The House

Sunny Palms High Continued

Language arts seemed to go on forever and I couldn't get my mind off of Sebastian. It didn't help that he would start talking to me and smirk afterwards. The bell finally rang for the next class and I hurried out of there. I look at my schedule and my next class is art. I go to my locker to drop off my language arts books. As soon as I close it, Sebastian is standing right behind it. I sigh. "What? Are you here to threaten me again?," I ask him. He starts smiling and I couldn't help but to smile also. "No, I gotta make sure you get to your right classes so you won't be late," he says. Dang, so I can't catch a break today? "Oh..," I said as I turn to head to art. He told me his next class was music. I told him mine was art and that I already knew how to get there. It's the only door with paintings all over it. "Okay, see you around," he said and then he walked off in the opposite direction. I breathe a sigh of relief. Butterflies are still in my stomach. Man, I can't be catching feelings now.

As I enter the art class I notice a girl sitting alone. I go to sit next to her because I figure she's new too. As I get closer I realize that she's Willow from the fair. "Hey Willow! This seat's taken?," I ask. She looks up from her painting. "Yeah!," she says harshly. I sit here anyways because all the tables are filled. "What are you doing? I said that the seat was taken!," she says with an icy glare. "All the other tables are filled and your sitting alone. So I figured why not sit here?" The tardy bell rings and I notice almost everyone in the class is staring at us whispering with their friends. "What's up with them," I ask Willow. She rolls her eyes. "SEE THIS IS THE REASON WHY I DIDN'T WANT YOU SITTING HERE," she hisses at me. I give her a confused look. "Would you like to elaborate on why?" "BECAUSE THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT US! I HATE BEING THE CENTER OF ATTENTION! Rumors can start and I don't you to be bullied on your first day here," she explains. "So, it's best for you to move somewhere else." I shrug and get book to read. Willow rolls her eyes.

Our art teacher walks into the room and starts talking about an art project we are going to be doing. We have to make a collage. Then he sits down at his desk and starts typing away on his computer. I head to go get a canvas. While I walk to get one, a girl with long blond curly extensions keeps staring at me. I stare back until she looks down and starts working on her canvas. I get my canvas and sit back down at the table with Willow. She ignores me but its whatever considering I could actually focus on my work. The girl with blond hair comes up to us. "Hi, you must be new here I'm Bianca! And you are?" I look up from my canvas. "Working," I say. She laughs a fake laugh and I look over to Willow. Willow is too busy trying to avoid eye contact with Bianca. "No really, what's your name?" "Aria," I say reluctantly. "What a pretty name! Oh and by the way you might not want to sit here with this Loser," she says to me. I start to get irritated. "And why don't I?" "Because she's a liar and a weirdo." This b*tch is standing here right in front of Willow talking about her like she isn't here! "Well I rather hang out with Willow than a girl who think she's better than everyone," I retort. Willow looks up at me shocked and looks at Bianca scared. Bianca gives both of us a look of disgust. "Don't say I didn't warn you," she says as she's about to turn around and walk out of the door. "WAIT," I say. She smirks, "Yes?". "You're being so kind to me, warning me about Willow that I have to warn you that your extensions are showing! You might want to go to the bathroom and fix that," I say with a smile. She looks at me with her mouth hanging open. At this point the whole class is quiet. I stuck up both of my middle fingers and waved bye to her. She storms out of the class with her entourage following close behind. Now it's my turn to I smirk. I look around to the class who are all staring at me. "What? Show's over! This has nothing to do with any of you anyways," I scoot my chair back in and continue working on my collage.

I guess the teacher hadn't notice that Bianca left the class. "Do you know what you've done?," Willow says to me. "What no thank you?" "Definitely not! You are now a target!" "No I'm not. I know how to take care of bullies. Why are you so scared of her? You know you could stick up to her and speak your mind," I say to Willow. Her eyes start to tear up. "I can't," she says barely above a whisper. Luckily, I heard her. "Why can't you?" "Just because! Okay!" "Fine. But how did this start?" Willow takes in a deep breath. A tear starts trickling down her cheek but she quickly wipes them away. "Why do you care," she asks me. "Because I want to help you. No one should be bullied like this," I tell her. Willow sighs. "Why not? It was my freshman year of high school and I had a group of friends including Bianca and Genesis." I raise my eyebrow wanting to learn more. I wanted to know why she stared down Genesis at the fair that day. She continued, " The three of us were best friends. Long story short I felt really insecure and felt the need to change my appearance. People would call me ugly and Genesis nor Bianca would stick up for me. I changed my really thick glasses to blue colored contacts, stopped eating besides the occasional granola bar, changed my clothes style, and stuffed my bra. All of this happened over the course of two weeks. People started noticing my changes quick and started making fun of me for it. Especially on a day where I was running late and had toilet paper sticking out of my shirt. I was so embarrassed. That's when they officially started bulling me. People called me names, didn't save any room for me at the lunch table, putting toilet paper in my locker, and Genesis and Bianca ignored me. I cried and it got to the point where I cried so much that most of ninth grade called me Weeping Willow. They also called me fake. I didn't have any friends after that so I spend most of my lunch eating and reading in the bathrooms." I look at Willow with wide eyes after she explained that to me.

"Willow I'm sorry," I say. "It's whatever it'll all be over soon," she says. "That's right think positive. We only have two more years left in this place. I'll be your friend," I volunteered. She smiled and we got back to work on our collages.

The bell rings and I go to math with Konner and Willow. All three of us don't really pay any attention to the math teacher because we are all having too much fun talking and giggling quietly in the back of the classroom. After math, biology, and French seemed to take forever. Although, Sebastian was in my French class distracting me all hour. He kept talking to me. I didn't mind I like hearing the sound of his deep voice. Then the bell rings for lunch.

I meet up with Willow and we walk to lunch together. Once inside the cafeteria, we chose a lunch table and sat down. Konner sat down with us too. "Why aren't you sitting with your friends," I ask Konner. "It's your first day. And we're friends now right?" I give him a nod. Willow stares at Konner intensively. "Nice to see your here Konner. You never sat and talked to me before. Why now?" Willow asks him. I glance at him. Konner's face turns red. "I talked to you before,"he says to Willow. "That was last year! Are you actually here because of Aria?" He shakes his head no and his face turns even redder. "I knew it," Willow whispers to herself. I start to feel uncomfortable that is until Genesis walks to our table and sits down at it. "Hey everyone," she says in her usually perky voice. I see Willow making her hand into a fist as Genesis talks. "Nice to see you're finally here," she says coldly to Genesis. "Yep," Genesis says awkwardly. "Where were you when I needed a friend Genny? Oh I forgot you said to never call you that again AFTER YOU PUSHED ME TO SIDE AND SAID YOU DIDN'T WANT TO BE FRIENDS AGAIN AND STARTED TALKING BEHIND MY BACK! Sorry I forgot Genesis," she yells. Hearing Willow's story back in art really saddens me. I don't even want to talk to Genesis again. I narrow my eyes at Genesis. She looks at me and realizes how angry I am at her. "You know, my friends probably miss me. Let me go see what they want," Konner says to me. I nod even though I know it's a lie. I can see Willow's eyes tear up. "Well I can't be friends with a fake," Genesis says to her. I look at her shocked and so does Willow. Willow draws back her fist and was just about to punch Genesis until she caught herself. Instead she banged her fist on the table and started yelling at Genesis.

Genesis looks at me, then looks back at the table, then to Willow. Let's just say the argument didn't end well and it ended up leaving Willow in tears. Once Willow was heading to the bathroom she accidentally bumped into Bianca. That made Bianca push her into the wall hitting her head against it. I stood up from my chair to come to her rescue but Genesis was in my way. "Move!," I say. "Please let me explain. Because I'm not gonna move until you let me talk to you." I sigh knowing that I could push her out of the way and slap Bianca in the face, but I decide to let Genesis talk. "Okay I'm guessing she told you the story about our friendship. Well I was no longer friends with her because I thought that ruined my reputation. All I wanted to be in ninth grade was popular. Little did I know Bianca would replace me also. But now everyone knows her as Weeping Willow and I don't want to be made fun of for talking to her. So I'm warning you. Find other friends," she tries to explain. "Oh I did find a friend and that's not you. So move out of my way before your reputation won't be the only thing ruined," I snap at her. "Oh and by the way," I say before I go comfort Willow, "You shouldn't care what other people think of you. People thought I was a druggie and spread rumors about me. Did that get to me? NO IT DID NOT!" I pushed her out of my way and headed for the bathroom. I probably shouldn't of told her the last part because that part is true, but I got my point across.

Sebastian stops me dead in my tracks. He comes up to me and asks me if I want to work on our project at my house. I was lost in his gorgeous hazel eyes so I couldn't really get any words out. So I nodded. "Cool," he says and walks away. "Calm down Aria," I tell myself. I push open the bathroom door just in time to find Willow take out some scissors to cut herself. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING!," I shout at her. She gives me a startled look and hurries to put the scissors back in her back pack. "Is this what you've been doing before I came here?" I ask her. "Not all the time.." she mumbles. "Most of the time I write about things I have been going through. It's only when things get too much to handle is when.. I pull out the sharpest thing close to me to cut. No one at a school would think anything of scissors, right?"

I wanted to make her feel better but I couldn't. I'm not good at things like this. When I have problems, I just keep it to myself and only tell one person when it gets too much to handle. I hug her as tight as I can hoping that even though I can't relate to what she's going through, she'll know that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

The bell rang for last hour and Willow and I went our separate ways. I have history next. Once in the classroom, all I could think about was Sebastian coming over and Willow's problem. Dang, it's my first day here, and I've already made an enemy. Drama just seems to follow me huh?