CHAPTER ONE
━━━━━ ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ━━━━━
❝FEAR❞
CRISP AUTUMN LEAVES swirled in a gentle breeze, cherry and gold, catching in her wild curls, churning on the ground. It was a beautiful sight, but Jade Oaks could focus on nothing but the school before her.
Compared to Arsenal Tech, Jade noted, Hawkins High was unbelievably small. For one thing, there was only one building. For this, she wondered why an icy dread frosted her veins. She trembled, and felt as though she were wading through water as she crossed the lot.
It made no sense, the deep fear that tried to consume her. Hawkins was tiny. There was no way she would get lost. Making friends was hardly in her list of concerns; she preferred solitude. All she had to fear was unfamiliarity.
The premises was clear, except for a couple pressed against the wall beside the payphone. Jade caught sight of dark skin and red hair, but she felt awkward paying any more than a glance—they were getting pretty hot and heavy. If Jade hadn't known better, she would have thought that they were trying to eat each other.
Jade moved forward, fingers locked around the straps of her backpack in a vise grip. She had been moving at a snail's pace all the while, but she assumed that the emptiness of the schoolyard meant that class would soon begin, and she did not want to be late on her first day.
Jade picked up her pace. As she passed the long open corridor, she glanced once more at the couple. She wanted to warn them, since they clearly had lost track of time—but then the redheaded girl, as if sensing Jade's lingering eye, jerked away from the boy she'd been kissing. Her eyes fell immediately upon Jade.
A cold sensation prickled Jade's spine, and she thought, Well, never mind, then. The intensity of the redheaded girl's gaze was alarming.
With an effort, Jade averted her gaze. A moment later, she arrived at the double-doored entrance. But the moment her hand fell to rest upon the handle, the bell blared, ringing all around her. Jade cursed under her breath and flung the door open.
The previous day, she had been given a tour of the school by the kind guidance counselor. Jade recalled that her first class, Chemistry, was downstairs. She just struggled to remember where the main stairwell was located.
Not a soul roamed the halls—which were narrow, in Jade's opinion. The marble tiles were ivory, interrupted occasionally by long diamonds of blue and gold. The lower half of the walls were striped with similar colors: deep orange, turquoise, weak yellow. They were not exactly appealing.
With every passing second, Jade's panic rose. The staircase should have been easy to find, but the new girl felt as though she were searching for a needle in a haystack. She turned corner upon corner, and had no idea where she was. The tour she'd been given had slipped her mind completely.
Jade strongly considered two options: One, go to the guidance room and ask for...guidance, or two, simply skip school. The latter sounded much more flattering, and Jade turned around, just about to follow through, until she turned the corner and nearly crashed into someone.
That someone was a girl—Jade noticed this immediately, due to the fact that her boobs were right under Jade's nose. It was times like these that Jade despised her shortness. She looked up quickly, and was taken aback by how pretty this girl was.
Hardly bothered at all by Jade's sudden appearance, the girl cast a smile on full, coral lips. Everything about her seemed perfect: her creamy skin, freckle-less and pimple-less, utterly smooth; her fair hair, a white-blonde curtain of silk, which fell around her waist like a soft cloud; her eyes, the stunning gray of an overcast morning, bright and oddly beautiful; and even her teeth were perfect. There wasn't a hair out of place. Jade felt an uncharacteristic wave of envy.

YOU ARE READING
SHADES of GREEN ↬ m. wheeler
FanfictionShades of Green | ❝How lovely.❞ ⊛ At the cost of Eleven's life, the Upside Down has been destroyed. Two years have passed by peacefully... but a new threat is lurking in plain sight, an ally of the world that mirrors a future of desolation and decay...