not Barrington Middle.”

“I’m from Arizona,” I said. “We just moved here last month.”

“Oh, shit,” he muttered under his breath. “That’s far away.”

“I suppose,” I shrugged. “We lived in New York before Arizona, so I guess it’s relative.”

Ms. Fawn cleared her throat. The whole class had been chatting merrily, discussing their summers and exclaiming in surprise that their best friends and worst enemies were in the same English class as them.

“Now let’s talk about the syllabus,” Ms. Fawn said, her voice quavering, sending out a stack of papers.


My Biology class was on the other side of campus and on the second floor, as I soon found out. I journeyed alone to my class, keeping my eyes down to avoid the leers from bulky seniors (“fresh meat”, “Freshman Friday is coming up, Freshie”). I came upon yet another line of freshmen next to the door of my Biology classroom. There were a few kids I recalled from my English class in line, including a certain green-eyed boy with a mole on his cheek.

When we entered the room, I was disappointed to find that the teacher had not devised a seating chart. I awkwardly took a seat next to Mike in the back.

“I am sitting next to you purely so no one weird sits next to me,” I said, sidling into the seat.

“How do you know I’m not weird?” he asked, smiling.

“I suppose I don’t,” I answered truthfully. “But you don’t smell, and that is good enough for me.”


By the time I got to sixth period, I discovered I had every single class with Mike. I appreciated having at least one friendly face in my classes, even if I didn’t yet know him very well. He was amusing, which made my first day almost tolerable. I didn’t even have to eat lunch alone.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, I guess,” Mike said when we approached the parking lot.

“Yeah,” I replied, almost absently, waving as he began walking across the lot. I sat down on the curb and waited for my dad to pick me up, as he had promised earlier this morning. I only waited five minutes before my dad pulled up at the curb.

“How was your day?” he asked, turning off the radio.

I smiled, this morning’s foul mood forgotten. “It was good.” I nodded, still smiling. “It was good.”