Chapter 2
New friends, new beginning...
I walk through the gate. Everyone rushes off to his or her group. Their friends yell hellos at them half way across the courtyard. This makes me feel somewhat isolated. I have no friends and no one I know goes here! I push my way through the middle of the crowd, towards the building with ‘RECEPTION’ printed next to the door. I look around and I notice that some of the people around me are giving me curious looks. Other people totally ignore me, which is totally fine with me. I make my way through the door and there in front of me is the receptionist. I tap lightly on the desk and she looks up at me expectantly.
"Are you Kayley Jenson?" I nod. This is the easiest part.
"I like to be called Kaila." She nods twice and hands me my time table, a small map and school journal.
"Is your brother here?" she looks around me as if he is hiding behind my back.
"Yeah, he'll be here. Can I have his time table so that I can give it to him?" Mitch hates to come up to the front desk. He says it's because he gets in trouble so often.
"Ok, just because you're already here and I don't want to make your brother late." So she hands me his time table as well.
"Thank you so much!!" and before she can respond I turn around and leave.
Once I'm outside I stand on a bench to see the parking lot and, like usual, I see heaps of people milling around Mitch's car. His car's not that hard to spot. Since it's so bright, anyone can spot it from miles away. I make my way through the crowd to give him his time table.
As soon as I'm close enough to the car, I can see guys and girls alike admiring the Holden sports. Mitch is standing in the centre of the ring, pointing out what certain parts do. He's in the middle of explaining to a blond girl that the hard caps are there for a reason, when he sees me coming.
"Hello little sister, what do you have for me?" he looks down at my hand and raises an eyebrow.
"Just your timetable; the receptionist was really looking forward to meeting you. She was pretty bummed that you did a no show!" I laugh and he laughs with me. This is a little performance we put on every time. Next thing I know, Mitch is twirling me around and I squeal.
He sets me down again and yells "Hey everyone, this is my little sis, Kaila!"
I glare at him "Mitch!" I whine. I hate it when he does that! So I turn around and walk away.
First bell goes and I have to run to get to homeroom on time. I have Ms Thomson. She's quite young with a really strict look on her face, and she doesn't appear to like it when you're late. She went berserk at these two guys that came in late. She said, "I don't care if you missed the bus. Don't let it happen again, Mr Allen and Mr James, otherwise it will be detention!" The class went really quiet after that. I would hate to get on her bad side after what happened to the guys who were late.
My first class is double English with Mr Jones! Everyone is seated before he comes in the room. He takes a really long time to start and by the time he does start I'm quite ready for the class to be over. He looks around the room. Then he looks down at the piece of paper in his hand and then he looks at me.
"Ms Jenson, will you please come out to the front of the class room?" Why would he want me to walk out to the front of the class room? He wouldn't do it!
"Yes Sir." I stand up and walk to the front of the class room and turn around.
"Ms Jenson, would you care to introduce yourself to the rest of the class?"
"Well, I'm Kaila Jenson," I start, but before I can say anything else Mr Jones interrupts.
"That's not what they say your name is on here," He says.
I take a deep breath and say "I'm Kayley Jenson, but most people call me Kaila. I live pretty near this school, and my older brother Mitch has just started here too. He's the one with the electric blue Holden sports; very cool car. Oh yeah, this is my eighth high school." I walk back down the rows and sit down. I look around the class and see that a couple of the people in the class are from the bus.
The class goes by really quickly. Mr Jones spends the whole double rambling on about the need for descriptive sentences in creative writing pieces. I sit there the whole time listening and writing down the notes from off the board. I feel like I'm about to fall asleep, though. Usually English is one of the most interesting classes but right now it just keeps dragging on and it doesn't help when the guy behind me is tapping his pen on the desk!
I don't want to turn around and risk being called uptight, but it's just so irritating. I look out the window and using my peripheral vision, I look at him. How strange is this? The guy who was on the bus, you know? He was the one up the back of the bus with the light brown hair. Well, he's sitting behind me with another guy who's wearing his uniform the same way as the light brown haired guy. The other guy is reasonably attractive, quite tall with dark brown hair. He has a side fringe and he's spiked it in certain places. Actually, when you look at him from this angle he is, as Nat would put it, ‘hot’ or ‘cute’. Well, now I've got a name for them; ‘The Guy from the Bus’ and ‘Mr Tall and Handsome Skater'.
The guy from the bus nudges the guy beside him and the other guy instantly looks up at me. I have to smile, he is so cute, and he's looking straight at me. I can't let him see me staring at him like someone with no brain, so I have no choice but to look back at the whiteboard.
By the time the bell goes I'm just about ready to run out the door into the corridor. I just about sprint out the door only to discover that I have no idea where my locker is, it takes me a while to find my locker, but once I find it I rush down to the cafeteria to sit and eat my recess. I find an empty table and sit down pulling out my recess at the same time. I start eating my food, and search the room for hints about the social climate. I analyse everything: the seating; the way they wear the uniform; the added extras to the uniform; what they're doing; everything.
I start off by finding the people I saw on the bus. I soon find out that the girl who had all the bracelets on is in the popular group. The guys all hang around her like she's one of the cheerleaders from a teen flick and they are all seated in the centre of the cafeteria. In the corner up the back is a rather tragic looking group. They all have the rather geeky sixty’s haircuts and they are all doing some sort of homework. Their uniforms are superb and that labels them as the nerds. I'm still analysing the room when I feel like someone is watching me. As if someone would bother to watch me! Sure enough, when I turn my head to the table close to me, all the guys are watching me. The worst part is, that when I look at them, I realise immediately that they are the skater group, and what is much worse than that is the guy I was checking out in English is at the table staring directly at me. Our eyes catch for a second. I feel myself start to blush and I know that I have to look away. I drop my gaze and try to look for my brother, with no success. He must be sitting outside.
I sneak a gaze back over to his table, only the guys from my English class are looking at me. I can tell that he hasn't stopped staring at me. I feel really toast!
Nat and I came up with the word toast. It means ‘cool’. It's a substitute. We got really fed up with using ‘cool’ all the time, so we decided to use another word instead. It just so happened that we were eating toast at the time while we were thinking of a word. I know what you're thinking. ‘Toast’ usually means something bad but it stuck and we didn't have any other ideas for a cool word.
I start to analyse the skater group. There are two girls sitting with them. Altogether there are six people in the group. I notice the girl who was sitting with them on the bus; she's still wearing her fingerless gloves. The other girl has two long white-blond plaits. From this distance I can tell she has a nose ring because of the glint of light shining off the metal; she also has thumb rings and some other rings on her fingers.
The bell shakes me out of my reverie, I jump out of my seat and head straight towards my locker; my timetable says I have Biology and then art next. The classrooms aren't too hard to find as they are labelled by t
he first letter of the subject, so Biology is in the S classrooms, which are on the second floor.
The class goes pretty well. I get all the practs done pretty quickly but that's only because I have a really good partner. This semester is biology, which is pretty cool!
I'm paired with the skater girl from the bus. I find out that her name is Ash. It's short for Ashley, but no one calls her that. We don't really talk much since we're too focused on the work. I desperately want to ask her about her cute friend but I'm afraid that it might be a bit obvious.
Biology passes in a whirlwind of observations and questions. Before I know it, the bell is going and I am making my way towards the staircase to go down to the art rooms. The art rooms are in the A building. It turns out that my locker room is upstairs in the B lockers. They are along the corridors of the L (language) and S (science) buildings.
The painting teacher Mrs Murray has only just set the first assignment so I don't need to catch up on much. I can't do art without my music; it brings out my creative side. So nearly every art lesson I put my earphones in and I listen to music. I know that it's against school rules, but do you really think they care? No! They don't even notice!
I have short hair so I can leave it out and it just makes it easier to put earphones in. I can still hear what the teacher says and every time she comes close to me I turn it down so I can hear her.
The assignment is to paint a canvas making it resemble something that would describe you. I have to draw what I want to paint and then write out why it resembles me. Most people are saying, "Well, that's not too hard." Well, it is hard! My painting skills look like someone decided to mix their colours on the canvas, so yeah, I think it's hard. The thing I'm struggling with most is making something resemble me. What am I? I'm Kaila, seventeen years of age, short dark brown hair, one hundred and seventy centimetres tall, weighs fifty-three kilograms, likes the colour dark blue, favourite film Step Up. If I had a choice between being Batman or Superman, I would definitely choose Batman. What does this say about me? I like sticking to facts, I'm easily distracted by music and I'm way too old for superheroes! So how would you go around putting all that onto a canvas? You just can't!
I notice that the teacher has seated me at a table with the two skater guys from English and the other skater guy from the bus. I try not to look up, because I can tell he's still watching me and it's really unnerving. I tune everything out and stare off into space trying to think of a possible way of doing this painting without flunking. I must have really gotten distracted because one minute it's the middle of class and the next someone's tapping my shoulder. I turn off my iPod and turn around to look at the person. It's the skater guy with the light brown hair.
"Kaila, I wasn't sure if you heard the bell," I look up at him stunned the bell has gone. Oh no! "I'm Nathan by the way!" Now I have a name to put to the face. Isn't that great?
I rush out of the classroom feeling like the most untoast person on earth. I hurry up the stairs, basically taking them two at a time. I walk into the corridor with my locker in it. It's the only hallway with both walls covered with built in lockers; the rest are just on one side of the corridors.
I put my books in and take out my lunch money. I feel so aggravated by the whole staring thing. I have to vent, so I slam my locker door shut and turn around. Standing behind me is Nathan and his hot staring friend. The tall skater guy is leaning against the locker opposite mine. I have to smile because for the first time today he's actually smiling at me! He looks so much hotter when he smiles; he could be a model for Target. He would set young teens’ hearts off!
I didn't realise until now that they do the lockers in order of homerooms. That's why my locker is near Nathan’s, I wonder where his friend’s locker is. I walk out of the locker room and head for the stadium.
I watch the guys play basketball while I eat my sandwich. They get so brutal. I swear someone is going to lose their teeth.
The bell rings again and I have to go to history I have Mr Humphrey for History. He's a balding old man who tends to get really passionate. At least that’s what I think it is. He showers the front row with his spit. He assigns everyone a seat and you’re not allowed to have another. I have to sit next to the hot skater guy. It turns out that Nathan doesn't take this class. Everyone seems rather bored. I'm willing away the time. I know I have maths next, but surely it's better than this.
The bell goes off causing everyone in the class to jump. I walk out of the room brusquely and head to maths. I have Mr Smith. He's actually quite young; only in his thirties. He's quite handsome; I catch some of the girls in the class flirting with him. He's really nice. There's only one space left and it's next to Nathan. His friend is on his other side.
As soon as I sit down, Nathan's friend walks over to me and says in this deep, friendly voice, "I'm Josh. If you need any help with anything, I'm your man." Then he strides back over to his seat. I start copying the notes down from the board feverishly as if it’s going to save my life. The lesson passes really quickly and before I know what's happening, I'm on the bus waiting for my stop.
I stare tentatively out the window waiting for the stop I have to get off at; I really don't want to miss it, although if I do, I just have to get off at the next stop, which is really close to Nat's street. When it's finally my stop, I hurriedly get off the bus and walk home. When I get to the top of my street I see Dad's car in the drive way. I walk up the steps and quietly unlock the front door. I tiptoe into the kitchen trying to make as little noise as possible. I grab a packet of chips and quickly walk back to my room. The reason for all the sneakiness is that when I start a new school, Dad wants to know about everything that happens, and that conversation can be very awkward and long. So it's best to lock myself in my room, because sooner rather than later he forgets what he wants to ask. I slam my bedroom door behind me and wait.
When I'm in my room, I start thinking about everything that has happened. This is a conversation for Nat. Maybe I should give her a ring and tell her all about the skater group. She would be really interested, especially about the guy who likes to stare! I could just walk over to her house. She lives a few streets away and it’s an easy walk. I met Nat on the bus when we were going to St Anthony's, two years before my parents separated. She's one of my closest friends, she is absolutely toasted and we get along like a house on fire.
"Kaila, are you home?" I can tell he's standing on the other side of my door.
"Yeah, I'm home, just getting changed so don't come in!" I yell in the direction of the door. I can tell that he'll go away now. He grunts and the footsteps start receding. I can tell he wants to find out why I slammed the door.
"Dad, school was really toasted. So I'm going to call Nat to tell her all about it," I can tell he's listening.
I rummage through my wardrobe to find my grey sweatpants and once I do, I put them on. Then I put on my blue t-shirt and my baggy blue jumper. I love wearing baggy clothing; it's just so comfortable! I love this outfit – it's my after school outfit; my way of winding down after school.
I walk over to my desk and pick up the phone; I really want to talk to Nat. I want to discuss the whole Nathan and Josh thing, and suss out the whole cafeteria seating cliques. I'm dialling Nat's number into my phone when it rings.
"Hello?" This is so weird. Maybe it's Nat.
"Um, is this Kaila?" a deep male voice asks.
"Yeah, um, who's this?" guys don't usually call me at home or on my mobile.
"It's Nathan and Josh. Josh wanted me to call you. We were wondering if you wanted to come to the movies with us on Saturday."
"Sure Nathan, but it depends on whether or not I can get a lift from my brother."
"Don't worry about it, Josh drives and I'm sure he would love to give you a ride. We'll work out the details tomorrow, ok?"
"Sure, um, by the way, who gave you my number?" because I am going to pummel them for giving out my number and not telling me.
"Your brother gave it to us
!"
"See you tomorrow at school." Why does he have to give out my number all the time without telling me?
"Bye, Kaila, see you tomorrow." The line goes dead and I'm reminded that I was going to call Nat. Now I've got to call her. OH MY GOD, Nathan just called me on behalf of Josh!