Haunted

∞ Chapter 1 ∞

The hallway was crowded as I made my way to my locker just before my classes started. It was the first week of the new year, senior year, so everyone was still energetically telling their friends about what they had done during the summer. Apparently their break had been so full of events they needed three whole days before they’d shared everything they want to. The loud noises the students made radiated around me, overwhelming me, and stupidly enough, I had to get used it again after my quiet vacation, having worked at a silent store all summer.

Drew just slammed his locker shut when I reached him and leaned against it. “Hey, dude.” Drew and I had known each other since we were twelve, when he and his mother moved to our town. We lived only two streets apart and he always walked past my house on his way to school back then, so it seemed logical to walk with each other instead of following each other, ten feet apart and without saying a word. He hadn’t been much of a talker in the beginning, and neither had I, so although we didn’t speak a lot, there had never been awkward silences and when the moment came that we opened up and did talk, we’d found out that our interests were almost completely the same and we hadn’t been apart again.

“Hey,” I said as I opened my locker to grab my books for the first period.

Now, though, Drew had no problems talking. He had turned out to be the perfect ladies-man, according to all the girls at school, and around it. He always knew what to say and when to say it, smiled at the right moments, confident in everything he did, somewhat mysterious with his leather jacket, medium length dark brown hair with bangs, blue eyes, black boots and a lip piercing. The combination gave him something dark, and for all that he had all the attention from girls he desired. Our friendship had never changed, though. Sometimes he would introduce me to girls and we would hang out, but it was never something serious. I wasn’t complaining. Mostly after a week or two, the girls found out I wasn’t nearly as interesting as Drew was and we agreed to be friends.

“Oh god, people beware, the Ice-Queen has arrived,” Drew muttered beside me.

As I looked over my shoulder, I saw her. It was almost one of those moments in a movie where the high school’s most popular girl entered, in slow motion and with fans to emphasise the importance of her arrival, her hair waving. This girl strode the hallway like she owned the place.

No, that’s not true, more like she owned the town. Her face high up in the air, swaying her small, yet curvy hips. She looked like she was the most important girl in the world, that everyone should be glad to be in her glorious company, self-confidence dripping off of her by the way she held her chin in the air. She wasn’t  very tall, even though she wore high heels. Her long, wavy chestnut brown hair floated in the wind.

She was he exact example of every high school biggest bitch, or at least according to some dumb chick-flick I had once seen. There was one difference between the girls in movies and this girl, though, because they were mostly leader of the cheerleaders, adored and followed by a horde of girls and guys. This girl, though, was so awful that not even the other popular girls wanted to have anything to do with her. She didn’t participate in anything and seemed to feel so much better than the rest of us, that she was already irritated when someone tried to talk to her. I had never had any contact with her, but I had heard several stories of students that said she could totally freak out if you came too close to her. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure what her name was. Most students called her Ice-Queen, or things like Casey the Callous. Casey was her last name though.

By now she was gone and someone tapped on my shoulder as I had finally found my books and dumped them in my bag. “Hey Noah. We have an appointment this afternoon, right? I completely forgot what time we agreed.”

I turned around to find Sarah; short, shy and straight blond hair. “Three-thirty. Do you want me to come over to your dorm or mine?”

Our school wanted to prepare us for college the best way that they could, so we had dorms. Of course, there hung a price tag on that possibility. Students weren’t obliged to get a dorm, we could live at home when we wanted to, but they wanted to give us the opportunity. Most students came from small towns in the area that took just too long to drive from, so it was pretty useful. My parent’s house in Rohnerville was a half hour drive from the high school in Eureka, so I was glad I could stay here.