Tingle

Chapter 1

"Come on! Oh God, we're gonna be so late!"

I rushed down the narrow hallway, tailing after my friend. I tried to maintain a slower speed than her, because at the speed she was going, she could probably knock down a football player. I watched as the flyers and posters on the walls danced around from the trail of wind she was leaving behind her, but still stayed attached to the pins holding them there. I brushed past several doors, stealing a glance through every window that one of my friends were on the other side of.

"Ugh, slow down, Skye! You're gonna crash through a wall at the rate you're going!"

With this, she slowed down a lot more. Ever since she ran into an opening door in third grade and cracked her head open, she's been terrified of crashing into anything at all. I finally caught up to her, even though she slowed down and was almost walking, I had been at least fifteen feet behind her still. We finally reached the end of the hallway and stopped at the last door on the left. We silenced ourselves almost immediately and got it together as well before even daring to open the door. Once we were settled down and our breathing was normal and quiet, Skye reached for the door handle and turned it slowly, trying not to let it squeak. She was successful at that part, but once the door opened further, the hinges didn't stay very quiet. Their loud creek sound disturbed the class and caused everybody to turn their heads in our direction. This was why I always had her open the door and go in first, because I didn't want to draw any attention to myself.

We walked in slowly and cautiously, watching each step as if, if we made wrong one, the floor would crumble beneath our feet. Quietly making our ways to our separate seats, I tried to avoid eye contact with everybody as I sat down. I sighed hardly audibly and brushed my chocolate hair away from my eyes and behind my ear, looking down at my thighs as if it would decrease the level of embarrassment. We were fifteen minutes late to first period and didn't have a note to excuse either of us, so we were most likely screwed today.

Mrs. Gerneae, our cranky old teacher, turned her head straight towards me, meeting my eyes, occasionally stealing a glance at Skye.

"You both are late again," she said with a raspy voice, then cleared her throat. "Miss Young, Miss Porter, this is your last excused tardy for the semester. Show up late again and you will both be assigned detention on Friday. Understood?"

"Yes Ma'am," Skye said quickly. I just nodded, not wanting to speak, because God knows I didn't need any more embarrassment. I was glad that people forgot about something five minutes after it happened, though, because after then it was like you never existed. That's the good thing about being a nobody. You aren't noticed hardly at all, unless you do something extra good or extra bad. Even thought people forget things easily after they happen, they still judge you for the five minutes they remember what had happened. That's just the way people are at our school. They pretty much base your reputation only off of what they see. That was the part that bothered me. People never really payed attention to. . .

I realized I was spacing out again.

I blinked a few times to wake myself from my daydreaming a bit and snuck a look around the classroom to see what we were doing so I wouldn't look stupid, just sitting there, clueless like an aimless idiot. Today was the day we read, Tuesday. We read for the first hour of English on Mondays and Thursdays, then the second hour we'd usually do a ton of stuff in our journals. It sucked having two hour classes, thankfully advisory and lunch were in between the two sixty minute long sessions. My English class was the lucky one, since we didn't have to sit through two straight hours of this, even though most people say they sleep through almost all of it. Mrs. Gerneae's isn't too boring for me, since I love writing. It's pretty much my passion, what I live for. Plus, I couldn't sleep through the class if I wanted to. One reason being, I always get too paranoid about getting caught and sent down to the principal's, and two being that I love the view from the window. The sandy beach and the wavy blue ocean were always too beautiful to pass up, even not looking at it was a missed opportunity.

Shoot, I'm getting distracted again.

I really needed to finish this book. Even though I loved it, I found it difficult to read at times because it reminded me so much of my own life, which was one of the main things I'd always tried to forget. But failing grades were also another thing on my mind. I'd always gotten at least a C+ or better, but I wanted it to stay that way, so I decided to suck it up and start reading.

Sooner than I thought it'd be, the bell dinged, startling me a bit to the point where I jumped up a bit. Some people around me laughed as they got up and slung their bags and binders over their shoulders and left the room in a hurry, ready for lunch in the next twenty minutes. I shrugged it off on the outside, bottling it up on the inside, trying to recycle that stupid plastic bottle. I don't know why I cared so much about the little things. But that was my emotions controlling that part of me, not my mind. I tucked the thought of it into the deepest parts of my mind, getting up to head to my advisory class.

I was bummed that Skye and I only had three classes together, so I was pretty much a loner in all of the other classes. In my advisory class, there was only one person I really talked to. Her name was Lizzie, and she was a real player. Every boy she saw, she went after. Pretty much all of our conversations ended up like "Oh my God, that guy is so cute!" or "Hm. . . do you think he has a girlfriend?" Besides her boy craziness, she was still pretty nice.

But then today I noticed that she didn't hit on all the cute guys. I hadn't even realized that she pretty much saw right through him. But then again, he pretty much saw through me, too. But the again, that was pretty normal for everybody I knew.

That thought never changed until today.

I was walking down the hall, avoiding eye contact as usual. One wrong stare and suddenly you're a screw-up. I turned a corner, and immediately smashed right into someone. Well, almost. He pulled his hands in front of himself and grabbed my shoulders, jerking me to a stop.

"Woah, watch out, Jayla. Probably shouldn't always avoid looking at everyone." with that, he gave a small smirk and walked away before I even responded.

The only thing left was him saying my name. My name. It was replaying in my head like a broken record.

And tingling shoulders.