Innocence

1

    It was the first day of school, eighth grade, and I wore a blue Superman shirt with a blue tank top underneath, and white shorts that were a size zero, so they were a little tight on me. 
    First, I had to go to homeroom, which was all the way down the hallway from where my locker was. The teacher was Mrs. Gall. She teaches a special education class for students who basically... need help. Mrs. Gall really is a nice woman though, and she is married to one of my favorite gym teachers that I had in elementary school. 
    I knew and recognized some of the people in my homeroom. Kate and Jayla were two of my best friends who I've known forever, especially Kate, who's always had my back through everything. Kate is so intelligent, and Jayla is so reliable. There were two other guys in my homeroom that I also recognized. One was a a shorter kid named Leo, who had red braces, really dark, dilated eyes and dark hair. Another was a clean-cut, adorable guy named Niall, who had big, piercing black eyes that you couldn't look away from.  I had never really talked to them, so the most I would say to them would be a greeting.

    I had first period with so many of my good friends, and I was so happy. Shay was in my class.  She was my right hand  and I couldn't live without her. My first period teacher, on the other hand, I could live without. She was actually out of her mind.  It almost seemed like Mrs. Johnstone had no brain in her head and no smart bone in her body. I'm surprised she was even teaching this honors biology class because as we all got settled in at our desks and took out our pencils for the first time as an eighth grader, she handed out a worksheet titled, "All About Me."  We would have to write down our favorite foods, colors, and sports.
After biology, I made my way downstairs to gym class. There were three teachers in the gym: Mrs. Johns, Mrs. Bernan, and Mr. Q. All the students were split up depending on what their schedule said their teacher was. I went with Mrs. Johns, and so did this little blonde girl named Lacey, who I was Friends with, but not really close to. There was another girl in my group named Cal, who I was actually very close with, but she couldn't participate in P.E. because she had a friend named cancer.
Cal had been fighting cancer for about a year now and I've been her friend through it all. We all have, Jayla, Elle, Sara B. and Sara Z., and Caitlyn. Shay was also a good friend of ours, but she was a good friend to everyone, and liked to think she was so popular. That was our lunch table though!

Two of my best guy friends were also in my gym class, Matt and Danny. They had Mr. W as a teacher. Shay was in the same period as well, and she had Mrs. Bernan. Even though we all had different people as a teacher, we would still play sports together and mix the classes once in a while.

    My third class of the day was Spanish.  There was a nice girl that I was seated next to named Jessica, who had brown hair and freckles, and was really just beautiful.  I also had a friend named Dani who was super nice.  But most importantly, the guy I really liked was in my Spanish class.  He was a tall goofball named Ian.  Ian was so handsome but he was so silly. He had brown hair and blue eyes, and braces. 
    I remember the day I met Ian.  It was last year toward the end of school, and I saw him walking in the hallway right before I went into English. I knew his sister Ally because she went to the same volleyball camp as me one time when I was little, and she was also good friends with my brother, Jack.
    "Hey," I shouted at him, wondering if he knew who I was.  "Aren't you Ally's brother?"
    He smiled and looked me in the eyes.  When I looked at his eyes, I felt comfortable and I felt odd, but in a good way.  I hadn't even met him before, but I felt like I already knew him.  The way he looked at me was different, like he understood who I was.  I felt crazy for thinking all of this in such a little amount of time, especially since we were in seventh grade.
    "Yeah, and your Jack's sister," his smile was gorgeous.
    "I'm Annabelle."
    "Ian."
    I ended up getting Ian's number because my friend Shay gave it to me, and I have no idea how she got it. She managed to get every guys number, and honestly she loved the chase.  She'd always get a guys number, text them for a while, and when they started to develop feelings for her, she'd push them away.  But that wasn't the case with Ian.  He was all mine. I remember nights when we'd text for hours and hours, and even talk on the phone with each other.  We would start conversations about nonsense that led to us arguing over something stupid for 6 hours.  I'm not 100% sure if we were flirting, but it sure felt like it.  One day Shay lost her mind because where ever I went, I'd be texting Ian.  So she texted Ian and told him to stop texting me.  But of course, Ian didn't understand why she was saying that, and we would continue texting and talking, and flirting. 

    When about 4 months passed, I found myself walking into Spanish with that same feeling looking into Ian's eyes that I had the first day I met him.  He saw me too, and of course he greeted me with the same thing we always said to each other.
    "Hey loser," he said, smiling. 
This was going to be a fun class, I thought.

    My fourth class was math, my fifth lunch, and my sixth was English. I basically had the same people in most of my classes; Shay, Kate, Jayla, and another friend, Cassie, who I'd been friends with since pre-school, was in my math class. My last class of the day was social studies, and in that class we would focus on American history.
When the day ended, I found my locker next to Kate and grabbed my book bag and headed home. I would have to take the bus that I dreaded every day, but I had to get over it and just sit through the ride. The only person that wasn't completely lame on my bus was Maggie, even though she annoyed the shit out of me sometimes. But the bus ride wasn't too bad with her. I just couldn't wait to get home and relax after the first day of school.