WHATEVER IT TAKES ; JUMANJI [VAN PELT x OC]

one

  "Just one picture, please!"

  "Mom..." I groaned and crossed my arms over my chest with frustration seeping through my pores. "I'm going to be late for school! And it's not even the first day of the year..."

  "But it's the first day for you." She let out an infatuated sigh and put her phone in front of her face.

  I covered myself with hands and shrieked. "Stop! I don't want Facebook to see a picture of me starting school in the middle of the year!" I hated myself in pictures. Hell, I hated myself in the mirror.

  "Oh, come on, Keira!" She cried. "You're my youngest child and your my last one. This is your last first day—"

"Next year...?" I was a high school Junior, not a Senior. "Mom, I'm not that old, come on."

"Sorry, honey. It's just after having five other kids and sending them all to school, your mind kind of... you know..."

I clamped my lips together and nodded. "Noted. But seriously, mom, please don't."

She sighed and put her phone down. "Fine..." She grabbed her purse and keys and followed me out of the door. "But what if I promised you I wouldn't post it?"

"Mom!" I shook my head and slapped my hand over my forehead.

"Okay... okay..." At this point, I felt bad. I couldn't bare to watch as she walked down off the porch and to the car. Right as her hand touched the car handle, I spoke up.

"Fine. One picture."

Five minutes and regrettably five-hundred awkward pictures later, we were pulling out of the drive-way and out of the neighborhood. Mom seemed, overall, pretty happy now that she had gotten to take my 'first day' pictures.

What bugged me the most is that we moved to town around Christmas time. Not only was I completely new to this entire state, but Christmas was in two weeks.

  "Okay, bye sweetie, have fun! I love you!" My mom waved at me with teary eyes after I stood up and got out of the car. I waved at her with a smile.

  "I love you too, mom. Bye," I nodded at her and shut the door. My fingers settled on the straps of my backpack as I looked up at the high school in front of me with students loitered all around the scene. Everything looked pretty good, I guess...

  But what if I were to get made fun of? Picked on? For not being the right shape or size, for having body odor? I had applied, like, 50 layers of deodorant this morning. I wanted to make a good first impression.

  What if they made fun of my clothes? I was wearing a simple oversized Nirvana tee with black, skinny ripped jeans and a pair of normal converse. But what if that made me look like a freak in this town?

  I swallowed my fears and took a step, and then another, and another. And it began.

  Well, it was my first class of the day and already things were awful.

  A blonde-haired girl sat beside me, with her red tank-top riding up above her belly button. My first thought was, 'my mom would whoop my ass before ever letting me walk out of the house like that.'

  We were taking a quiz, which I thought was very unfair for me — it was my first day. In the end, I knew nearly all of the questions and blew through it with a breeze. So did the blondie next to me, unfortunately.

"It's been over two hours since I've posted and he hasn't commented. He hasn't even liked it. I don't—I—You saw it!" She was complaining over a boy she had broken up with not liking her picture. On Facetime. In the middle of a quiz.