Soul Searching

Chapter 2- Chase Watson

I'm up at the crack ass of dawn hitting three-pointers in my backyard before school. Junior year is the most important and the most difficult year of high school. The stats from my games that I'll send to colleges will be from this year. My grades have to be great this year, that means distinguished honors. I mean, I already have offers from schools for basketball. Eleven to be exact. But none of those offers are from the University of Tennessee. It's been my dream school ever since I started playing basketball.
I watched one of their games against Louisiana State when I was 7 with my dad, and I was completely taken away by the point guard Jeremy Collins. He was so agile, so quick on his feet. Everyone knew he was the best at what he did, and he knew it too. I could tell how much he loved basketball by the way he was everywhere on the court all the time, and how his smile lit up every time his teammates made a shot. He was so energetic and that energy has stayed with me since.
I'm broken out of thought when I feel my phone ringing in my pocket, and when I go to look I roll my eyes. It's my girlfriend Megan, well, girlfriend might be a stretch. I used to like Megan back when we were freshmen because she'd always been so cool. I remember my first day of high school, and all my friends had gone to different schools in the area so I had no one to sit with. I was hunched over my peanut butter and jelly sandwich, glued to my phone, and stuffed away in the back of the lunchroom. I was so embarrassed that I had become the kid who couldn't find friends because that had never been me. Throughout middle school, I'd maintained the same friend group and I never worried about who I was gonna sit with, who I could work with, or what I was doing that weekend. I guess Megan had seen me and felt sorry, so she'd walked up to me and asked me who I was.
"I'm Chase." I looked back down at my phone for a second before feeling rude, and I looked back up at her, except that almost felt scary. I decided to just look to the side of her, trying my best to feel comfortable but not look super weird. Well, I think it's too late to not look weird but a guy can still try.
"I'm Megan, I just saw you by yourself and was wondering if you wanted to sit with me and my friends?" This made me look her in the eyes. When I looked up, I saw chocolate brown eyes, covered under thick, long eyelashes. Her face was a warm, tanned shade, and she added honey-blond highlights to her dark hair to complement her skin tone. It was obvious that she cared about how she looked and that she wanted to present herself in the best way possible, but she did it in a way that she still looked natural.
I realized I was starting a second too late, and tried to recover myself. "Um, yeah sure, thanks, Megan." I gathered up my stuff as fast as I could without looking insane, and I followed her to her table. The round table she sat at had about ten chairs, and all but two of them were filled. I recognized a guy, Seamus Gaffery, from my world history class. He looked so comfortable with everyone he talked to, and even though this was our first day, he seemed like he'd known these people for years. The girl Seamus was talking to was in my homeroom and she was sitting with a group of girls who looked like genuine carbon copies of each other. They were all blond, wearing trendy clothes, and they all presented themselves like they were famous. Walking up to them had me shaking because what if they thought I was weird? I didn't think I was weird, but my thoughts weren't important.
I was getting closer to their table, and they all, one by one, started to look up at Megan and me and stare at us. They were just staring at me. I must have been shaking or looking incredibly constipated because the guy, Seamus, stood up and held out his hand. When I took it, he didn't give me a regular handshake, he pulled me into a 'bro handshake', where he grabbed my hand and patted my back with the other.
"Hey, I'm Seamus," He looked behind him and began to point the kids out, right to left, "and that's Haley, Kate, Jasmine, Lucy, and Quinn," He then pointed out two guys on the opposite side of the table, "Zack and Ashton." I didn't remember half of their names, so that's great, but Seamus patted the only open seat at the table next to him. I sat down with shaking hands, more nervous than I had ever been in my life, which is silly. These are just freshmen who go to the same classes I do, who do the same homework I do, and who eat in the same lunch room. But still, I perceived these people as objects I had to possess and be like, or like Gods I had to impress.
"So Chase, how has your first day been?" Seamus broke the silence to ask. His warm blond hair fell on his face in strands and after a few minutes, he stopped fixing them. He stared at me when he asked this, confident enough to assume I wouldn't find it weird. I didn't.
"Uh, it's been fine. I can tell World History is gonna be a pain in my ass, Mr. Gallagher sucks." This got a laugh from not only Seamus but some of the girls as well.
As I got comfortable with Megan's friends, I started to forget why I was so nervous in the first place. I learned that I have math with Zach and Jasmine and that I have biology with Megan. I felt like I'd won the lottery, being set with people to look forward to seeing on my first day.