Thin Ice

It's a girl!

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Excuse the mistakes

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I was late.

It was only my second day of school, and I was over five minutes late for homeroom. My dad had forgotten some files that he needed for work today, so he’d had to turn around run back home before dropping me off. This resulted in me sprinting into the school, turning prematurely and running straight into a wall, and giving myself whiplash.

This was by no means the way I wanted to start the day. First of all, it might give Ms. Brown a bad idea of me, since she’d basically said that the only thing she cared about was me being on time to homeroom. Second, I was already freaking out a little inside because of my try out today, and I’d managed to start the day out stressed.

After dumping my lunch in my locker and grabbing the folders and notebooks that I would need, I slammed my locker shut. It took me a minute to remember the way Penny had gotten me to homeroom, but when I did, I took off running through the hallway. Less than a minute, I stumbled into homeroom, but people only stared at me for a few moments before returning to their conversations.

Penny was sitting at the same desk as yesterday, with a copy of Candide in her hands, and as I looked around, I noticed that Ms. Brown was nowhere to be seen and neither was Dane. I frowned and walked over to Penny, and I settled down in the desk in front of her. I swiveled around and snapped my fingers to get Penny’s attention.

“Huh?” she asked, jumping as she was pulled from the zone she was in. Penny took a moment to get her bearings, and when she saw it was me sitting in front of her, she exhaled loudly. “You scared the crap out of me!” Penny hissed, bookmarking the page she was on.

“Sorry,” I replied, and I gestured towards the teacher desk at the front of the room, “Where’s Ms. Brown?”

“Oh,” Penny said with a shrug, “she’s running late, like always.”

“What?” I asked, “She told me that she just cared about people being on time?”

“Yeah, I know,” Penny replied with a shrug, “Ms. Brown isn’t ever here on time, though, so it doesn’t actually matter.”

So I’d stressed out for nothing? More importantly, I’d accidently slammed my face into a wall for nothing? Seriously? I ran a hand through my hair and let out a sound of frustration before remembering what I wanted to talk about with Penny.

“Hey,” I said, propping my head up on my hands as my elbows rested on her desk, “You didn’t tell me your dad coached the Ice Devils when we were talking about it on Friday.”

Penny shrugged dismissively, though there was a sense of anger in her eyes, and replied, “I didn’t think it was relevant.” After a moment, Penny frowned and tipped her head to the side. “Wait, how did you find that out?”

I blanched and quickly searched for a viable excuse. However, I found that Penny was the one person I didn’t want to lie to about my tryout. So, I decided to tell her the truth about how I knew about her dad.

“Well,” I drawled, “I met him yesterday at the Ice Berg.”

Penny’s eyes went wide with surprise, but then they narrowed as she started to piece things together. “Did you go talk to him about trying out for the team?” she hissed, and I nodded.