The Crystal Guardians

The Test

With shaking hands, I flipped through the pages of my notes. Laura and I were fretting over our notes and doing last minute revisions. "Oh where's Vini?" She huffed and searched the halls. "I swear, the girl has no care in the world does she?"

"Take a deep breath, she'll be here," I said, panning across the crowd of students waiting outside the hall. There were far too many faces to distinguish from and I settled on the fact that it would be near impossible to find her. But from the corner of my eye, I saw someone wave at me. It was Hawk standing with a group of guys. I waved back only for Laura to catch me.

"Who's that?" she asked in curiosity. "He's... attractive."

I laughed at my gawking friend. "That's the new guy."

"Oh!" Laura exclaimed. "I think they mentioned his name. Hawk was it?"

"Yeah, Hawk... uh... well Hawk. "

"Just Hawk?"

I looked up, briefly meeting his eyes before I snapped away, looking back at my notes. "I guess, just Hawk."

Peering up from her notebook, I was greeted by a smirk. "Okay fine, we talked a little this morning."

"Obviously, you're not very good at keeping secrets. You know, I think you should go for him. Take that as an advantage, that's what I would do."

I gasped, "You already have a boyfriend."

"Exactly why should go for him before someone else does, girls won't be able to help themselves, I mean look at him!"

I shook my head and continued studying. Although I couldn't retain much information before a girl came pushing through the hoard of sixteen year olds. Her dark skin glowed with the makeup caked on her face. She whipped off her sunglasses to reveal eyes of honey, bordered by long lashes. "Hello ladies, did I miss anything?"

"Obviously I did." I reach out for her scarf, it's soft and fluffy. "Is this new?"

She placed her hands on my shoulders and gave them an apologetic pat. "Fairly, but i don't even like it, I kind of just bought it because it was on sale. You know, I was actually going to give it to you this morning since I thought you were going to meet us there!"

"I'm so sorry Vini, it's a long story-"

"Babe you've always got some crazy story to tell us about your life," she said, wrapping a scarf around my neck. "But that's alright. "And speaking of crazy have you seen the new guy?"

"I told you Ever!"

"That's enough." Leura had burst into giggles and I could only shake my head at Vini. She gave nothing but a big smile as I shoved my nose back into my notebook. Typical.

"No but seriously, what happened?" she asked after a quick recovery.

I hesitated. "Just the usual stuff," I quoted. Vini nodded and didn't bother pressing for more. It was half true I guess, except nothing that happened today wasn't the usual, but it's the usual confusion.

***

"Time's up!" I dropped my pencil and sunk back in my chair. Laura gave me a reassuring thumbs up as Vini slid her Adot from her pocket. "You there! Give me that." The teacher turned towards Vini, walking towards her. He stood beside her table, hands on the desk. After an eternity of the class waiting for him to say something, he muttered. "You may all leave in quietly. Now."

Everyone ran for the door except for Leura and I. Soon we were left with the ring of the bell signalling the next period and the chatter of students. Vini shot me a look of concern and all I could do was shrug. Only then did I realise she was looking behind me.