I sat up in distress at the sound of my alarm clock. It couldn't have been six already, could it? To my surprise it was, so I sat up and turned off the alarm. Today was the first day of my freshmen year. All these years I had looked forward to being in high school and now that day had finally came. I got up and used the bathroom and brushed my teeth. I could hear my brother doing the same in the upstairs bathroom. My brother looked just like me, except of course he was a boy and I most certainly was not. Me, him, my mom and dad all lived together in a decent sized home in Pennsylvania. We had our problems but all families do. I rinsed out my mouth and walked back to my room. I searched through my closet for the maroon polo shirt I was going to wear every weekday until June. It was my uniform shirt that I had to wear with a nice and unflattering pair of khaki pants. I slid them on and headed upstairs where my mom was making eggs and toast. Now, this seems like your cliche mom, but let's get real for second. My mom only, and I mean ONLY did this on day one of school. She was so excited we wouldn't be home for 8 hours every weekday for the next 9 and a half months that she was celebrating by making us breakfast. I started eating my food very slowly. I always had an uneasy stomach in the early morning.
"Jeez. You can just tell me my food sucks," my mom said trying to crack a joke.
"Ha. Ha. Ha. Very funny." I jokingly played along.
She may have been excited but I'm not sure I was exactly ready for ninth grade. This past summer had to have been the worst summer I had ever been through. The boy I liked ignored me, my best friend and I got into a huge fight, and my depression was at an all time high. I started cutting myself in July and to be honest I still was. I did not exactly think that all the soon to come high school drama was going to help with my depression. I finished eating and grabbed my stuff and headed outside to wait for the bus.
My brother slowly followed me out with his headphones in. When the bus pulled up, I climbed on and headed to the same seat I've sat in for four years. The bus was empty. Our school always started a week or two before everyone else did. Since I had no one to talk to, I slipped my headphones in. The boy I liked wasn't going to be on the bus anymore because he went to a different school for high school. I would be alone on the bus this year. I mean, even if he rode, he'd ignore me anyway so I guess that was stupid of me to say. Once I got to our extremely small school that still managed to fit students from kindergarten to 12th grade, I got off and stood next to my friends outside while we waited for the doors to hell to open. I could easily point out the kids I had been going to school with since elementary, but of course there were plenty of unfamiliar faces.
"Mia! I haven't seen you in forever!" I turned around and saw the familiar face. It was my friend Alex.
"Oh, hey Alex. Yeah, I had camp for part of the summer and I guess I just stayed under the radar." I kinda just made up an excuse for why we hadn't seen each other in months.
Once the bell rang I was in homeroom and the only person I knew was Alex. We did the cliche "go around the room, say your name and say one thing about yourself." I told them my name, Mia, and that I had an obsession with Ed Sheeran. That was so true. I started listening to his music thanks to a suggestion from a friend, and I instantly fell in love.
I went through my day and learned the names of all the new people and got to know my new teachers and had to repeat my name and obsession nine times. Lunch was at fourth period and so I walked over to the lunchroom with my friend Joy. Joy and I became extremely close in seventh grade and I guess we were kind of like best friends because I basically told her everything. I bought lunch that day. I grabbed a plate of fries and walked over to pay for them. I guess I wasn't paying attention because I almost lost a perfectly good plate of fries running into one of the new kids. Luckily, I looked up in time and saved myself from embarrassment on day one.
"Oh god, I'm sorry. I wasn't paying attention." In the motion of me preventing myself from losing my precious fries, I had made him drop his phone. I leaned over and picked it up for him. As I stood up and handed him back his phone he made eye contact with me and asked me what my name was. For some reason his eye contact made me lose the ability to speak and I didn't answer his question. Instead I continued to stare at him.
"Oh, I'm sorry. I'm Mia." I managed to mutter that out. He told me his name was Shane. It clicked to me that he was related to one of the girls in my English class.
"Oh, you're Caroline's brother, right?" I asked him.
"Haha, yeah, unfortunately. I'm also Celia's brother." The name sounded familiar but I couldn't put a face to it. Then it hit me. Celia was also in my English class.
"Holy crap. You're the triplets." I don't know why I practically screamed that. That's a great way to scare away someone after you creepily stared at them.
"Yeah, we are. But shh don't tell anyone. You'll blow my cover. I'm amazed Caroline didn't tell you that." I wasn't sure why either. I mean triplets??? Why would you not want to tell people at a new school. "Look, I gotta go get food, I'll see you later." And then he walked over to the line and grabbed a plate of fries, much more gracefully than I, of course.
I walked to the lunch table and sat down next to Joy. She gave me a weird look.
"What took you so long to buy one plate of fries?"
"I ran into some boy. I mean almost literally ran into him."
She laughed and started telling me some story from her summer. But honestly, I wasn't listening at all. I was just wondering how I was going to get through the rest of this year.
