Serendipity

Chapter 1

People liked to say that your junior year of high school was the best year out of the four.

Freshman were just panicked and transitioning from middle school to high school, so that year was just confusing and hectic. Sophomore year, and you still had a majority of the class being too immature to really have fun or escape petty drama that never mattered. Of course, senior year was filled with college hunting and stress over picking what you wanted to do with your entire life, and just hoping you don't make a wrong decision when you do. Juniors, though...they were just kind of there. Fully mature...or as mature as you were going to get in high school, and it unfortunately did differ between people. You didn't have to worry about college or trying to fit in...you were just kind of there in high school, but you we're already established and you already had everything figured out. All your friends, your classes...the works. So, when you look between the four years, your third was definitely the best.

Well, whoever had that opinion had obviously never met Kay Daniels.

If this year was supposed to be the least stressful, she had nothing but fear for what was to come. Every single one of her core classes were AP. Not only was she involved in the wind ensemble, but she was involved in the marching band after school, and student council. She had a planner in her bag that was so full that if anyone else picked it up and looked inside, it would just look like she'd taken a pen and scribbled all the way down the page, and it actually all meant absolutely nothing. She'd highlighted the most important events she had to make...but everything was highlighted. She wrote down tests, project deadlines, extra credit opportunities, meetings she had to make, band practices and contests that would follow, concerts to perform, family stuff she had to do, and about a million other things. Other juniors in her class might be taking this year as the last year to really have a lot of fun. To slack off a bit and just coast. But she just didn't have the time.

Time was the one thing she was all out of, no matter what day it was. Take the night before. She'd stayed up until one studying for the test she would have later today in government. Now, it was 6:55 in the morning, and she was sitting in her literature class, in the back corner of the room where she usually took to if there wasn't assigned seating. She was still half-asleep, but she was trying to force out some last-minute studying before the test. Government was second hour, for her, still bright and early. She still had some time to use to prepare for it, if she could keep her eyes open. And if she could manage to focus around everyone else already gathered in the classroom.

There weren't too many just yet. But it was around seven when people really started coming in, so it was close enough. Friends were clamoring to say hi to each other, to give each other hugs like they hadn't seen each other in years when really it hadn't even been twenty-four hours. Students were sitting on desks talking to each other, or rifling through the bookshelf in the other corner to "Find a book that doesn't suck" they could add to the next roster of books to choose from. Apparently One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest wasn't their cup of tea, because that was what they were reading now. Other students were talking with the teacher. Mrs. Shockley was one of the more laid-back teachers (she was two years from retirement, so there wasn't much math to that equation) and currently she was humoring a group of them who were trying to propose 'Bagel Tuesdays.'

"Panera sells bagels for fifty cents on Tuesdays!" Mike was proclaiming. Kay glanced over at the shout, irritated, and tried to redirect her attention back down. But his voice was way too loud to ignore as he went on. "Monday, we can all give you a dollar, and you can pick them up on the way. I think it'd do wonders for...morale." He had to stretch for the word. Which was sad. Because this was an english class. Shockley was nodding very dramatically, still scrolling through her email. "I'm serious!" he pressed. "And think about it: we'd give you a dollar! So if you add it all up, you'll be making a profit. And we'll be getting some really good bagels."