"Taylor. Taylor, sweetie. Time to get up; it's the first day of school." his mom, Diana, whispered, gently shaking him to get up. He son lay like a brick in bed, unable to awake and rise from under his forest green comforter.
"Nooo, it's too early." Taylor groaned, glancing with squinted eyes at his alarm clock. It read six thirty in the morning, at time too early for him to wake up to, considering what he was acclamated to arising at during his vacation time. This made him groan even more and he buried his face deep into his pillow.
"Come on, sweetie, you have to be at school by seven fourty-five. Get up." she said, pulling the covers off of him. He reached out and pulled them back over his body and shut his eyes tightly, hoping it was all just a bad dream.
"Get up Tay!" Diana yelled, drumming his back with her hands. She turned the boy over from his stomach to his back and yanked him up by his arms. She was getting older, and he was getting bigger, yes, but she still had her mother's strength to get her son going for the day.
Taylor draped his legs over the side of the bed and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He finally got up and dragged himself out of bed, groggily, and into the bathroom to take a shower, slowly readying himself for his first day as a freshman at the new high school he was going to be attending for the next four years.
Whoosh!
I opened the two doors leading me into the main office of the high school. The other day at my private orientation brought an amazement to my mind at how large the school was. I learned there were twenty-five hundred students, and that there were two campuses that held all of the students comfortably. But I still was quite a bit lost at everything. The school hadn't even printed up my schedule yet, which posted my homeroom on it, an immediate place I needed to be every morning for announcements and what-not. I found the secretary I had talked to earlier that week and proposed my question.
"Excuse me, ma'am." I asked her. She was sitting at her computer and ending a phone call.
"How may I help you?" she asked nicely.
I smiled. "Hi. I'm Noelle Chavez. I'm a new student here, and I haven't received my schedule yet. I came in a registered late last week, and they said they would have my schedule printed up for me before school started, but I called everyday to ask if it was, and they said they were having computer troubles. Is it printed up today?"
"Oh yes, I remember talking with you. The computers just went back up today. Let me check and see if your schedule is ready yet." she said, turning back to her computer.
"Chavez...Chavez...Chavez...Yes, your name is scheduled in here. I'll print it up for you, and right down the hall, there's a printer and yours should be printed up in just a few minutes." she replied.
"Will it have my homeroom on it?" I asked.
"Yes, honey, it will." she replied.
"Okay, great. Thank you." I thanked her, and walked down the hall to pick up my schedule from the printer.
Rrrriinnggg!
"Oh, god." I said, glancing at the clock from up above. The computer was slowly printing my piece of paper.
"Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up." I chanted, watching the printer like an eagle. It finally finished, and I snatched the sheet. "Homeroom: Rm 48." the sheet said in the listing.
"Excuse me again," I said, jogging down the hall towards the secretary. "Where's room fourty-eight?"
"Go out that door right there," she directed, pointing to the door behind her, "and see that building with the phone on it? Room fourty-eight is on that first floor." she instructed.
"Thanks again." I said, and sped out of the office.
People were shuffling around everywhere to get to their homerooms. Some just mingled with their friends they hadn't seen the whole summer. As for myself, I rushed into the two-story building to find room fourty-eight.
"Augh!" I said, running into a guy with blonde hair just past his shoulders.
"Oh Gosh, I'm sorry. Are you okay?" he asked, touching my shoulder to see if I was hurt.
"Watch it, asshole." I snapped. I was mad that I was late.
I finally got to room fourty-eight, and by then there was no one left in the hallway. The door was open, so I quietly walked in without him seeing me.
"Tardy." he called and pointed to me, as if I was in the spotlight. His name tag said Mr. Hembrix. I moaned and closed my eyes, then walked over to an empty desk.
"Wow, this place is huge." Taylor said to himself, walking through the large hall of the English and History building of West Canaan High School, searching for room thirty-two.
Rrrriinnggg!
Taylor pushed through the crowds of teenagers, trying to find the stairs to get upstairs for his homeroom.
"Augh!" Taylor accidently crashed into a girl with shoulder-length blonde hair. She wore a white tank top with an orange shirt over it and blue shorts; white tennis shoes laced around her ankles.
"I'm sorry." he said, sympathetically, checking her to see if she was alright.
"Watch it, asshole." she remarked, rushing off to her destination.
"What's her problem? PMS or something?" he asked himself, looking back at her. He didn't give her a second throught, and trudged up the stairs by twos, his backpack beating against his back with every step.
I glanced at my schedule and skimmed down to where my locker assignment was. It was the one right by the set of stairs on the second floor of the English and History building, where the freshman lockers were located.
I approached it, and had trouble getting the lock to open.
"Need help?" a girl asked, approaching me.
"Please." I said, and stepped away for her to help me. "Twelve, eighteen, thirty-two." I directed her, and she banged the locker when she finished unlocking the combination, then lifted the latch, and it opened.
"Thanks," I smiled, unzipping my backpack and putting my Spanish book into the compartment.
"My name's Shannon. What school did you come from?" she asked, opening her own locker that was three away from mine and down one.
"Oh, I'm new here altogether. My name's Noelle." I introduced myself.
"Wow, tough. A freshman and new altogether." she commented, putting her Algebra book and some papers into her locker.
"Yeah well, I deal with it." I said, closing my locker and zipping my bag back up.
"Well, um, are you doing something for lunch then?" she asked, closing her bag as well.
"Nope." I said.
"Well, what do you have fourth?" she asked.
"Um..." I started to say, and pulled my schedule out of my back pocket and read it. "I have Algebra." I told her.
"Ooh, Vista campus. Some 'teen room, right?" she asked.
"Room thirteen. Why? What's so bad about it?" I asked.
"Sierra Vista is the other campus. You gotta walk over the bridge to get there. It might take you awhile to get back over here for lunch. But anyway, I'll wait here for you if you still wanna hang out during lunch." she offered.
"Thanks, I'll hurry up back over here, that is, if I don't get lost." I commented, chuckling.
"Great, then I can introduce you around. You'll like it here. I heard Green Acres people aren't so bad." she said.
"Green Acres?" I questioned, raising my eyebrows.
"Yeah. I came from La Joya. Green Acres was our rival middle school. But anyways, even if we're all together now, doesn't mean they're any better than us." she said, and laughed. "Besides, La Joya boys are much cuter."
Just as she was finishing her comment, the same blonde guy I had run into earlier walked up behind Shannon and stood with us.
"Hey Shannon." he greeted, placing his hand on her closed locker.
"And speaking of La Joya boys, hey Taylor," she greeted him back. "Taylor, this is Noelle; Noelle, this is Taylor." Shannon introduced us, smiling.
"Hi." I said semi-snootily. The bell rang just then. "Look I gotta go. I'll meet you here for lunch, Shannon." I said, not in the mood to talk to....Taylor.
"Um, bye...Noelle!" she called out, confused about my sudden behavior change.
"Hey Noelle." Shannon said, meeting me in the hall by our lockers. We talked as I stashed my Algebra book in my locker. Then we headed downstairs and out into the quad towards a lunch cart to buy sandwiches. After purchasing our food, she led me to a large group standing on an area of the large grass that made up the quad, and some of them were sitting on stone benches, already engaging into heavy conversations they missed out on earlier in the day or the summer.
"Hey!" Shannon yelled to the group. "Come on." she told me.
"Hey, everyone, this is Noelle, she's a part of the group now." Shannon introduced me to everyone. They all said hi. Shannon and I took seats on one of the benches and talked with everyone.
Then, out of the blue, Taylor walked up to the group. The not so good part was that he took a seat next to me and opened his bag of Doritos.
"Hey." Taylor said to me, attempting a friendly smile.
"Hi." I said semi-rudely, then turned my attention back to a girl, Stacie, who had the whole crowd in a story about her summer vacation is Japan.
"Dad?" I called out after I got home, setting my backpack on one of the stools at the kitchen counter. There wasn't an answer to recognize my call. I spotted a note magnitized to the refrigerator.
Won't be home until about five or so. I'm bringing Chinese take-out home, so don't snack on too much. Tell me about your day when I get back! Love you.
DadHey hon,
"So, hon, how was your day?" my dad, Miguel, asked after he got home and sat down his briefcase.
"It was pretty good. The campus is huge, there's two of them. P.E. was boring. My Algebra teacher is really short, and I think my Spanish teacher is crazy. I met a girl who introduced me to all her friends. There's this one guy, Taylor, well, I don't like him. He's a jerk. He almost made me late today." I spilled out.
"That's nice," he said, "I'm glad your day went good. Well, except for almost being late. How did that happen?"
"The computer had took forever to print up my schedule, so I had to hurry to get to homeroom when he ran into me and interrogated me, making me late for class." I grouched.
"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. But hey, most of your day was good, right?"
"Yeah, it was."