Phoebe

The next morning I woke to a dim stream of light from the one circular window in my room. It was early -- 6:53 to be exact, but I had to get up for school. I quickly went to the bathroom and got ready. By the time I left the house, it was 7:38. Like the rest of the school’s population, I was arriving to school early for the first day of the school year -- which, so you know, is August 7. Unlike my peers, I wasn’t greeting friends with hugs or claiming a locker on each hall ecstatically; I was trying to get the feel of the school layout, which was very different from any other school I’d ever been to.

"Lisa!"
"Dava!"
"Kara!"
"Sara!"

Four girls greeted each other cheerfully in one big group embrace. It didn’t matter now that there might be drama later in the year. No, they were just happy to see each other after an entire vacation of seeing each other.

"Dude, I’m not gonna carry a book bag this year. I have a locker on each hall!"
"Man, why didn’t I think of that?!"

A small band of football player-like guys were huddled together and were discussing the things general guys talk about: girls and sports. To hear them talking about school lockers sort of made me want to laugh, but as I passed them on my way to the library, I heard one of them mutter, "Whoa, hot chick. New girl I think." That weirded me out. Me? That was new. But the comment was especially strange considering 1) I wore no makeup, 2) my hair was still damp from my shower because I absolutely refuse to take my time drying it when the air will do it for me, 3) I was wearing an old black t-shirt and a pair of loose-fitting blue jeans, and finally 4) in no way am I a stunning beauty: my eyebrows ruined it for me especially, but at least they gave me a semi-interesting face to look at. Of course, it was probably just the fact that I was new here that made me so appealing. It didn’t truly matter anyway if a guy on the football team liked me; I wouldn’t date anybody and that especially applied to football players.

After picking up my books in the media center, I went in search for locker 595, which just so happened to be on, get this, hall 5. 5 was one hall out of 10; there was a hall for each subject taught/offered: math, English, social studies, science, language, technology, family and consumer sciences (a.k.a. Home Ec), business, art and band and chorus, and horticulture (a.k.a. growing plants class, similar to Herbology at Hogwarts I’m guessing). Locker 595 just so happened to be on the language hall in a prime location -- beside the water fountain and near the girls’ bathroom. Do I need to also mention near the connector hall to get to the lunchroom? It was as if I had died and went to locker heaven; normally I got the bottom locker, the junky one that was always coated with grape soda spilt from one of the lockers above and sticky gum. But not this year. No, things were looking up for me.

Subsequent to loading my books into my piece of prime real estate, I practically skipped to Trig. I picked a desk in the back of the middle so I could see everybody else come into the classroom. I wasn’t going to make it easy for some people to stare at me by sitting in the front; it would be more difficult for them to look at me when the lesson began and the teacher was on freak-out teach mode. I was mostly ignored though, except for two girls up at the front who kept glancing back at me. I think they were about to come introduce themselves or something, but the bell rang promptly at 8:10 causing a mad rush for the few remaining kids in the hallways to get to class before the teachers closed the doors and forced them to get a tardy slip and detention.

The Trig teacher Mr. Hardy, I’m sure, didn’t really care if people were late or if they slept or ate in class as long as 1) they learned the math, and 2) didn’t get him in trouble with the administration. He looked to be that sort of man and it was confirmed when he started his back-to-school speech.

"Okay. Welcome back kids. Rule number one: Learn the stuff I teach and know that there is no reason you should fail. Rule two: I don’t care if you eat or drink or even sleep in this class provided that you do rule numero uno. Respect me and I’ll respect you. Do what I say when I say it; otherwise I will have you removed from my classroom. Are we clear?"

The class muttered something like "yes" and Mr. Hardy continued. "Good. Now I have to call role and do that little race card, so you know the drill." He sighed, obviously hating this part of his job. "Alberta Zabel Addison?"

The list went on and on until, "Phoebe Ione Whitaker?"

I raised my hand a bit irritably, my locker high obviously fading; I also had issues with the first day's role call. He marked me down as present and as the broad -- and in my opinion "politically incorrect" -- term "white." I was more of a milky beige, thank you very much; I most definitely wasn't an albino. And it didn't help that he had said my middle name wrong; it's eye-oh-nee, not eye-own.

I was the last person in the role and we soon moved on to the classic introductory math. I really hated first days back and I wished I had just skipped. But I was trying to make my new life here work, truly I was. And to do that there could be no skipping class.

Eventually, the bell rang -- oh that horrible buzzing sound! -- and my fellow students started a stampede to second period. I sort of flowed with the herd until 9 Hall; I had homeroom on the business hall.

I guess, essentially, the day went by uneventfully: Trig, homeroom, U.S History, band, lunch, and Spanish II. Yeah, practically the whole day was taken up with boredom-ness. We didn’t learn anything, and it’s my goal to learn something new everyday. I was sort of looking down on this school, but then as everything was disappointing me and I thought life couldn’t get any worse, it was as if a beam of light shined through the storm clouds. I saw him and nothing else.