Heathen Heaven

Jumpstart

Do Re Me Fa Sooo f*cking done with you...

Ara groaned and yanked her covers over her tangled mess of black-brown hair. The person next door didn't seem to understand the definition of neighborly thoughtfulness and she often found herself rudely blasted from her muddled dreams by their thundering music.

She didn't hate the songs that they played. She did, however, hate the incessantly loud volume of it.

The thumping rhythm felt like it was pulsating through her bones, rattling her teeth. It didn't help the headache that was already manifesting; a building pressure in her skull.

She blearily glanced over at the alarm clock. 6:30 am, which meant her parents had already bustled off to work. She huffed. At least, she thought, she had 15 extra minutes to get ready for school.

So far, school had been uneventful. School had started a few days ago, and it wasn't much different from her old district. The teachers were nice enough, and he few students that had tried to initiate friendships, or conversations, or anything social whatsoever had left her alone after she had awkwardly brushed them off.

It wasn't that Ara didn't want friends. But as her mother often stated, ever since... well, for as long as Ara could remember, "We Destons do not allow ourselves the pleasure of being distracted by small, trivial things such as friends. We focus on work, and success. Connections and alliances to help us climb the rungs of life are the closest to friends that we will ever need. Anything... anyone more, is a waste of time."

Ara yanked on a t-shirt and leggings, snatching her keys from her dark-stained wooded bedside table. Pulling on ankle length gray socks and black sneakers, she slipped into her bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face. wiping water droplets from her chin, she looked up to stare her reflection in the eye.

She had always hated her eyes. Actually, that was a lie. She had hater her eyes ever since a kid in 3rd grade had begun ruthlessly teasing her about them. Before then she hadn't really given them much thought.

Her eyes were a light hazel, which wouldn't be all that unusual if it were't for the fact that one of them was greener than the other, and that the brown eye had a ring of gold-silver around the pupil hat sparkled when it caught a certain angle of light.

Until that boy had started to jab at her about her eyes she had barely noticed that one was different from the other. It was subtle if there wasn't much lighting, and Ara had never really cared about her appearance enough to closely study herself. from 3rd to 5th grade the boy and a few of his lackeys would goad at her about her "freaky eyes" and how she got them by being such a "bratty, stuck-up teacher's pet". 

In retrospect there wasn't much logic to their teasing, but back then it had made her self-conscious. She had taken to wearing her mother's reading glasses to school in order to draw attention away from the slightly different colors of her eyes. Of course it hadn't worked, and the boys had only made a point of throwing the names "nerd" or "loser" at her every time they passed. 

Ara shook herself from her self-pitying thoughts and flitted out of her room and down the steps, skidding into the kitchen. She snagged a pear from the bowl on the kitchen island and poured herself a glass of apple juice, feeling the tiniest bit childish as she sipped it. 

Later, once she had arrived at Spencemont High, she swung herself out of her somewhat new black-blue Lexus. She admired for a split second the way that the subtle sparkles of the car were brought out by the warm early-morning sunlight before the first bell interrupted her appreciation.

Ara flinched. She could have sworn hat she would get to school early. Had she spent that long daydreaming in front of her mirror? She blushed thinking about how idiotic she must have looked staring into her own reflection's eyes. At how vain she must have looked. Rushing to her locker, caught up in her own thoughts, she rounded a corner.

And promptly collided with the firm, heat-radiating chest of someone tall and muscular. 

Well, shit.

~~~

I know, I know. It's such a Wattpad way to introduce a new male character, but I'm tired and honestly don't have the brain power to think up anything more creative at the moment. I'll try and update as soon as possible, though for now, I think I'm mostly writing this for me.

-Lynn

(Yes, my nickname played a part in forming the name Aralynn.)