The Wallflower of Parkview High

Chapter Three

The rest of the day went by in a blur. I got a few more strange looks from people probably wondering who this red-headed weirdo was and why he suddenly began attending this school. The rest of my teachers were pretty nice, though my language arts teacher, Mrs. Johnson, did give me a look when I was taking my pencil pouch out of my backpack while she was talking.

At the end of the day, I barely made it through the crowd of people before walking to my dad's car. As soon as I opened the door, my dad smiled at me.

"How was school, Noah?" he asked as I climbed into the passenger seat and set my backpack on the floor in front of me. I shrugged.

"It was okay." I answered. Just okay. There was no way I was going to tell him about how I got embarrassed by Mr. Greene and the looks people gave me; I didn't want him to go into his overprotective mode.

"Did you meet anybody today?"

"Yeah, a boy named Zander who sits next to me in PE, at least for now."

"Good for you!" my dad exclaimed. "Was he nice?"

I thought back to when he had talked to me during PE. He wasn't really mean, persay, but then again, when I thought back to how he had laughed when Mr. Greene called me out in front of the class...

"I don't really know." I finally responded.

"Huh. Well at least you met someone." dad said.

"Yeah."

The ride home was silent after that. As soon as I got home, I made a beeline towards my room, collapsed on my bed, and closed my eyes. The events from today swirled around in my mind and overwhelmed me so much that I didn't know where to start. The looks, being embarrassed by teachers, the vague conversation that I had with Zander...

I layed on my back for what seemed like hours, only moving to go down to dinner, go to the bathroom, and complete a few problems of my math homework.

Later I was busy staring at a crack in my ceiling when I heard a knock on my door. I sighed and got up to go open it.

"What do you want, Charlotte?" I grumbled, looking up at my sister.

"Jeez, calm down Noah, I just want to ask how school went." Charlotte said, and without waiting for me to respond, she strode into my room, closed the door and plopped down on my bed. She put my stuffed cow (that I had named George) into her lap and patted the spot next to her. I awkwardly shuffled over to my bed and sat down.

"You still have that stuffed cow, Noah? I thought you got rid of it two years ago!" Charlotte teased. My cheeks turned red and I snatched George from her, placing him on top of my pillow.

"Can you please shut up?" I whined. Charlotte just grinned.

"So, did anything interesting happen at school today?" she asked.

"I had this short conversation with this boy in PE." I answered. Charlotte's eyes lit up.

"Oooh! Tell me more about this boy!" she urged.

"Um, well, he has very long eyelashes and can run very fast."

"Is he friendly at all?"

"I can't tell." I responded, looking down at my lap. "He didn't seem mean when we were talking, but a few minutes before that, he laughed at me when I got embarrassed by my PE teacher."

"Hmm." Charlotte hummed, a thoughtful expression on her face. "Is he like that towards anybody else?"

"I haven't seen him laugh at anybody else if that answers your question."