Carter

Chapter 1: The Beginning

Chapter 1

When I was a kid, I loved all that princess stuff. I mean, what little girl wouldn't? My favourite princesses were always Belle from Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella. I would always dress up as Belle and have tea with my weird stuffies I got from my aunt in Detroit. I'm the beauty and they're the beasts. Until I turned nine, sharing plastic food with my toys and running around the house with a princess dress on with a magic wand in my hand, pretending to be Cinderella's fairy god mother were my favourite activities. I threw out my little kid stuff then, and began to like music, internet, electronics. 

That was then. Now it's more like, I wonder if Dee Brance knows that Blake Carsh has been looking at her butt for the past three minutes. Or makeup. If you wan't to get through Junior High School alive, you need the make up. 

It's Friday. 3:27 PM. My entire class is staring at the clock in agony, waiting for the bell to ring for two reasons. One: no teacher could have a more boring class, than Mr. Sinclair, our Social Studies teacher. And two: The school dance couldn't be held in a more romantic place, than the Logan Hotel Ballroom. 

Everyone is excited for the dance, and has tickets. And I mean everyone. Yeah. Everyone except for me. Stupid Skiing trips. I think. It's the biggest trip of the year, or it's supposed to be. We're going all the way to Brandon. Yippee! Like I haven't been there six million times to visit my grandmother.

Finally the bell rings and one of my best friends, Clarissa McDonald walks with me to our lockers. 

"Are you sure you can't come Carter?" She asks me. 

"Yeah," I reply sadly. "Believe me, I wish I could go. I love skiing and all, but I really LOVE dancing. Especially in the Logan Hotel ballroom."

"Uh!" She says, stomping her foot on the ground, childishly as we approach our lockers.

"You know we're really gonna miss you." She says to me. She pauses before speaking again.

"What about David?" She asks slowly. I know what she means. David and I both have a thing for eachother, but we aren't dating. We both know that he's definetely one of the cutest guys in school, and that 92% of the girls in the school want him to be their boyfriend.

"Don't worry Lissy." I respond finally, using her nickname. "He's not my boyfriend. I don't even know what his favourite colour is. Besides. It's not unusual for people to have a crush on more than one person at a time. I wouldn't be surprised if he liked Dee Brance, or Jani Puckett, or Carly Clayson. They are the prettiest girls in the entire school. I'm just a girl on the sidelines." I answer. 

Lissy's boyfriend Ben walks up to us and gives her a little hug. 

"Hey Claire." He says to her. 

By then I'd already opened my locker and prepared my backpack with the appropriate items. I lock the locker.

"Gotta go guys!" I say.

"Oh, bye Carter!" Liss yells after me. 

"Catch ya later, Carston." Ben calls after me. We both have nicknames for eachother. He calls me Carston. There's no reason. He just does. I call him Ben the Bean, because he doesn't have much smarts. I run down the stairs and head out the door sadly, on my way home.

Girls chat around me about what they are wearing to the dance. I try my best not to listen.