The Secret of Lentra High: Freshman Year

Making Friends

It had been three days since I had arrived at Lentra. I still was having trouble dealing with the whole "This school exits to fight and cooperate with aliens" thing, but I was getting by. The thing that annoyed me most about the school at that point was actually my partner for the E.T. Hist. project, Brandon Smith. He wasn't helping at all. No matter what I said, he just replied with "Yeah, that sounds good. Let's do that." He didn't care about anything or anyone. Our model of the second galaxy was by far the worst in the entire classroom. Even I hated it, and I blamed Brandon for it being so bad. I couldn't stand him. In fact, I felt that I hated him.

Other than being positive that I was going to get a failing grade on the E.T. Hist. project, I was rather enjoying Lentra high. I'd made friends with many people already and was on good terms with almost all my teachers - except Mrs. Burnett, the speech/P.R. instructor, but I didn't think she liked anyone. Overall I was rather enjoying the experience, just like I had planned on doing.

The dorm room wasn't bad either. There were five beds, five chests for clothes, and one bathroom with a sink and a toilet. Anything else we needed (food, showers, a place to study), could be found outside of the dorm room. The walls were white, as were the beds. It was rather plain, but it served its purpose well.

I shared my dorm with four girls: Natalie Barnes, Samantha Torres, Marie-Anne McCray, and Sophia Robinson. The four of us got along fairly well. Natalie was from Virginia, like me, and actually lived four hours south of me. Samantha, or Sam as she preferred to be called, was from Tennessee, Sophia was from Washington State, and Marie-Anne was from Colorado. Of the four girls, I got along with Marie-Anne the best. She reminded me of my best friend, Kathleen McCarthy, who I missed a lot; she and I clicked immediately.

That Wednesday morning, homeroom began and lead into E.T. Hist. as usual, except, Brandon wasn't there. It was five minutes into class, he still hadn't arrived, and my temper (which was already pretty short with him) was running low.

In the back of the classroom, Brandon's dorm mate, Jake, was partnered with Sam. I walked back and asked Jake if Brandon had been sick this morning, or if he was somewhere specific. Jake said he didn't know where Brandon was and that he should have been there. Feeling even more annoyed, I walked up to Mr. Carton and asked permission to go look for Brandon; he told me I could go. I was sure that everyone in that classroom could tell I was pissed, but I didn't really care enough to try and hide it.

After leaving the classroom, I stormed the empty hallways searching for Brandon. I walked back to the cafeteria, by the boy’s bathroom, and was headed to the boy’s dorms when I heard a low voice nearby. It was Brandon. I nearly stomped over to yell at him, but before I opened my mouth I stopped.

He was talking on his cell phone, and from what I could hear he sounded a little upset. "Mom," he said, "Please stop. I know you did not call to spend ten minutes talking about that. What's really going on?" I couldn't hear what was said on the other line. "Damn, Mom. Why didn't you tell me about this earlier?" He sighed, "Are you going to be okay? I mean, should I come back home? ... Well, I'm really not supposed to, but I'd do everything I could to go home if you need me to. ... Okay, yeah. I'll stay. You're sure you're going to be okay? ... Mhm. OK. Be careful, and call Gram to help you out. Since I can't be there, at least let her come. ... Yeah, I do. You're all I've got, Mom. What kind of kid would I be if I didn't worry about you after you've told me you broke your leg? ... I don't need to be normal." Brandon glanced at his watch. "Mom, I've got to go. I'm way late for class. ...  Yeah. I will. I'll call you later, Mom. ... Yeah, love you too. Bye."

I suddenly felt really bad. The words "What kind of kid would I be if I didn't worry" kept running in my head. I realized I had been really wrong about Brandon, and I felt awful about it. It wasn't like me to hate someone after knowing them only three days. In fact, I couldn't remember anyone I'd ever truly hated for anything, yet I'd been hating this boy who hadn't ever done anything to me. Why had I done that? Why had I thought that way? I felt worse than garbage for the way I had just been acting, for the words I had almost said to him. I just felt like an overall dirt bag and thought I seriously needed to make it up to Brandon somehow, though I didn't know how.

Brandon hung up the phone, turned around and saw me. Looking up at him, I saw how upset and worried he looked, another wave of shame washed over me. This kid was actually good guy and I had judged him so quickly.

"Naomi?" he said, taken aback, "What are you doing here?"

"I was looking for you since you missed homeroom and were late for class." I replied, with none of the anger those words were originally supposed to hold.

"Oh. I'm sorry."

"No, its fine. Let's go."

***

By the time lunch came around I was still feeling pretty bad. I'd never been so quick to judge a person, and I had certainly never been so quick to hate a person. I felt like I was supposed to apologize to Brandon, but when I tried to picture what I would say it sounded something like, "I'm really sorry, Brandon. I thought you were a jerk and didn't like you, but earlier when I overheard your conversation with your mom I realized maybe you're not that bad of a guy and now I think I'd really like to get to know you a little better," but no matter how I thought about it, that just sounded weird and I knew I could never say that to him.

For this reason, when I walked into the cafeteria I did something I'd never done before: I looked for Brandon to see who he was sitting with. I looked around the large cafeteria and before long I finally found him sitting alone in the back corner of the room. I immediately walked over to him.

"Mind if I sit here?" I asked nodding to the chair in front of me. I felt extremely nervous and didn't exactly know what I was doing or why I was doing it, but I was and there was no stopping now. Brandon glanced up at me, then shrugged and continued with picking at his food.

We sat in an awkward silence for a few minutes before I finally got the courage to say something. "So, I was thinking," I paused, racking my brain for what I was thinking. Then I remembered seeing something in the art closet that would be useful in our E.T. Hist. project. We already had all of the paper mache balls made to scale for the project and the plan was to glue them to a black piece of poster-board and draw stars on the poster-board. "What if, instead of gluing the planets to the poster-board we use that cardboard box in the supply closet, line it with the black poster-board, and then hang the planets from the top of the box?"

Brandon looked at me, "Uh-huh." he said, "Then what are we going to do for the moons on Asdentle and Fieskt?"

I smiled. It was the first time he'd said something that even sort of contributed. I began to think that maybe it was my fault we were doing so badly. If I hadn't disliked him from the start I would have tried harder to make the project good, and perhaps he would have tried too. "We can hang them just like the planets. It shouldn't be too hard."

He nodded. “Yeah, it shouldn’t. We can hot glue some of that clear string to the planets and moons, then attach them to the top of the box.” Brandon, who had been slouching in his chair, sat up and looked at me properly. "If you want to use the box, it’s going to take a lot more time. The others are ahead of us in doing stuff like that."

"I know. I think we should probably meet up after classes today and start. Then we can finish tomorrow during E.T. Hist. and after classes if we need. Mr. Carton is grading Friday, right?"

"Yeah. That should be good."

***

We talked about the project until the end of lunch and made more progress in those forty-five minutes than we had in four and half hours of class time. Right before lunch ended, as we were cleaning up our trays, Brandon turned to me, "Hey, uh, Naomi?"

"Yeah?"

"Um, this morning... H-How long were you standing there?"

I hadn't expected him to ask that. In fact, throughout the course of lunch I had completely forgotten about that morning. "Um. About five minutes, I think."

"Oh... So you heard..." Brandon trailed off.

"That your mom broke her leg." I said sympathetically, "Yeah, but that was about it."

"Oh, yeah. OK." Brandon said awkwardly. "Well, uh, I’ve got to go to class. See you later."

"Yeah, see you after classes." I smiled and watched him walk away, wondering why he'd been so nervous about that. Was he keeping some sort of secret, or was he just embarrassed that he only lives with his mom?