Grey Skies

Chapter 5

IMPORTANT NOTE at the end!!! Please read!!

Chapter Five

When I get back to the table, everyone is staring at me, even Max who I barely see because he locks himself in his room for hours. My mom asks me what Tyler needed, and I tell her that he was just talking to me about conditioning and if I wanted to help him out. I wasn't ready to tell my parents, or Sarah, about him training me. If it all went wrong, I didn't want anyone to know about it. It would save me from the embarrassment. From the pity.

Sarah continues looking at me the entire dinner and I decide to act like nothing is different because Sarah is far too smart to know that something happened if I can't even keep eye contact with her. My attempts to act normal don't seem to work on her because as soon as we reach my room, she presses me for answers before I'm even in my pajamas.

"It looked pretty serious between you two. What's going on Iris?"

I smirk. "So it was you in the window?"

She looks away from me and pretends to pull a thread from her shirt, "That's not the point."

I snuggle into my side of the bed and force a large yawn that tunes her out momentarily. Then I tell her the same thing I told my mom, because more than often, when you keep saying something over and over again, people start to believe it. Or they stop caring for the truth. I've said it so much now, that it was nothing between Davis and me, that even a part of me starts to recognize it as just that. Nothing. Amounting the entire thing to nothing made everything easier. Lying. Explaining. Succumbing to failure, if it were to show up.

* * *

The next morning I decide that it would be smart of me to schedule an appointment with a counselor to sort out my classes and prior credits for the upcoming semester. The last thing I need, on top of everything else, is to rush and sort everything out last minute. I was never very good at performing under limited time, and gambling with that at a new college with new professors and classes wouldn't end well.

Fortunately, Ms. Scalise, the woman I spoke to, had time for me this afternoon. And with fifteen minutes left until noon, and me circling the campus like a lost duck, I curse at myself for not coming sooner. I can only imagine my Mom right now, what have I told you about being prepared Iris. On time is coming half an hour earlier, not right on the dot, she'd say. And if you have to wait a little that's fine. There's nothing worse than someone with no sense of punctuality at all. Well geez, I remember thinking, forget serial killers, and rapists, and guys who cheat on their wives, if you have no sense of of punctuality, you must be a terrible person. For me, this meant going everywhere early. Hair appointments, the dentist, birthday parties. I hated waiting half an hour just to be called in and being the first person to a birthday party. Thankfully, I only had to suffer up to my seventeenth birthday, where I finally got my license and didn't have to follow my Mom's rules anymore. That's right Mom, no more waiting for thirty minutes.

I make it to the correct building five minutes late, and when I find Ms. Scalise's office, I knock and apologize when she comes out. She's fairly young, with blonde hair reaching her shoulders and a set of bright blue eyes that match her large smile. Her office isn't very large, mainly a large wooden desk and two chairs, with a bookshelf filled with tattered books behind her.

"Oh it's fine honey, the first few times coming can be a little tricky but then you catch on pretty quickly." I nod and look at the chair and she gestures for me to sit down.

She starts off with a small introduction to the school. The courses, the qualified staff, the diverse student body. I almost want to tell her that she doesn't have to try and sell me on this place, I'm going here either way, but then I think, she's done this so many times that she probably can't even stop herself. I tell her that I don't plan on dorming, or even spending a lot of time on campus, so she goes away from those topics and switches to my likes and dislikes. If I want to major in English or History. Art or Foreign Language. Was I apart of any clubs. Drama Club or a musical instrument. When she mentions the word sports, a part of me shrinks away but my interests also peak.