Up from the Ashes

Monday

I woke up with a jolt. My alarm clocked screamed at me from the bedside table.Crap, School. I really shouldn't have stayed those extra few hours at Brett's playing Call of Duty. I dragged myself out of bed after successfully ceasing the wail of my clock. The blinding light hurt my eyes and I felt the need to shrivel up into a ball and hiss, but I slowly moved towards my dresser and threw on some clothes.

Mom was waiting for me with a poptart and a juicebox when I got downstairs. "Henry, you're late for school! Hurry up or you'll miss the bus!" That got me moving, there was no WAY I was walking to school in this heat. I practically flew around the house, almost tripping over my dog, Rhino, grabbing notebooks and my lunch before rushing out the door, all the while thinking that I only had to do this for two more weeks. Soon it would be summer and I could stay up as late as I wanted playing video games, and wake up at lunch.

As everything in high school, there are specific unspoken rules and politics to the school bus. In the front, are the nerdy kids. They're sitting in the front so they can be first off, and hopefully get into the school before the bullys find them. Behind the losers are the freaks. The kids who have multicoloured hair, skip classes and do drugs. In the middle of the bus are the kids who just want to get to school and get off the bus, the ones who aren't really in a specific group. I call them the Decorations, because all they really do is give the school some body and make sure that there aren't too many popular kids. At the very back of the bus are the popular kids, the girls usually sit closer to the front, then directly behind them are the boys, grunting and showing off, trying to catch the girls' attention.

I head straight to the back and sit beside a kid named Cooper. I think Cooper's an idiot, he's far too busy trying to get girls and act cool to care about schoolwork or his grades, yet he wants to be a lawyer. On the other side of the bus is Brett, my best friend. He smiles at me and starts talking about the new first person shooter game coming out, and I nod and pretend I'm listening but I'm too focused on Milly, the most popular girl at my school. I see her laughing and talking with her friends, a few seats in front of me. It's no wonder she's popular, she's pretty and the nicest girl in my school, she's even nice to the nerds and the freaks.

The bus ride ends too soon, and then we are all marching of the bus and trickling slowly into the school. I walk to my locker with a group of my friends and soon enough, I have first period. The day seems to creep by at the pace of a snail in a bowl of molasses. Slower. Finally, the dismissal bell rings and we are free for the afternoon. I take the school bus home and once I get home, I grab my laptop and some lemonade and head out to the tree in my backyard.

I sit there Facebooking and drinking lemonaid until mom calls me in for dinner. As I'm walking back up to the house, the strangest feeling overcomes me. I look around to see if my sister or Rhino are outside, but I'm alone. It feels like I'm being watched, not just like at school, where heads turn when I walk down the hall, but it felt like someone was actually creeping on me. Weird.