Scream, to Be Heard

Chapter 1
“Now I’ll be assigning partners for this project, so don’t you go complaining because I warned you in advance.” Mrs. Johnson joked, staring out at the bored English class. Alex had sat in the back with his buddies, talking and avoiding the lesson. English was probably the least brutal of all the subjects for him, but he still didn’t really appreciate the haggy old teacher. Nobody did, really.
“Rian, you’ll be working with Maria.” The woman announced. Rian looked quite satisfied.
“Bro, you’re so lucky, Maria’s smokin!” Jack whispered so she wouldn’t hear. Mrs. Johnson continued.
“Jack, your partner is Lisa.” The boys laughed. She was Alex’s ex-girlfriend. Whom they all found very attractive. Thankful that he didn’t get stuck with her, Alex relaxed in his seat, pushing his swishy brown hair out of his face.
“And Mr. Gaskarth, you’ll be working with Bailey.” Rian and Jack snorted.
“You got stuck with her! HAH!” They laughed, trying to be as quiet as possible. Their teacher shot them a look as Alex slowly sank in his chair.
Bailey Cooper was one of the drama kids, a group which the majority of the school was not fond of. They were all so…weird. Alex didn’t like to associate with them. He was afraid they’d break out into song or something. Bailey was an odd one as well. He didn’t understand her spontaneity, that of which none of his other females had nor acted upon. And on top of all of that, all she ever did was have her nose stuck in her journal. Rumor had it that she was writing gay porn about the guys in Dulaney. Alex didn’t totally believe that, but he couldn’t be so sure. He just kept his distance.
“Of all the gorgeous girls in the class, you get her. Congratulations, Gaskarth. The world hates you more than we thought.” Obviously disappointed, Alex groaned and put his head on his desk. I guess he’d just have to get this over with. I mean she wasn’t as bad as some of the other drama kids, dying their hair a different color every week and reciting poetry during the most random of times.
“Now class, I’m gonna give you five minutes to get together with your partner, work out when you can get together, and then class’ll be over.” Alex couldn’t believe it “We have to fucking get together?!” This class only kept getting better and better for him, didn’t it? His peers shuffled around the room in search for their partner, but he knew exactly where his partner was. She sat almost by herself, with maybe one or two overly friendly classmates around her. Bailey sat on her desk, swinging her feet back and forth.
“Uh….hi.” Alex blurted out. He didn’t really quite know what to say, fearing that he might say something that might be mistaken for a line in a musical and she’d go full out Broadway on him. She looked up at him with her kohl-rimmed brown eyes, flipping her blonde hair out of her face.
“Hey,” Had he ever even talked to her before? The boy didn’t think so. Even from the first day he’d moved to Baltimore, he never recalled speaking to the blonde once.
“So…uh…when did you wanna…get together…” It almost hurt him to say it. Getting together. He wouldn’t hear the end of this from his buddies, you can bet your ass. Alex stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jeans. He felt awkward. She fiddled with the hem of her t-shirt.
“Well, I’m free on Saturday,” she said, looking down at the worn out converse that the boy sported. She had the same pair at home, but she wasn’t going to say anything. That would have been weird.
“I can do Saturday, but I have band practice from 3 to 6,” he replied. His band was getting rather popular locally, and they had a show coming up in a few weeks that they had to be prepared for. There was no way in hell he was going to blow off a rehearsal for some awkward blonde drama chick. Not in a million years.
“Well just like come over any time, I guess,” she played with the ends of her hair, “I live at that brown and white house at the end of Maple street.” Alex knew exactly where that was, because he lived right around the corner. 'I could probably walk there in less than 5 minutes', He thought to himself. Not that he’d be going there more than this once.
“Okay…well…I’ll be there…at some point I guess.” Hopefully they could get this project done in about an hour so he could go home and wash out all the weirdness with some Blink. Maybe a beer if his parents weren’t home.
“Alright, sounds like a plan.” Bailey could barely make eye contact. As Alex walked back to his seat, she let out a sigh of relief. Boys like Alex intimidated her. Always partying, getting girls everywhere. They seemed dangerous. Not to mention he was quite the little trouble maker. I guess you could say Alex was a regular bad boy. A bad boy with great hair. But she wasn’t thinking about that. Or at least she tried not to.
Alex and Rian met up in the hallway after. They didn’t really feel like going to Chemistry, so they decided to bail. The two of them sat in the hallway, talking and watching some of the drama kids rehearse their lines.
“Seriously, isn’t that what their rehearsals are for?” The taller boy grumbled. He was sick of hearing the same lines over and over again. Rian was too.
“They’re so fucking weird,” Rian added, looking at the way they acted and dressed. Some of the guys in the group wore eyeliner, a trend that the rest of the school didn’t understand. The girls wore what looked like gothic school girl costumes or miss-matching clothes because, as some of the more ‘normal’ girls in Dulaney would say, they didn’t know how to dress themselves. Alex could pick Bailey out of the group. Her and her friends were making bird noises. It was weird.
But what the guys, the whole school actually, hated most about them was the fact that they were happy about being like that. It seemed like the boasted about it. For example, when it came around time for one of their productions, they would do random flash mobs at lunch. Or when they acted like they were the police of the auditorium. Would it hurt to be a little more normal? Nobody else wanted to be around people like that. It wasn’t right. And if you ever got caught talking to one of them, oh hell, you’d be stuck with a reputation of a traitor. It was a stupid nickname, but Alex was really quite worried about his reputation. The party-hard-chick-magnet who was in a band. And he wasn’t about to let some awkward girl ruin that for him.