Lemon Water // Paul Lahote

thirty five

Serena

I left the classroom in the middle of the herd of students trying to get out, looking around for Quil who was just across the hall in home room 122. Once I spotted him I shoved through the sea of students to get to his side.

"Hey Serena, ready for honors geo?" He asked when he noticed I was standing there

"As I'll ever be, where is it?"

"Room 208, we need to go down the hall and up the stairs, then take a left and it's the 4th door on the right"

"Wow, that's really specific instructions, let's go"

We joined the crowd of students that were using the stairs and made it to the classroom with a minute to spare. Upon entering, Bailey spotted me right away and waved me over to her frantically.

I looked at Quil and he gave me a reassuring smile, "go, make some friends that aren't us"

That's all it took for me to walk over to her and sit in the empty desk beside her. "Hi, Serena! I saved you a seat! Although I didn't realize that you'd bring a lost puppy with you so I only saved one"

I glanced over at Quil who was sitting across the room and saw the annoyance flash across his face, "oh, uh, yeah, Quil and I are friends, well, he's like Embrys best friend so that means he's automatically mine" I replied, watching as Quil nodded to my response to Bailey.

"Well I'm not going to be Embrys friend, I get that you guys are twins and all but I am not going to be seen hanging around that boy, ever"

"That's ok, I wasn't asking you to be friends with him, he has his friends and I have mine, we don't need to share"

"Good, now you see that boy sitting in the front? That's Sebastian Regin, he's one of the boys I have dibs on, and you know Jakey-poo of course" I watched as Quil laughed to himself, "and obviously you know Pauly-boy, but Laken Kirk is in gym with us next period, he is absolutely gorgeous when in the skins team"

"That's good to know, but, if you have dibs on all 4 of them, how do you choose which one you actually, you know, are going to date?"

"Well, my main target is Paul, but he's been playing hard to get for the last few weeks, right around when you were discovered ironically, then it's Jake, but he has the hots for some idiot clumsy girl from forks, then it's Sebastian but currently he's dating Grace so that's put on hold, and why Grace got cut from the clique, so that leaves Laken, who is all over me and totally loves me"

"Oh, that makes sense"

"Alright class, sorry I'm late, I had some business to take care of in the copier room because today we have a pop quiz! Everything on the ground, pencils and calculators out! Ah yes, Serena! There you are! You're still taking the quiz and it counts towards your final grade, better hope Forks is as far as we are in material!"

The teacher, whose name I didn't even know, passed out the packets of papers that were nowhere near the length of what I thought was supposed to be a quiz.

This 'quiz' has 25 multi step problems worth a point each and one word problem worth 10 points. "You have 45 minutes for it to be in my basket, begin"

I started on the first few problems and finished them with ease, but as I got to the third page the questions started to confuse me. I haven't learned any of this stuff yet and had no clue what I was supposed to be doing.

I skipped to the word problem and worked it out with difficulty, then went back to try and finish the last 9 problems. "This is your 10 minute warning"

I started to scramble and finished 3 more problems before the 2 minute warning was called. I completed the last problem I was on and then circled random answers for the last 5, luckily the quiz was multiple choice. 

I hastily wrote my name on the front and placed it in the basket only seconds before the timer went off, signally that time was up.

Not long after the timer went off the bell rang, "let's go to gym, today we get to play lacrosse! It's my favorite sport, I'm going to be on varsity this year, you should try out!" Bailey said, dragging me towards the locker room.

"I don't know, I guess it depends if I'm any good today"

"I'm sure you'll be great! If you play you can hang out with me and Birkley all the time!"

We walked into the locker room and Bailey showed be my assigned locker with my first initial and last name on it. I opened it up and pulled out the ugly green shorts and grey t shirt we were expected to wear as our uniform.

Changing quickly, I followed Bailey and Birkley into the hallway where half of the class was waiting. I saw Jake across the hall and waved. He smiled back at me and walked over to us, "her, Rena, how was geo?" He asked

"God, Jake it sucked, we had a 'quiz' and I didn't know half of it because of how behind Forks is compared to here!"

"Hey Jakey!" Bailey said, trying to flirt with Jake

"Hi, Bailey, Birkley" he greeted them with a small smile and a nod.

"Here we go, class, sticks are in the closet, girls on the north field boys on the south field" coach said and the entire class formed a line to grab lacrosse sticks.

I was wedged between Jake and some other tall guy, "here" the guy said, handing me the stick with a wink. I smiled and thanked him before following the crowd out to the fields.

"Team captains are Haley and Kirsten for the girls and Theo and Laken for the boys"

I ended up on Haley's team and, surprisingly, I wasn't the last pick either. Birkley was also on my team, and she showed me how to hold the stick.

I got assigned to stand on the left side of the field and got told to get open, and that's exactly what I did. Once my team member had the ball in her net I moved my way around the girl defending me and to an open spot.

I watched as the ball go chucked my way and held my stick, closing my eyes in fear. I head cheating and people yelling 'go!' so I opened my eyes to see the the ball was actually in my net and there was someone charging at me full speed.

I gasped and started running towards my goal, but I got blocked by two people on the other team. I searched frantically for someone to throw it to but I didn't find someone in time and was knocked to the ground by Bailey.

"No hard feelings, yeah? I just gotta prove to coach that I should be starting varsity this year" she told me, getting off of me and helping me up.

"Yeah, sure, whatever you need to do" I replied.

By the end of the period I had gotten shoved to the ground 4 times, but I caught the ball 7/9 times it was thrown to me and even made a goal, but I also missed a couple of shots.

"That was great, Serena!" Birkley told me, "you should totally join the team!"

"Really? You think I'm good enough?"

"Yeah! You're actually better than some people on the team right now!" Bailey said

"Maybe I will join, I'll just have to talk to my mom about it and see what she thinks!"

"Yay! I'm so excited! I can't wait!" They both exclaimed.

"Let's go to chem now bestie!" Bailey cheered after we finished changing, grabbing my arm and leading me out the locker room door.