Code of Family:1357

Chapter 1: What the Heck Just Happened!?

My name is Tori Langer. I live with six other brothers and sisters and our ages are our nicknames, as weird as that sounds. I'm thirteen years old which has quickly become what everyone calls me: thirteen. Even my mom and dad call me that. But, hey, I don't mind. It's cool. Anyway I'm getting ready for school with a now sore stomach. If you must ask, my little sister, Toni, flopped on my stomach to wake me up. She ran off before I had a chance to slap her head, though. She's a pain, but I lover her anyway. We all had to pile into my dad's minivan. My mom was away on a business trip again and Dad had to take us to school. When we got there, I had to take Aaron to his kindergarten class since he refused to go by himself, and after that, all I had to do was walk myself and Caitlin over to the middle school and go to the gym where I always sat. I was always sitting with my friends, Kia and Hilla. They didn't seem to care that I was everyone else's definition of a weirdo.

The three of us chatted until it was time for us to go to our boring classrooms. I had my first period with Kia, who never payed any attention in class because, somehow, someway she got on her phone the entire time and hasn't got caught not once . (I seriously need to learn how to do that) I understand why she does it though. Our Social Studies teacher is the most boring person you could ever listen to. All she does is show us videos with people who seem a little too excited about their topics and all they do is put us back to sleep. I wish Mrs. Pash could hurry up and get fired already. It's obvious that no one likes her. I know what you're thinking, but there are many reasons for us hating her.

1) She never even gets off her lazy butt and teaches us like she's supposed to

2)Every video she shows us is boring!

3) Whenever one of us asks a question she goes on this big rant about how we should've paid attention to the video, or how we're so needy, or whatever else stupid she says. I don't know why she thinks that we shouldn't ask questions, but she does and it's getting more annoying by the minute.

Anyway, we watched, yet again, another boring video about the way westward expansion and the removal of the Indians affected America. Usually I'm one of the only kids who actually pay attention despite how dull it is, but this time, I went right to sleep and didn't wake up until Kia started shaking me. Finally, class was over. We walked over to our next class, which was my favorite of them all! Not only did we get to choose where we sat, but it was Language Arts.

I always liked language arts. Especially when we got to write stories about whatever we wanted. Me and Hilla always had the best stories, or at least in our opinion. Hilla was already at our little trio of desks when we walked in. She sat where she always was, in the middle. I took the left side of her and Kia took the right. She checked her phone before putting it down on her desk. I swear, everyone smiled when Mrs. Lavica walked in. She was the nicest teacher you were ever going to meet. No one ever got in trouble in her class (which is more than I can say for Mrs. Pash's homeroom) mainly because of that. If you got an answer right, she always gave out candy and cool pencils and other things like that. If you were really lucky she either gave you a dollar or 10 extra points on your next test. That's why I like Mrs. Lavica. She makes you feel good for knowing the answers.

Today, we were studying 5 famous poets: Robert Frost, Emily Dickenson, Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, and Langston Hughes. We were supposed to find patterns in their writing style and create our own poems based off of their style. Hilla had already started when Mrs. Lavica was finished giving her instructions. I didn't really know how she did it, but stuff like poetry just came naturally to her. I had to think for a minute before choosing to write something inspiring like Langston Hughes. His poetry always made you want to get up and do something. I started writing the first thing that came into my head:

As much as a blaze of fire

needs to kindle

Our time begins to dwindle

away from our lazy hands

and awaiting fingers fair

wishing the wasted time still there

"That's pretty good Tori." I looked up to see Hilla smiling at me. I had no idea she was reading what I wrote. I thanked her anyway and told her that I probably won't be able to add any more than what I've written already. Surprisingly enough, she told me that poems by Langston Hughes tended to be short like that anyway. Who would've thunk?

The rest of the day whizzed on by but when we were switching to our sixth period classes, a boy I recognized (I think his name was Matthew but don't quote me on that) walked up to where I was standing with Kia while she was texting her sister. "Hey, Langer. Can I talk to you a minute?" I shrugged. "Alone." I felt my cheeks getting hot. I didn't know him at all and he was asking to talk to me privately? What does he want? What the heck just happened?