Strawberries and Kisses

Chapter I

Tuesday, February 5th.

*BEEP BEEP*

*BEEP BEEP*

My eyes shoot open. As I reach my arm over to turn off my alarm on my phone, I groan and stretch. There is a bright light shining through my window shades. After a few minutes when I come to my senses, I get out of bed and trudge out the door and down the hall to the bathroom. Thankfully, my little brother Marcus wasn't in there. He takes forever whenever he's in the bathroom, especially when it's before me.

I get into the bathroom and shut the door. I then begin looking over myself in the mirror. I didn't sleep well the night before, and it showed. My eyes had light bags under them, and my hair was disheveled. After my inspection, I strip, and hop into the shower.

There's nothing like a nice warm shower in the morning to *hopefully* get you energized.

A good few moments later, I hop out, and wrap myself in one of my mom's fluffy towels. It was only recently that I discovered that her towels are much more comfortable than the ones my brother and I use.

I head back to my bedroom and begin getting dressed. Thankfully, the high school I go to has a uniform. Had it not, I probably would've struggled quite a bit. I'm not the best at picking outfits that actually... work. Once I'm dressed, I put on my black-rimmed glasses, and look myself over in the mirror. Putting my glasses on brought the world around me out of bluriness. I also began to notice the large amount of acne on my forehead. It gradually was becoming more noticeable. The normal person would at least become the slight-bit concerned, but I just shrugged it off.

Who would care to notice it anyway?

I grab my schoolbag off of my chair by my desk and head downstairs to the living room. The only one downstairs was my little brother, jamming away to music through his earbuds while eating cereal. His music was so loud that he hadn't noticed me until I sat down.

"Morning Wesley," he greeted me.

I nodded back.

"Where's ma?" I ask.

"She's already left for work, where else?" He answers in the typical 13-year-old-smartass manner.

I roll my eyes, and shrug off his response. A few moments later, he gets up, and puts his bowl in the kitchen sink.

"I'm ready, Wes." Marcus says as he returns from the kitchen. I hop up, grab my bag, and head to the door to put my shoes on. As we both step outside, we are greeted by a pleasant breeze. Even though it's the beginning of February, there is hardly a trace of snow, and the sun is shining. The weather is beautiful.

I lock the door to the house, and we begin walking. I usually have to walk Marcus to school, which I know still annoys him. Especially since the walk isn't that far.

The walk is silent, until Marcus pipes up.

"What's up with you Wesley?"

I turn to look at him. "Nothing." I say, trying to evade the subject.

"Yeah, okay." he retorts. "I know something is up, you seem even more glum than normal." he giggles.

"What do you mean, 'than normal?'" I ask, getting agitated.

"Whoa, take a chill pill bro." Marcus giggles even harder.

I dismiss his remark. With further consideration, I take his advice.

Admittedly, with the second semester starting up for my highschool, I've been very angst lately. My last semester had been, questionable. It wasn't the subjects that were the problem, it was more specifically some dumbasses in my classes pissing off normally decent teachers, and them becoming assholes as a result of it. My teachers liked me a lot though, or I should say most of them did.

There was one teacher, Mr. Tivoli, who was just an asshole for no reason. I had him for P.E. last semester. Now, I feel like he didn't like me because I'm not all that athletic, and tire quite easily. So I guess he thought I was slacking? I really am still confused what his thought process was. But anyways, I've been worrying I get him again for French, since it's either him or the other French teacher, Mrs. Leone. If I get Tivoli again, chance of survival is greatly limited, especially since French isn't my strongest subject.

Anyways, I digress.

Moments later, we reach my old elementary school, Taylor Mills Public School. I have many mixed feelings about this building, a love-hate feeling. Many of my most awkward moments happened behind those steel blue doors.

My grade school memory was interrupted by Marcus, thankfully.

"See ya later, bro." he says as he punches my left arm and runs inside. I shake my head.

Maybe I'll get him back later.

I continue my walk to school, still visualizing various ways the second semester could turn out. Although admittedly my imagination got the best of me, and I imagined either positive or negative extremes of how the semester could go.
I decided that perhaps I was overthinking the possibilities, and tried putting in my earbuds and listening to music, to drown out my thoughts. Thankfully, it worked the way I had hoped.

Thank God earbuds exsist.

A short 5 minutes later, and I'm arriving at school. I get inside and head to my locker. The hallways are already jammed with students. I look at the clock on the wall; 15 minutes to get to homeroom. Once I get to my locker I'm greeted by my good friend Chrystal.

"Hey Wesley!" she chimes as she wraps her arms around me for a quick hug.

"Hey Chris, sup?" I reply, returning the hug.

"Have you seen Chelsea around? I can't find her anywhere." she asks, hopefully.

I open my locker and retrieve my binders as I shake my head in the negative.

"Damnit." she said, disappointed.

"You'd think that since you guys are identical twins you wouldn't loose track of each other." I partly-joked.

Chrystal and Chelsea are in fact identical twins, and they usually stick together; so it was quite odd for Chelsea to stray away from Chrystal.

"Well, I'll look for her later, we've got about 10 minutes till class." Chrystal said, acknowledging the clock.

I nod, close my locker, and begin the walk down the hallway towards homeroom with Chrystal.

"What do you have for homeroom?" she asked curiously.

"English," I reply.

"Room 407?" she asked, growing more excited by the minute.

"Yeah, do you?" I ask, also getting excited.

"Yeah!" she answers excitedly.

"Hell yea!" I cheer as we exchange high-fives.

I'm not normally an excitable person, but I got pretty excited because compared to last semester where my classes had a few "difficult people", and nobody I actually felt the need to relate or talk to, I have at least one class this semester with a friend, and not just any friend, one of my best friends.

We head up three flights of stairs, to the fourth floor. A short walk down the hallway, and we see the classroom. 

"Well, here's room 407." Chrystal says. 

We look to one another, nod, and enter the classroom.