Collided Worlds

Chapter 10

Monday finally arrived. I was signed back up to attend Ridgeland, and I was on my way. I picked my electives, and I’m ready to, hopefully, start and finish, and pass, my senior year of high school.

“You ready?” Mrs. Maroja asked as she stopped the car in front of the school.

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“Okay. Have a great day.”

“You too.” I opened the car door and exited, waving as I shut it. She waved back and drove off, leaving me in front of the school.

“Okay Calia, relax…” I said to myself, rubbing my thumb over my ring. “You’ve done this before.” I pushed through the double doors of Ridgeland High School.

I saw the stares, and I walked right past them. The students must’ve recognized me, because the hallway was loud with energy, to quiet, and only the echo of my footsteps were heard.

I passed the Freshman hallway, which was louder, but not by much. Sophomore and Junior were the same. When I arrived in the Senior Hall, fiddling with my schedule, it was total-dead silence. Everyone stopped heading to their Advisories and stared at me, waiting for me to do something. I looked around the crowd, and saw everyone. Nicole, Austin, Drake, Vicky, and Maddie, all in the same hallway, staring at me.

I didn’t like to be stared at.

I almost memorized my schedule, I was staring at it so hard. I found the room, thankfully, and headed inside before the tension grew more.

What could I say? It was a classroom. I had to have the Language Arts Advisory, because there were writing technique posters, and books were high on shelves.

“Ah, you must be Calia.” A feminine voice said from a teacher’s desk. I walked over to it to see a pretty woman with shoulder-length black hair that complimented her light-green eyes. “You’ve been gone for quite some time.”

“Oh, uh…” I trailed awkwardly, not knowing how to explain. “I was with my brother.”

She cocked her head to the side. “And how come no one knew about this?”

“I didn’t want SWAT of the FBI to come hunt me down.” I concluded, but spoke again quickly. “Where’s my seat?”

The room was put into two-desk islands around the room. By this time the students were filing in, and the desks were filling up. Of course, of all people, I spotted Drake, but I'm used to it. But the seat next to him was taken, so I sighed in relief.

“Ah, I’ll have you sit by Michael.” She said, pointing to where it was as I nodded and quickly made my way to my seat.

I pulled my chair back and sat down, the chair making an odd scratchy noise as I slid it forward.

“Hi.” A male voice greeted. I turned to face him. He had reddish-brown hair and brown eyes, a black leather jacket covering his black shirt. Dark-blue jeans covered his legs, and black converse on his feet.

“Hi.” I greeted back.

“You’re the girl that was missing, right?” He asked, and the question surprised me.

“I wasn’t really missing.” I corrected him. “I was with my brother.”

“For almost a year and a half?” He countered, but I just nodded.

“Yeah. What’s wrong with that?”

“Besides nobody knew where you were?”

I paused, finding a way to counter that. “Yeah, well, we all have secrets.”