Lions, Tigers, and Bears

I Feel It All

My phone buzzed under my pillow and I quickly turned it off.  I set my alarm but I didn't really need it.  Most days I have to hit snooze at least twice before rolling over, rubbing my eyes, and starting my day.  Not this particular day though.  I was about to be the new piece of meat at Neverforth Public High School.

I spent my whole life growing up in farmland Kansas.  That's not to say I was home schooled, I did go to a Catholic elementary, junior, and senior high with other people.  I knew how to interact with others and wasn't too worried about my social structure with new people.  I was actually really excited about moving and starting my junior year at a new school in Las Vegas, NV.  Of course i'm upset that we had to sell our farm and our animals, but I didn't have many friends (or at least close friends) and my family and I moved here together.   Las Vegas is exciting.  Everything is open all the time, I can go out to get groceries past 7 in the evening!  We moved to Las Vegas because this is where my oldest brother, Thomas, moved with his fiance, their wedding is in two months.  We were just going to visit when the time came, but with the repetitive horrible crop seasons and my fathers drinking habit (that I blame on the crop seasons), the bank took our farm.   I have four older brothers, and I am the youngest and only daughter.  Does that make my parents protective? Yes. Did my father own a shot gun and sit on our porch? Yes...

Stretching my long legs in the air, I finally rolled out of bed and headed to the only bathroom in our small two bedroom apartment.  It was still weird getting used to not living in a one story house.  The apartment complex was small with only 3 floors and 6 apartments total.  I knew there was a family with a small son living on the second floor, but the other apartments mostly had older couples who refused to move into a retirement community and liked to gamble in the afternoons before the sun went down.  I went to the bathroom and washed my face before applying light make up.  I didn't wear much make up, I honestly didn't know how to wear it.  My mother never wore make up and some girls from my old school would help out, but I just applied some mascara to my already long eyelashes.  My chocolate brown hair hung in waves down to right below my shoulders and I decided to leave it alone.  My clothes I didn't worry too much about either, there's not much to choose from.  I have a couple dresses that I wear on a nice occasion, but I decided to go with my favorite pair of jeans (which were the perfect size a little too big and I had to roll up to avoid walking on them), and a long sleeve button up top which was decorated a pale pink with small white flowers.  I tucked the bottoms of the shirt into my jeans. My body type is slender.  I would like to say i'm tall, about 5'7", but I guess that's just a little more than average height.  Not much in the chest region, but a boy last year told me I had a cute butt.  Other than that I just feel long.  Long arms, long legs, long awkward stares that i'm going to get by being new.

"Good morning, mama." I said to her as I sat down at the table which already had a glass of orange juice, a piece of toast, one egg, and two strips of bacon on a plate waiting.

"Morning June-bug, did you sleep okay?"

"Not a wink, too excited." I said smiling and biting the toast.

"Well i'm happy to hear you're excited.  I've got to work late tonight, but you can make dinner for yourself. Papa will bring you to school and Thomas will pick you up." She said cleaning up some of the dishes.  She was a nanny for a married couple of lawyers whom have enough money to buy a mansion, but not enough time to spend with their child.  My father just got a job packaging boxes and shipping them out to various places.  He's used to manual labor, but he complains that it's boring work.  I ate my breakfast, brushed my teeth, collected my bag, and waited in the car.  He came out a couple minutes later in his uniform and hopped into the truck.

"Morning, papa." I said to him as he started the car.  He grumbled a little bit and took a sip of his black coffee.  It was expected, he didn't speak much before finishing his first cup of coffee for the day.  The school was only six blocks away, but my parents didn't trust this city and wouldn't let me walk for my first few weeks here.