awkward together

~School~

~Annika~

We got done eating our breakfast of pancakes, eggs, bacon, fruit, and a variety of other things. All through breakfast, I felt someone staring at me, but I didn't look up. Part of me told me to and see if it was Stephanie. The other half of me told me not to look up, in fear of making a fool of myself.

"Annika, be a dear and drive Stephanie to school with you please?" My mother asks me.

"Yeah sure mom!" I reply.

Okay. You can do this. Just drive her to school, and then back seven hours from now. It's not that hard.

But what if you screw up. What if you get in a car wreck. What if you offend her in some way. What if you confess your feelings and then she rejects you.

No, none of that is going to happen. Everything is going to go perfectly.

Well yeah, but WHAT IF.

Shut it.

I'm in your head, you can't silence a voice in your head.

We head out the garage to the car, and I unlock my blue Ford Fusion. It has beautiful black leather interior, and has 325 horsepower, although I don't like to go very fast. I'm too scared I'm going to wreck it, which would be horrendous. Not to mention it was a birthday from my parents when I turned sixteen, which was about two months ago, December thirteenth. We both get in the car, and with that, we are off.

~Stephanie~

'"Yeah sure mom!"'

Well, at least I don't have to walk to school, by the time I got there I would look like a drowned rat. It's raining cats and dogs out there, not to mention it's very foggy, which means it'll be hard to see, which undoubtedly makes me nervous. I have really bad anxiety, and that's why I play so many sports, and curl up in hoodies. Running and hitting balls, it's almost therapeutic. And then to be able to go home and curl up in a hoodie and relax, it's what I do most of the time. It's strange actually, people automatically think that because I play sports I like to be the center of attention. When honestly, being the center of attention, it's like my worst nightmare. When I get nervous, that's when I feel like my anxiety is at its peak. I don't usually have panic attacks, but when I do, it feels like hell, it's horrible, but at least I don't have it as bad as others. If I did have it worse, I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't be able to deal with it, I already don't do well with my anxiety as it is.

"Well, are you ready to go?" Annika questions me.

"Yeah, let's go." I answer.

We convey our goodbyes to our parents, and head out the door. We traipse to the the garage, where the car is apparently kept. I don't really know, I'm just following Annika. We walk into the garage, which holds Arman's black Mustang, and Sandra's white BMW, and Annika's blue Ford Fusion.

"That's dad's Mustang, mom's BMW, and this is my car." She speaks, probably to break the silence. It wasn't uncomfortable, but it was nice enough to not be awkward. We get into Annika's car, and she starts the engine, and backs out of the garage. It's comfortably quiet, and the trees outside were blurring as we drove by, hues of blue and green and brown, it looked like a stained glass window. Almost as though somebody had poured a bucket of watercolors on the scene in front of me.

"You want to put on some music?" Annika asks me, breaking the silence.

"Sure,"

"Any specific band or person you like?" She asks me.

"No, put on whatever you like."

"Okay, just to warn you, I'm kind of a punk rock person, and I like it loud." She jokingly warns me.

"Same," I agree. She puts on a song, and I immediately recognize it as "Wake Up" by Black Veil Brides, one of my favorite bands. We start to sing along, and when the song ends, she hands me her phone and tells me to choose a song. I put on "Famous Last Words" by My Chemical Romance.

"You listen to My Chemical Romance too?" Annika asks me, almost sounding surprised.

"Yeah, who doesn't?" I ask jokingly.

"Cool, what other bands do you like?"

"Paramore, All Time Low, Panic! at the Disco, The Front Bottoms, you know, stuff like that. How about you?"

"Palaye Royale, I Don't Know How But They Found Me, Twenty One Pilots, Asking Alexandria, Flor. That's just a couple though, so don't think my only knowledge is of those bands." She chuckles.

About five minutes later, we pull into a parking space in front of the school. We both get out of the car, and start to walk towards the doors of the school.

***

Hello! Sorry for the long wait, but my schedule with school and helping out around the house has been absolutely insane. I promise I'll try to set aside some more time to write more everyday, but let me know in the comments what you want to happen, because part of why I took so long to update/post this chapter is because I bad some terrible writer's block. And I would like to thank my amazing cousin for reading the last two chapters and helping me improve my writing skills, and I hope I did at least a little better than last time. Have a wonderful day/night/afternoon (depends on the timezones)!

~Angie