The Dandelion Girl

Chapter One

If one were to write a list of the top students who despised going back to school after summer vacation, my name would be at the top.

Why?

With barely little sunlight seeping through the blinds of my room, I have spent most of summer listening to classical music with a stack of notebooks on my desk, mindlessly trying to come up with the perfect story. So to come back to school where sunlight would graze my skin and be subjected to monotonous teaching was irritating to say the least.

School was the place where the world replaced everything I have treasured and been accustomed to during summer in the blink of an eye.

The smell of microwaveable food and Chinese to-go boxes which filled the kitchen were replaced by the scents of sweaty students coming back from PE classes and older women "making" so-called lunches like oily pizzas, smelly burgers, and mushy corndogs.

The silence of my room slipped through my fingers into oblivion only to be replaced with the obnoxious chatter of students. I have often felt like an animal in the sweltering heat with a flock of vultures -which in this case are students- flying overhead, just waiting for me to drop dead. I wished that for one day they would stop talking about how high they would get after school or if so-and-so have done the "deed."

Instead of being in the luxury of my room sitting on a leather chair, I was stuck sitting on the cold, metallic blue tables where students hanged out and ate their lunches. The walls were newly painted with a thick layer of white due to a recent incident, where a student was caught spray painting racial slurs all over them. Both the superintendent and principal acted quickly to fix the situation to avoid a massive fight between the students.

Several feet from where I was seated was the music department building. The school's marching band and orchestra were already busy practicing despite it only being the first day of school. The maestro's voice boomed. Instructions were given. Drums beaten. Brass instruments and woodwinds were blown. And percussion instruments clashed with a bang which rattled the building.

My suffering would have been alleviated had the school decided to keep the library operating. Unfortunately, a daily average of five students using the facility out of roughly four thousand was deemed not worth the time to find a librarian. So, it was closed for the second year in a row.

I stared down at the ground and sighed with disappointment when suddenly, a pair of hands covered my eyes. They were soft, yet slightly rough around the edges. They also smelled of lavender. Lots of lavender.

"Elaine, you know I hate it when you do that, right?"

"Sorry," she said as she removed them away. "How'd you know it was me?"

"Your hands always smell like lavender," I said as I turned around.

Elaine, my childhood friend, was panting and out of breath as if she just ran a marathon. The leanly muscular guy beside her, Andrew, was carrying two bags. He handed the magenta one to her and proceeded to take out his phone from his jacket pocket.

"You look terrible," I commented, pertaining to Elaine, who was still trying to catch her breath.

It took her a good minute or two before she could speak without looking like she would collapse. She then fixed her curly, daffodil-colored hair into a ponytail and sat to my right.

"Again with the stories, Chase?" she asked as if surprised despite knowing my love for writing for ten years already. "You need to-"

"To enjoy life outside of the fictional world," I said, having heard the same advice hundreds of times. "I know, but how, when I could-"