Synchro

Sync Ch.2

I can hear Talia and Emmy before I see them. Even though the loud, obnoxious hallway noises of a Monday morning, their laughter echoed into the school loudly. My head pounded as I slowly put my books into my locker, hoping they’d quiet down before coming up next to me.

“Hey…Oh my god, Hannah, you look awful!” Talia screamed at me, jumping back a little when I closed my locker door.

“Gee…thanks,” I mutter, looking around the hallway, crouching into myself. I wasn’t comfortable around people. There’s too many of them in school, but it seems like there’s always so many more on Monday morning than any other morning.

Emmy started laughing at my “I hate you” face when a tall, Italian boy came in through the doors at the end of the hallway. “Who’s he?”

Both Emmy and Talia turn around, searching for whom I was talking about. It didn’t take them very long.

“The hot one?” Talia inquired, and Emmy nodded in response.

“She wouldn’t care about anyone else. He’s the only one interesting on this side of the hallway.”

“Oh, he’s Deveon. A new kid. I don’t understand why they wouldn’t wait to move until the end of the school year, there’s only a few weeks left of school. But this is his last year of high school, and his family wanted to be near his college. You know, that type of thing. He’s originally from Italy, but he doesn’t have an accent. Straight D student, egotistical, very rude, really everything that sucks about a guy all put together. The only reason he really is going to college is because he has devoted his life to synchronized swimming, already swimming on the Junior Italian International Men’s Team for a few years before he moved to America when he was nine. …I think that’s it…” Talia listed off facts like she memorized them last night before coming into school today.

“How the hell do you know this?” I ask, amazed and slightly disgusted at the same time. Talia was always the first one to know almost everything about a new kid, and she could rattle off information she’s stored in her brain about them at anytime as long as you asked her. If you gave her fifteen minutes to learn as much about a person without actually speaking to them, just following them, you could probably get a whole history of that person, their family, personality, and psychology. Talia just is one that is social butterfly.

Emmy and I on the other hand are as anti-social as we physically can be. I’ve come to hiss at people I don’t want to talk to, and Emmy is really good at ignoring and pretending to not hear people. It really doesn’t help that we have Talia as a friend, cause she’s always attracting new people to us, but she’s not a terrible person. She just has an unique personality.

“Duh, what do you think? I talked to him this morning! He’s a perv. You wouldn’t like him what so ever, Hannah.”

“I don’t like people in general, what would make him so different?” I ask, starting my walk to math class.

“You never know, you might actually find someone who hates people as much as you do, and you guys can live happily ever after in that little emo corner of yours.” Talia said, marching off in the opposite direction of me. “Okay, well, toodles you two. Gotta go blow in my horn now!” She yelled across the hall to Emmy and I, attracting good and bad attention (mostly bad). I roll my eyes, waving in her direction, before quickly pulling Emmy into our geeky math class, where no one likes to talk to anyone else.

***

That afternoon, I decided to go to the pool for some strange reason. I was drawn to it. Because I was smart and knew this would happen some day, I always kept the swimsuit of the routine I had to practice the most in my school backpack during the week, just in case sudden cravings for water come out of no where.