A House But Not a Home

Chapter 1

"You smell that?" Michelle would say sniffing her nose. "That's the smell of sex, drugs and homework that will probably be given to use on our first day... or maybe just ballsack, same thing.. your typical high school smell."

"How would you know that?" Charlotte asked "It's only our first day here."

The three of roamed around early in the morning trying to find all of our classes. I took a step back behind Charlotte to try to catch up.

"Oh, Shakira, how are you here? I thought you were younger than us?" Michelle caught me.

There was a reason why I tried avoiding Michelle, she was a bully. It fitted in with her boyish haircut and attitude, it was hard to believe that a girl like Charlotte would be best friends with her. To me they were complete opposites.

"She's the same grade as us." Charlotte said as if she were talking to someone stupid.

"My names not Shakira." I stated, but it was obvious she didn't care.

It's Zakia, not Shakira.

The sun was bright on our first day, surprisingly it only took us fifteen minutes of our morning to find our classes. We had a lot of time to spare so we spent it looking for potential places to meet at lunch.

"Look, I see the bro. Peace out girl scouts.." Michelle said dashing off leaving us behind.

We looked after her searching for why she dashed off and it was obvious to Charlotte. It was

Jared, or Michelle's "bro". Even though they weren't blood related, he was the closest to being an older brother to Michelle than her own.

We were left behind. It was just me and Charlotte left in the crowd, walking around awkwardly searching. There was a table nearby one of the math buildings which we found was a decent spot. It was near a corner but it was empty, it was shady that no one was there, but we went anyway to escape the awkwardness.

"See any cute guys here Z?" Charlotte asked sitting against the table.

I wasn't paying attention. "I-I-I guess." I said stuttering. "A f-few. What about you?"

I tried my best to stop myself from making more errors but couldn't help it. My speech was never perfect, people asked why I never talked and it was because of this, I would end up sounding like I was mentally ill.

"They're alright." Charlotte went. "Just don't tell my boyfriend I said that."

Before long a group of people came up to our table, it came clear that this table belonged to them. Something about them was cool, in a way. I don't know if it was the way they dressed, acted or if it was just they way they carried themselves. There was barely any color in their clothing, mostly black but not enough to call them goths. It was funny to me, something about them just made them mysterious.

One of the girls came up to the table all casual.

"Hello." she said and began to sit down all cool against the table. Next to her was another girl that gave us an eye throughout the whole time. I did my best not to look at her.

In the girl's hand was a cigarette and her other, a lighter. She lit up a smoke in plain sight.

~oooowoo~ * she inhaled and puffed away..

"Mmm, all these pretty little people." she says in a mysterious voice, gazing towards Charlotte as she holds the cigarette.

It was so.. mysterious. Her voice, her sway, I didn't even know what it was about her. I remember getting that feeling was like it was some sort of spy movie. I tried my best to avoid staring.I turned to Charlotte and saw that she was looking at me too.

"You kids, fresh?" the girl asks.

"W-We're freshmen." I went.

She payed no attention to me but had her eyes on Charlotte. I took a look at her face. It was obvious by the way she look and acted that she wasn't our grade level. She's so different from the rest of the crowd but everyone seemed to like following. I guess everything about her came together and fitted perfectly.

"Mmm,.." she went, flipping her hair.

The bell interrupted what I was going to say next.

It was time for our first class of high school.

"See you around." she said, and walking away with her group.

Charlotte looked at me, a bit weirded out about the whole situation, but we were speechless and just left it at that.

"We'll meet up at break, Z, see ya." Charlotte said.

"Yeah, I'll s-see ya."