The Beginning: A Novel of Crossed Paths

Chapter 4: School Dance - Scarlett

 for giving me something to improve upon and saying that I have potential.  Thank you for telling me honestly what you think.

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Chapter 4

School Dance

Scarlett

The days of September were drawing to a close.  I did not mind that much, except that the weather was getting colder.  Not by much, but I could barely stand the change – I did not know how anyone else could.  I constantly wore my long sleeve shirts to school, even though Jeanette tried to explain to me that autumn had not yet started.  Autumn supposedly would start next week, the day of the Back to School Dance. She said that I should save my long sleeves for when it really got cold in the dead of winter – down to forty-five degrees.

I asked Jeanette why we were having a Back to School Dance a month after we had returned to school.  She told me that it usually took that long for student council to arrange everything.  I wondered, not out loud, why they did not have meetings before school started to schedule the dance.  Surely it was better if the Back to School Dance was the first week, or even the second, as opposed to the fourth or fifth, but it was not my choice to make.

Many people had, of course, asked me to be on the student council, including the president Trevor Dauterman.  I refused all of the requests; I would not really be able to make a difference if I could not voice my opinion at meetings.  It was not like I could be an officer either, the president and vice president ran the meetings, the treasurer gave a treasurer’s report at every meeting, and even the secretary, who you would think would only have to sit in at the meetings and take notes, had to recite a secretary’s report about the last meeting that took place.  I only knew all of this information in the first place because Trevor insisted I go to one of the meetings before making my decision.

Ah, Trevor – the poor, misguided soul that actually thought that I might be the one for him.  He seemed sweet enough after that first day, but would not leave me alone, even though I had tried time and time again to tell him to do so.  Whenever I had, he denied having received the note on which I had written my request.  I was not interested in a relationship right now; I really needed more space to be comfortable; I had had a boyfriend back at the orphanage (a lie, of course) and I needed time to get over that.  I used all of these excuses, multiple times, in fact, but nothing got through his thick skull.  I even tried the “Maybe once I’m settled down in school – next quarter perhaps?” excuse, hoping that he’d take the bait, at least for a few months, but that still did not work.  I was definitely the wrong girl for him to get involved with, because of my inconveniences and all.

On the other hand, Mark Kingsley, the, and I quote, “hottest, most popular guy in the junior class” according to Jeanette, was doing what I wanted him to do.  He had not really tried to start up a conversation in the days that followed the first.  I was glad – I did not enjoy having to compose careful half-truths when he asked me a question.  I think the longest sentence he had spoken to me had been, “Did you hear what we’re supposed to do today?”

That was another thing that was different.  For the first time, I was actually, sort of, fitting in with the rest of the students at River Academy.  I did not have to take nearly as many restroom breaks during lunch, and no one hesitated to ask me a homework problem anymore.  Semi-popularity was, in reality, quite enjoyable once I gave it the chance.  Different people began sitting at the J-Trio’s and my lunch table, and I began to learn most of the students in school by their first names, if not their last.  Everyone smiled and said hello to me in the hallways when I walked by and I tried to smile back, often making those people’s smiles even larger, if that were possible.  They made it seem like I just made their dreary-up-until-that-moment day.