Autumn Leaves

Chapter 3

My books drop to the floor with a loud crash. I mutter a few swears under my breath and bend down to pick them up. People walk past me without looking at me, much less helping me, so it takes me a few minutes to pick up all of the papers that were previously shoved into my books. 

            I stand up with a sigh and continue down the hall. It’s pretty much empty by now, so I walk a little more relaxed than usual. The gray lockers mix with the blue walls in my tired mind, and I feel as if I’m walking in a sea on a stormy day.

            Before walking into math class, I take a deep breath. Of all my teachers, Mrs. Spinelli is the harshest. I really don’t feel like dealing with her at the moment, but my mother made it clear I have to be on my best behavior.

            After her walk, she was just as angry as before, and because May wasn’t there, she really let herself go. She yelled at me for a long time, but despite all of her efforts, I barely felt a spark of guilt. I was so exhausted and tired of being alive in general that I wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and forget the world. But I still sat there, on the couch, and listened to my mother. When she let me go, I went up to my room, and later that night, I could hear her crying softly in her room. That made me feel worse than when she was yelling at me, but I couldn’t do anything about it.

            I know that I’m placing a lot of unwelcome stress on my mother, but I also know that if she just left me alone, both of us would feel better. She’s hurting herself by trying to help me, because I’m a lost cause.

            Shaking off the distant thoughts of last night, I twist the metal knob and walk into class. I’m only a few minutes late, but Mrs Spinelli is looking at me, trademark glare and nasty expression on her face.

            “Miss Fairchild. Good of you to join us. Take a seat, please. The class is waiting,” she says quietly, but her voice is deadly. I look down quickly and walk to the back of the class, where there’s an empty seat among a bunch of jerks. The back of the class is the haunt of all of Westview’s bullies and idiots, so I usually pick a seat in the middle, but since today I can’t, I take a seat in between two of the most decent of the bunch.

            Will Mayer, douchebag extraordinaire, smirks at me and flips his wavy black hair. He’s hot and a lot of girls like him, but he spends a little too much time with the stoners behind the bleachers. Also he’s an asshole. Just saying.

On my right is Charlie Haymire, who is a stoner. Period. He sucks. He’s not mean but he’s not pleasant either.

I settle into my chair with a sigh and roll my eyes slightly before rustling through a few papers. I actually did my homework for once, and I hand it to Mrs. Spinelli with a slight smirk, wiping the convinced-of-my-idiocy look off her face. She raises an eyebrow and I smile innocently.

The rest of the class passes without incident and I escape to English with my mood slightly improved.

I actually like English, and my teacher, Mr. Lions is really passionate about his subject. We spend the period discussing fiction writing and we leave with an assignment to write a short story. I think I may write this one.

After the bell rings, I drop my books off in my locker, and then walk to lunch. On the way there, surprisingly, Will Mayer falls in step with me.

‘What do you want?” I snap, giving him nothing but a quick glance.

“Oooh, sassy,” He says, trademark smirk on his face. I’m tempted to slap it off him but instead I just tighten my fists and continue walking.

“I just wanted to say hi, London.” I have no idea what he means by saying my name like that, but I’m really not tempted to know.

“Okay, you said it, bye now,” I say, giving him a sarcastic little wave. I have no idea why I’m being so mean, but now that I’ve started, might as well finish.

He smirks, again, and I roll my eyes.

“See you later,” he says quietly, as if he’s afraid of someone hearing him, and brushes my arm slightly before walking away. What the heck?

            I brush off the encounter and step inside of the cafeteria. Despite my dislike for her, I slide into a seat next to May, ignoring the rest of the table.  There’s a few girls at the end of the table laughing over someone, and a quiet guy named Simon is sitting on May’s other side, leaving me at the end of the table.

            I don’t know much about Simon other than that he hangs out with May sometimes. He’s looking down at his hands and gently bobbing his head to his music, lunch sitting in front of him, ignored. He looks up as I’m observing him and smiles brightly, curly brown hair falling over his bright blue eyes. I look away awkwardly t

            I’m snapped out of this weirdness by May.

            “London! Londonnnn…?”

            “Sorry,” I say, smiling sheepishly.

            She smiles sweetly at me and begins to talk about her earlier technology class.

            May is annoying and pushy and clingy, but she is really nice, I realize. She always treats me kindly and even though sometimes I didn’t want her, she was always there after Tara died. As I listen to her rambling, I decide I’m going to be nicer to her. Will doesn’t matter, but May doesn’t deserve to be treated the way I treat her.

            The rest of the day passes by more or less easily, with science class and my elective, art, where we worked on drawing with charcoal.

            By the end of the day, I’m a lot more optimistic than I was this morning.