Your Melody Sounds As Sweet As the First Time It Was Sung

Following the colourful map, I found my way to homeroom only four minutes late. I was excused because I was a new student. Thankfully, Mrs Flint was a very relaxed teacher. She was pretty old, but she didn’t really care how loud or crazy any of the students were, as long as they weren’t doing anything really dangerous. She didn’t make me introduce myself, thank god, so I managed to slip into a back row seat in the corner of the room without attracting too much attention.

Math went by exactly as Leanne had predicted. Mr Robs called on me for the answer three times; twice I got it wrong, once I got it right. No one other than him really seemed to care though.

I spent morning break trying to work out where my next two classes were so I wouldn’t look like an idiot with my nose buried in the map. I was kind of looking forward to these classes; history and art. They were two of my favourite subjects back home.

History was the first subject that I noticed any of the other students pay me any attention. When I walked into the room, the teacher hadn’t arrived yet. The first person to look at me was some guy in the front row. I knew immediately that we wouldn’t get along, just because he was sitting in the front row. He had short orange hair and wore a tie over a white shirt. I mean, come on. His eyes flickered from by bag (which was decorated with some band badges) to my face. He glared at me – why? I don’t know or care – and I resisted the temptation to glare back and just ignored him. I reached the back row and sat once again in the back corner. Two heads turned my way as I did. They belonged to two guys sitting in the middle of the back row. I couldn’t really catch their features because they turned back to each other and kept talking. All I figured out was that one of them had long brown-blonde hair and the other had shorter brown hair. I’m so observant, aren’t I?

The teacher came in and began the lesson. The only thing I heard, though, was that our topic was Ancient Greece. The rest of the class was already halfway through the topic, so I was glad that I’d already done this back home. Throughout the whole lesson, those two guys kept glancing at me when they thought I didn’t notice. It was really quite irritating, actually. The red-head kid (ha... coming from me... but his hair was curly and bright orange! Like a clown...) in the front shot his hand up to answeralmost every question, and he kept turning around to face the rest of the class with a smug look on his face whenever he was right. I had to stifle my snicker when he confidently answered a question wrong, but I think that somehow he knew and turned to shoot daggers at me. Whatever.

I was happy to get out of that class when the bell rang and I found myself eager to check out this school’s art facilities. I was severely disappointed, however, when I reached my art room and felt the lack of creativity in the air. You know how art rooms are supposed to smell of acrylic paint, fresh canvases and turpentine? These rooms didn’t. They smelt like artificial pine; like someone had hung a hundred of those little car fresheners shaped like trees from the ceiling. There were unfinished sculptures and canvases around the edge of the room which was good, but there was no paint splattering the grey work benches the way there should have been. Now, I’m not saying that my old school was completely amazing, because it wasn’t, but at least the art rooms there had character. Graffiti artists had made murals on the walls, and the warm feel of paint and clay clashed against the fresh air beyond the doors. That’s the atmosphere art rooms are supposed to have. Not this pristine cleanliness. When our teacher walked in, she looked somehow sad, straight away. I wondered if it was because she sensed the lack of inspiration too. The worst part was, when she told us all to get out our text books, no one groaned. They were used to enduring heavy amounts of theory work.

I didn’t like it at all.

***

I didn’t know whether or not to trust cafeteria food at this new school, so I only intended to get a bottle of drink at lunch, but the cafeteria ladies basically forced me to take the food and I was too scared to say no. I took the tray back to a small table outside. I never liked that I always had to eat inside back in Jersey, so that was one good thing about this place. I wasn’t particularly hungry, so I occupied myself by pushing my food around with the plastic fork, wondering what on earth the substance actually consisted of. I was kind of out of it, so I was startled when I heard a voice directed at me.

“Hey, you mind if I sit there?”

I looked up at the person. I thought it was one of the guys from my history class, but I couldn’t be sure. He was pretty skinny for a guy, had not long but not short dark brown hair, and wore red rectangle glasses over deep brown eyes. I quickly scanned his attire and took in black converse, black skinny jeans, a yellow t-shirt and a black hoodie. Whoever he was, he had good fashion sense.

“Sure,” I answered, somewhat quietly. He took a seat opposite me and took a bite into what looked like a cheese and tomato sandwich.

“Thanks,” he said through a mouthful of food. “I’m Brendon, by the way.”

He swallowed his food and went to take a sip of orange juice, but instead spilt it all over the table. I laughed a little, and he did too.

“I’m Charlotte,” I said back, gaining a little confidence.

“Yeah. I think you’re in my history class.”

So I was right. Yay. One point for Charlotte.

“Oh yeah. Where’s that guy you were sitting with?”

“Brent was feeling sick so he’s gone home.”

“Oh.”

There was a brief silence before the boy named Brendon decided to break it.

“So are you new here?”

“Yeah. First day.”

“Having fun?”

“Yeah. Because school is my favourite place ever.”

There I go again with the sarcasm…

He laughed. "Seriously, though. It’s not that bad here.”

“Yeah, I know. The receptionist lady was really… Well, it was kind of scary, actually. She was like, overly nice.”

“Yeah. She’s a little creepy, but not a child molester as far as we know…”

I laughed. “What a comforting thought.”

“Sorry,” he smiled sheepishly. “Apparently I have a tendency to be cynical.”

“That makes two of us."

Another peaceful pause settled over us and I took another sip of my drink.

“So…” he started again. “Where did you move from?”

I tensed up a little but answered anyway. “New Jersey. Belleville, to be exact.”

“Really? There’s this new band from around there that I’ve gotten into lately.”

“Yeah. There’s a fair few garage bands over there,” I sighed. “I miss it.”

“Why’d you move?”

There it was. The question I was bound to be asked sooner or later. I had previously made an agreement with myself not to tell anyone, because it was a personal part of my life that I didn’t want to wear on my sleeve. For some reason, though, all that flew out the window here. I wanted to tell him.

“Uh, my dad died a few months ago.” He looked shocked. He probably wasn’t expecting that. “Yeah. Car crash. We were pretty tight; mom, dad, and I. Mom couldn’t handle staying there, you know?”

He looked at me sympathetically. “No, I don’t know, but I’m sorry. I bet it’s hard.”

I was really glad that he wasn’t trying to pretend he understood. That’s probably what most people would do, and it would irritate me half to death myself.

“It is.” I looked down. “But it’ll be okay.”

He reached across the table hesitantly and put his hand over mine.

“You’re strong to deal with it so well,” he said quietly. “I don’t think I could handle it the way you do, Charlotte.”

I smiled.

“I think you could. And call me Charlie.”

We kept talking for the rest of lunch. He was really cool. By the end of lunch, I’d call him a friend. I was proud of myself. Making a friend on the first day of school was an accomplishment for me.

On the walk home from school, I thought about Brendon. For some reason when I pictured his smile, I pictured my dad, wherever he might be, smiling too.