Orin's POV
- - -
The best year of my life:
Day: 2
- - -
After six class periods of attendance and "classroom rules" lectures, I dropped my pile of binders down on my lunch table. Soon after, the rest of the group plopped, dropped, and slammed, their piles of binders down on our lunch table, aka my getaway.
After the plopping, dropping, and slamming of the books, my table started the first day of school off with an extremely special event: our normal, everyday, routine.
Tyler, Greg, and Marshall started their rampage around the cafeteria, looking for kids to take quarters from and get sodas from the vending machines, which usually resulted in them kicking or punching the glass and the lunch monitors stalking over and sending them to the office.
Tommy and Paige headed out towards the south stairway to make out or whatever they do every week.
Brevon and Luke paraded around, fixing their freshly cut hair and winking at girls.
Sam took out a book and started reading.
Tony took out his summer reading homework that no one in the school does but him.
Zach walked from table to table talking to the other guys about his "sweet new dirt bike."
I sat and folded loose leaf paper into planes.
I used to be embarrassed by what I did but I've learned to never care what people thought of me. This resulted in good and bad things. Most times it was good, but over the past few years it has gotten me into trouble. Like the time two years ago when I had climbed into a window, high about the east stairway, to see how far I could throw my plane. Another time I had crawled across the floor of my social studies class to get a textbook when the scrub of a teacher had just finished screaming at us to stay in our seats. I did that because I had to, not to get attention, which is what I was accused of when I was caught.
I used to hang around this girl named Ellie—she ended up moving to Wisconsin two years ago—and she was really shy and self conscious and I think that's how we got along so well. That day in social studies was because she needed the textbook but was to scared of what people would think if she crawled over to get it. I never think of that. I never consider other options to avoid embarrassment. I'm not sure what that makes me, but it helped me soar over fifty different planes into the trash cans in the cafeteria.
I don't really know why I like paper planes. My mom thinks it's because of my dreams to travel the world and become an extreme photographer. I don't really know and I don't really care.
---
Before I had sat down in social studies, I had grabbed a tall stack of loose leaf papers from the teachers desk. She had given me a weird look but didn't say anything. The first few weeks were always the hardest. The teachers didn't know who I was yet. They didn't know my paper plane habits.
I was sitting in the back corner so it would only allow a person on one side of me. A few minutes later a girl placed her books on the desk next to me. She smiled a tight smile as she sat down, glancing around the classroom, then proceeding to scrape the dirt out from under her fingernails with her pencil.
For a second I saw Ellie sitting there next to me but I blinked and she was gone. I could say that Ellie was my best friend and when she moved we tried to stay in touch but the time zones were so different and she was always in school and it never worked out. I wondered if this girl would be the new Ellie. But who was I kidding, she probably had lots of friends and was outgoing and popular, not to mention I only met her—not even met her—two minutes ago.
She glanced down at my stack of paper and furrowed her eyebrows, but then looked away. I watched her for another second then began folding the first piece of paper into a plane. Seconds later I reached for the stapler and put a staple through the bottom to keep it from unfolding. I flicked my wrist and my plane flew across the classroom, hitting the white board and falling to the ground.
The teacher whipped her head around and her eyes flickered around my half of the room, before landing on my stack of papers and the stapler in my hand, then up to my eyes.
"There will be no paper planes or spit balls in my room," she declared, glaring at another kid as she said spit balls.
"Now," she said looking back at me and pointing to the fallen plane. "Pick it up!"
I rose from my seat next to the girl and walked slowly to the board, bending down to grab the plane. I brought it over to the trash can and dropped it in, walking back to my seat, not fazed by any of this.
"What's your name?" The teacher asked.
"Orin Cossco," I said simply, before picking the dirt out of my nails just as the girl had done minutes before. The teacher glared at me a minute more before realizing that I wasn't going to say anything else, and continued on with her lesson.
I glanced over at the girl who had the tiniest smile on her face. She picked up her pencil in her left hand and wrote her name on the worksheet. Serenity Scandey it read.
---
The last bell rang and I sat through music class until the announcements came on. When we were dismissed I exited through the main doors and started my walk. The buses were lined up from one end of the school to the other and my bus was the very last one. I shoved my earbuds in and out my backpack over both shoulders.
"Orin?" I heard a voice say my name behind me. Looking over my shoulder and seeing no one, I looked back at the sidewalk.
"Orin." I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked over and Serenity stood next to me with a weird look on her face. "Hey, it was pretty cool what you did in social studies.." she said carefully.
"What?" I asked. I knew exactly what she was talking about but I didn't really know how to reply. No one had ever come up to me and said throwing paper planes was "cool."
"The planes..in social studiesssss... never mind," Serenity said awkwardly. She walked off the sidewalk and up the stairs to her bus: 372.
I stood there for a moment watching her walk down the isle, before continuing on to the end of the bus line.
I'm not really sure what that was but for some reason I got the slightest bit excited when I turned around and she was there...
