The Gifted (Sorry no cover yet)

1-Alex

I wish navigating my sophomore year would be my biggest challenge, but my life had other plans

I slammed my locker shut just as the warning bell rang, telling me to get to class. I had biology first hour, and since it was the first day of the school year, it should have just been syllabus stuff, but Ms. Goodes was not one of the teachers you were excited to see when your schedule came in the mail. She was a Cranky, 65 year old lady with curly white hair and glasses with the strap thingy on them to keep them secured to her wrinkled old head.

"QUIET DOWN!" yelled Ms. Goodes. "Jeez, I'm kinda regretting signing up for this," muttered my best friend since like second grade, Ryan. He was a little shorter than most, with an athletic build, and tousled blonde hair. He was almost always grinning, but Ms. Goodes even took away his smile.

"All right everyone, listen up!" snapped Ms. Goodes. "My name is Ms. Goodes, G-O-O-D-E-S. We got a test today, so pull out a pencil and sit down!" Everyone groaned. "But we haven't even learned anything yet," said Maya Patel, a petite girl with curly black hair, round glasses, and darker skin. This shocked me, as she was one of the best students in our grade, and Maya didn't talk back to teachers often. "Well you shoulda studied over the summer," Ms. Goodes said, or rather screamed. "Since I'm feeling nice, I'm counting this as a quiz, so it's only 30% of your grade. No need to thank me, I already know I'm too kind." "Sure," I grumbled, but luckily she didn't hear me.

Ms. Goodes handed out the tests, which were like 5 pages each, and I got to work.

Which of these requires a stomata?                                                 A) Evaporation B) Transpiration C) Condensation D) Precipitation

Easy. I learned that in 8th grade. I circled B and continued on with the test. If the rest of the questions were like the first one I would have done pretty well. However, I had know idea what Binomial Nomenclature meant.

Right as I circled my last answer, the bell rang. It looked like half the class was still struggling on the test. I got out of my seat, put on my backpack, and headed to my locker to get my Pre-Calc textbook, when I saw someone start to fall. They were probably 10 feet down the hallway, and somehow I caught up to them and pulled them up before they hit the ground. It was Taylor Nguyen, a kid a little bit shorter than me (although I was pretty tall for my age) with olive skin, a warm smile, and medium length, dark, messy hair. He was kind of a friend of mine, but not really. "How did y-" he started to say. "I don't know man, I guess I just really didn't want to have to walk around you to get to my locker." "Well, thanks for catching me." He smiled at me and walked away.

Second and third hour went by easily, as we didn't do much in Pre-Calc and third hour was Study Hall. I chatted a bit with Ryan, who happened to be in another class of mine, about how we thought the Wild were gonna do this year.

We continued our talk over fake-taco-meat-in-a-bag at lunch. I stopped paying attention when I noticed someone out of the corner of my eye. She must have been new, because I had never seen her before. She was average height, with long and straight dark hair, pale skin, and a really pretty face. "Who's that?" I asked. "I don't know, but she's kinda hot. You should go talk to her." said Ryan. "Yeah, and get embarrassed in front of the whole grade? Good Idea." "Hey, I bet you got a good chance with her." I snorted. "Just trust me," Ryan insisted. I sighed. "Maybe Tomorrow."

The rest of the day went by pretty quick. I had APUSH (Yeah, I know, I probably should've taken easier classes) with the new girl, who I found out was named Lily. She was seated next to me, which I couldn't decide if it was good or bad. She was also in my sixth hour guitar class, which I thought was kinda strange, because she didn't look like she was the type to be interested in guitar. I saw an old friend from elementary school in guitar, a girl with shoulder-length brown hair, trendy clothes, and hazel eyes named Jordan, and we chatted a bit. Turns out she liked music a bit, as every single class she had was either playing or learning about it.

After school I went straight to the locker room at First National Arena to get ready for hockey practice. As a sophomore, it was my first year playing highschool hockey, and I was hoping to at least make JV, though it was possible I would make varsity if I did really well in tryouts. Today was just Captains practice though. I tried to focus, but I kept thinking about Lily's piercing green eyes and her round pink lips- Okay, I was getting a little weird. I pushed her to the back of my mind until practice was over.

In the locker room, Breck, one of our Assistant captains, came up to me as I was untying my skates.

"You good Thompson? Can't have you playing like that during tryouts or you won't even make J-Gold." (Look that up if you don't know what it is) "I'm fine, just a little tired," I lied. "Well get better sleep tonight, cause we can't have you messing up our drills."