This Too Shall Pass

Chapter 2

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Just a side note: Claire's Squad in this book is actually based on my squad in real life! My friend, Claire, was telling me how cool it would be to live with Jack, so this story is officially dedicated to her! For those who don't know, my biological name is Sarah, so the character Sarah is based off of me in some ways, and Claire in others. And Vice Versa. And in real life, there is a Carson, Myah, and Shannon as well. We also just started 7th grade recently, in real life.

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Things to know:

Gold and Blue Days - Some classes rotate every other day. In this case, Spanish and Gym are on Gold days for Claire and Art and Communications (Learn to give speeches and stuff) on Blue days.

Houses - For 6th graders. The grade is separated into thirds and assigned a house, where all of your everyday classes are in the same general area. In this case, Lighthouse, Boat house, and WACA House.

Main Hallway - The hallways that all grades need to use to get to Gym, Choir, and band at the end of the hall, it is overly crowded. It branches into 3 more halls, The Lecture room hallway, the library, and the math hallway (Used by everyone except 6th graders)

8th grade hallway - Exactly what it sounds like: the hallway that mostly 8th graders use, although 7th Grade science is there as well.

Back hallway - The halls that Boat and Waca house branch off of and a way to Lighthouse without using the Main Hallway. Typically for 6th graders only unless you are coming out of the lunchroom, need to go to Art, or need to go to the upper level of Lighthouse for Social Studies or English.

The IPads - All 7th and 8th graders receive one to use for the year to help with classes.

Rush hour - When everyone in the grade is rushing through the back hallway to go through Boat house and into the lunch room.

"Hey Claire!" Sarah greets me, opening the gate to from her backyard.

I smile "HEY! Nervous?" I say, Sarah has Anxiety and normal change change doesn't work well for her, but big change, for some reason, makes her happy. I can see her glancing in the direction of school nervously.

"You'll be fine! Now hurry up or we'll be late!" I cheer and start to walk. She jogs to catch up and I take her mind off of the new school year by telling her jokes and the stupid stuff my dad did last night while recording and told her about the drawing Signe started a few days ago. Pretty soon she's back to her normal, sassy, overly-energetic self. The walk to school is short, around 5 minutes to her house, and 15 to the school.

All of a sudden we see a puppy looking at us from the top of a small hill. It runs down and immediately jumps up on Sarah. She laughs and scratches it's head. A man runs down and starts to apologize in shame and embarrassment, Sarah stops him.

"No, no, it's fine! He's the cutest! He reminds me of my dog! He was a golden retriever as well." Tears well up in her eyes. "We put him down a few weeks ago." She wipes her eyes.

I put my arm around her.

"I'm sorry..." he says.

We exchange goodbyes and continue our separate ways.

When we get to school, Sarah and I immediately search for Shannon, Myah and Carson. I point them out and we run over to them.

"Shannon! Myah! Carson!" Sarah and I scream in unison.

They turn and wave, smiles on their faces.

"Oh my god guys! Can you believe we're 7th graders?" Shannon laughs.

We shake our heads in disbelief and exchange schedules. Sarah and I have no classes together, unfortunately. Shannon, Carson and I have Social Studies together 5th hour. Myah and I have 1st hour Math, both 3rd hour gym and 6th hour Spanish on Gold days, Advisor, and 4th hour English together.

We exchange hugs and agree to meet by Lighthouse so we can walk to lunch together.

We all separate to find our lockers and it turns out Myah and my lockers are very close to each other's.

Myah and I put our bags away and grab our stuff to head to Math. Our teacher has a sense of humor and has us take a little quiz about ourselves. The class seems to go by in a flash. Myah and I part ways and I head off to Science. We do a project on physics and I meet some new friends. He tells us about getting our Ipads on Thursday and then releases us. I stop at my locker and exchange my academics binder for my, smaller, art binder and a pencil and head off down the back hallway to art. I see my friends Cat, Ruthie and Kaitlyn sitting together and I slide into the bench next to them, shocking them both. Pretty soon we are giving hugs and catching up since Cat was in Wisconsin all summer, Kaitlyn was busy most if the time and Ruthie was at camp and we didn't get to see each other at all.

-Timeskip to just before lunch-

I sprint to the other side of the school to meet up with Shannon, Myah, Sarah, and Carson. They were waiting for me patiently and said nothing about me making them late a few minutes late to lunch.

-ANOTHER MOTHER FUCKING TIMESKIP-

School was fun today, I hug everyone goodbye and Sarah and I start walking home together. She asks me how my day went and I give her a quick blow-by-blow, and then she gives me hers. We joke about a kid named Daniel and how when she got partnered up with him for a project and he introduced himself she yelled "DAMMMMN DANIEL!"

She says she has no classes with any of her friends except for Maddie in 6th hour. I know she loves making new friends, and she's excited about doing that, so I smile. But she looks down and doesn't seem to be happy.

"What's wrong?" I ask.

"I had an Anxiety Attack in Comm." She whispers, I can barely hear her.

I put my arm around her and she just walks there, sadly.

"It's okay, you can't control it, remember that. Remember to excuse yourself from the room, take a walk, and breathe. The teachers know you have Anxiety."

She nods and we walk the rest of the way home in silence.