Drifting

Chapter 1

Michael walked into the school as confident as ever and flashed a smile at the onlookers who gawked at him. He knew they were all jealous, who could blame them? He was Michael Helser. Popular, attractive, talented, and a total bad*ss. The only person who was unfazed by him was Taylor and for a moment, Michael paused to think about her. Taylor thought that Michael was, to put it bluntly, an overly confident jerk who had become an absolute douche, he knew she thought that (as much as it hurt), and everyone else did too. It's not like he thought any better of her though, he thought she had become a self-centered brat who thought of herself too highly. Michael could still remember the days back in elementary school when they had been inseparable, but that was a long time ago. Things had changed. They had changed. And all anyone else at the school knew was that something big had happened that caused them to change, but neither of them would ever talk about it. Michael snapped away from his thoughts and turned to his friends with a cocky smile on his face.

"What are you doing at school, loser?" He asked in a joking way to his best friend, Nick.

"Someone told me to go to Hell, so I followed their advice." He answered and they both laughed.

"Well, next time tell them to f**k off, because I want to skip tomorrow."

"What kind of kid skips the second day of school?"

"The type that doesn't like going."

"Touché, my friend, touché."

"So, are you in, or what?"

"Yeah, count me in."

"Okay, well I'm off, see you later."

"See you."

Michael walked off, his steps confident and sure as he walked down the hall to his locker. He didn't miss a step until he saw her and almost fell backwards. There was Taylor, standing at his locker, staring at him with a worried look on her face. He should have expected this, she did it every year, but it still managed to catch him by surprise and he staggered a bit before regaining his poise.

"Blondie, we haven't had a single class together since fourth grade, I don't think we have anything to worry about." He said as he reached her, leaning against a locker.

"We won't know until we check, now will we?" She asked in an annoyed tone.

"Guess not." He responded, defeated, and started to search through his bag. After a few more seconds he pulled out a folded piece of paper that looked exactly like the one she was already holding in her hand. He handed her his paper and she unfolded both of them.

"Happy now, Blondie?" He said, expecting a snarky response, but instead nothing. He looked up at her face only to see that she had turned pale and a look of horror was sprawled across her face. She handed him the papers and he saw it. Their class schedules, side by side, identical. They had every single class together, all year.

"Oh." Michael said, also beginning to turn pale.

"Yeah. Oh." She said back simply, before grabbing her schedule from his hands and running down the hallway. This was not going to be a fun year.

Michael wasn't ready to go to first period anymore. He wasn't ready to go to any period. She would be there, they would be forced to spend more than an hour together, in a small room, with no pauses. . . and then they would have to repeat that for every other class. . . everyday. . . all year.

He wouldn't do it. He couldn't do it. And he knew she couldn't either, so when the bell rang, signaling that he had to get to class, he turned around, and walked straight out of the school, determined not to see her. Whereas Taylor sat patiently in the classroom, waiting for the class to fill up and the lesson to begin, dreading the moment that he would walk in, but it never came. She repeated her worry in each class of the day, but each time he wasn't there and she couldn't have been more relieved. If he had shown up they would have felt the tension. They would have been forced to remember that night, oh so long ago, and what had happened. And they might have ignored it, they might have pretended like it had never happened, but it would remain there. In their minds, in their memories, never going away, never giving them peace.