Between You & Me

Chapter Five

          Monday. Finally! I was starting to get bored, even though Ash already took me on another tour through the school. My bag is all packed up and I’m ready for school, dressed somewhat casually, yet in a quite fashionable way. Angel and I start out on the path across the bridge around eight forty-five. My first class starts at nine, and then from there I go to Drawing and Painting. Dex helped me pick out my classes before leaving, and he must have chosen this one. I would have picked it, too. He knows me so well.

          I enter the classroom and stare in awe at it. The moment I enter, I feel as though I’m in college, not high school. The seats rise up on steps, going high up. Everyone is able to see the front of the room, where a whiteboard is set up along with a Smartboard and even a screen for movies. I’m not the first person here, though. Carter sits near the middle of the rows of seats beside a few other guys surrounding him. I come over to them, and he allows me to sit beside him. “This is amazing!” I comment, my voice echoing slightly even though I didn’t talk that loudly.

          “What do you mean? What were your classes like back at public school?” He asks me.

          “Flat!” I laugh when they do. “We had desks, not chairs with tables that fold out,” I comment to the platform that folds out of the chair in front of me. I’m surprised to see that it’s quite large. “And usually we had blackboards, no Smartboards or whiteboards. And we didn’t use…” I pull out my Mac, “laptops. We’d write on paper instead.”

          “Wow,” he comments, logging into Facebook. “Do you have one?” He motions to the webpage.

          “Yeah,” I nod. He looks me up on the search bar and a photo collage that my friends made pop up as my profile picture. The middle picture is of Dex and me holding hands. “That’s it,” I point to the picture. He requests me as a friend and when I log in, I accept it.

          “Who’s that?” A dude asks when Carter starts scrolling through my pictures.

          “Dex.”

          “Who’s he?”

          “Um…”

          “Don’t ask her about it,” Carter snaps at them, and they shut up. “Who’s that?” He points to a picture of Christiane and me shopping before I left.

          “That’s my friend. She picked this outfit for me,” I motion to what I’m wearing. “I used to only wear sweatshirts and jeans. I guess this is a step up.”

          “I see,” he laughs, not even looking at me. “What about the midget?” I crack up when he says that.

          “That’s Dallas. Oh, that reminds me!” I exclaim, pulling out my camera and putting an arm around Carter. “Smile!” I snap a picture and look at it. He made a face! “Why aren’t you smiling?”

          “I didn’t think you meant it seriously,” his accent is so cute, I let it pass this time.

          The time between now and class starts, we take pictures together with all the other dudes. Carter takes the camera from me and takes them for us. And then suddenly as the flash snaps, someone comes up from behind me and hugs me around the waist from behind, head resting on my shoulder. I can tell it’s a dude, and definitely not Ash. So when the next flash comes, I elbow the intruder into the stomach. He obviously wasn’t ready for that. “Damn!” AJ exclaims.

          “You’re such a perve!” I shout. Carter is still taking pictures. 

          “You’re in this class too?”