The Perks of Being a Freak (Editing)

46. The Fear Of The Freshman

The beginning of school was not a fun time for most people, but it was my favorite time of the year. Gone were the endless days of moping and laying around the house, bored out of my mind. Now I had something to do. I had purpose once again.

Benny and Emily did not feel the same.

Benny and Emily hated school, and were annoyed at my optimism. It seemed like nobody liked an optimist.

I practically bounced into homeroom when school started, and immediately stopped.

Tony was in my homeroom.

Well shit.

I sat as far from him as I could, while he pretended that I didn’t exist.

Perfectly fine by me.

There were lots of people in my new homeroom that I had never really talked to, even though I had seen them around school. I hated not knowing people’s names, though, so I turned to the girl next to me and introduced myself.

“Hi,” she looked surprised that I was talking to her. “I’m Lia.”

“Um…” the girl blinked, and then smiled a little awkwardly. “I’m Gina.”

“Nice to meet you,” it was getting weird fast. 

“You too,” she turned back towards the front of the classroom, twiddling her thumbs nervously.

And I chewed on the end of my braid.

Our teacher finally arrived, a shorter hispanic man with a Doctor Who mug in one hand and a clipboard in the other.

Interesting.

“Good morning,” he had an accent. So he was probably a native from South America. “My name is Mr. Lopez.” Lopez was a common last name. It didn’t really say anything about where he was from. “Welcome to junior year.”

And so it began.

After taking roll call, and being corrected that no, my name was not Juliana and yes, I would most certainly like to be called Lia, Mr. Lopez let us lounge around the class. It was our third year at this school, he said. We should know the drill by now.

Ten minutes of mind-numbingly boring homeroom, and then we were off to our first period. Spanish para mi.

Now I’ve taken Spanish for a very, very long time, but I still suck. Keep that in mind. My spanish is abhorable.

I didn’t catch sight of any of the other freaks, nor did I see my two normal best friends, Hana and Maggie. 

Maggie was the artistic one of our little group. She was medium height, stockier, with shoulder-length brown hair. She always wore it up in a messy bun. She carried pencils and pens in her pockets and her hair. Nearly all of her shirts were splattered with ink or paint. One semester I had had to tutor her because she had spent so much time in class writing a story.

Hana was tall, dark, serious. She had absolutely no temper at all, and managed to deal with our antics with no more than the occasional eye-roll. 

Maggie was our artist. Hana was the one who kept us in line. Emily was the friendly one. I was the brains and the troublemaker.

We had a great friendship.

I felt awful that I hadn’t really talked to my two other best friends during the summer, despite our promises to text. To be fair, however, they hadn’t texted or called me either.

It would have been nice to have homeroom with at least one of them.

I was so caught up in my thoughts that I barely noticed the head of bright orange hair that shot past me.

But the girl brushed my arm, so it caught my attention, and I watched as she darted away.

Weird, I thought, frowning. Maybe she’s a freshman. Afraid of the upperclassmen.

She hadn’t looked like a freshman. She had been almost as tall as I was.

I shook my head and didn’t dwell on the familiarity of the hair, or the strangeness of someone running. I had Spanish.