Coping Mechanism

Chapter 1

As Mr. Cock Suc- I mean Costiq rambled on about the syllabus and his lack of tolerance for cell phones, I surveyed the room to make sure I hadn't overlooked any friends I might have that period. It was third period of my first day of freshman year. Everyone told me that the next four years will come and go more quickly than I could imagine, but that's not the point. The point is that lunches rely on the subject of your third period class; mine happened to be Math and I wanted to have some sort of reassurance that I'd have friends to sit with at lunch.

My surveying was cut short by someone opening the door. He's tall with, I'll be honest, a blonde bowl on his head which looks less like a bowl because it curls up on the sides. His eyes are a piercing light blue, but their intense color is contradicted by the sad-puppy shape they have.

I'm cut short again. This time it's by Mr. Costiq asking "Why are you late? What's your name? Do you have a pass?"

"They don't give out passes on the first day" he answered, seeming pleased with himself.

"Alright then, what about my other two questions?"

"I'm late because I couldn't find your room and my name is Walker Bilk."

The teacher walked over to his computer and logged into the attendance system. When he found Walker's name he replied "You're a junior and you couldn't find your way here?"

"Yea" Walker answered with an attitude, but not quite enough to get himself in trouble.

"Just sit in your seat behind Nathalie..." I could see he was struggling to say my last name, but he didn't look to me for help so I let him figure it out on his own. "...Nathalie... just sit behind her" he said, pointing at me.

He sat down in the seat behind me and tapped me on the shoulder when the teacher had started talking again. "What even is your last name because I think it almost caused a stroke" he asked jokingly.

"Amaryllis, like the flower. He could've sounded it out."

"I could understand his confusion then."

Before I could reply, he shot a glance at the teacher then back to me, telling me I could turn around to avoid getting in trouble.

The lunch bell rang not too long after our conversation and I met my friend Paige at the back of the room along with Ashton. I've had a crush on Ashton since seventh grade, but more about that later.

Paige is shorter than me, but not my much considering I'm only 5'3". Her hair is brown in a bob style with bangs. Despite her petite height, she's curvy. Although she is gorgeous altogether, her eyes are my favorite feature of hers. They're my favorite eye color, light green.

As we walked down the hallway and down the steps to the cafeteria, the three of us made incredibly dumb jokes and laughed what seemed like the entire time we were at lunch and even all the way back to the classroom.

When the bell rang for third lunch which signals us to start class again, Mr. Costiq hands out classwork to review things we should already know how to do. He made sure to put particular emphasis on that fact.

I don't like math very much, but I'm good at it for some reason. Plus the paper was simple equation solving; things like "x + 54 = 2x + 10" were what we had to solve so it was easy for me to finish quickly.

I looked around the room some more after I finished and no one else was done. (Apart from the kids on their phones who hadn't even looked at the paper who were a different kind of done).

I felt a tap on my shoulder again. "Can you help up?" Walter asked, gesturing to himself and the girl sitting to his right.

"Sure" I began to explain how to work out the problems and paused for a second to see if they understood. I saw the 'ah-hah' moment resonate on their faces and we all laughed and then got shushed by the teacher.

The girls name, I later found out, is Brianna, but everyone calls her Breezy.