What We Lost In The Winter

Chapter 7 (Part 1)

I walk back to the locker room, following the crowd. I take my clothes out of Gabi Reeves locker and change back into them.

“So, Becca, how do you like Redo so far?” someone asks. Alex Madrid, the little girl with the really long dark hair. Gabi’s friend.

“It’s fine,” I shrug. That’s the truth; It’s fine. I don’t know anybody yet, no rivalries have set, no hatreds. It’s really all just a sea of faces.

“Where’d you live before this?” Alex asks, closing her locker.

“Chicago,” I answer. Let’s just hope she doesn’t ask about schools.

“Chicago! Chicago!” someone sings.

“Carlie! Shut up!” Alex shouts. “Sorry, that’s just, well, Carlie. What class do you have next?”

“Um, math, I think,” I pause.

“So do I!” Alex smiles wildly. “What teacher?” I hesitate. Who is my math teacher? She notices my hesitation and then says, “Meldrum or Klussterfeld?”

“Meldrum,” I respond. Klussterfeld must be the other math teacher.

“Awesome! That’s my class. Nicole, Ari, Bria, and Kennedy are in it too. You ready yet?” the dark haired girl shrieks. Well, she’s excited, is the only thought I come up with.

“Yeah,” I pick up my gym uniform and turn towards Gabi, “Can I just leave my gym uniform in there?”

“Of course!” she smiles.

“Let’s wait for Gabi,” Alex grins to me. About 30 seconds later, the Gabi/Becca locker is shut and the three of us walk out of the locker room. We go down to the eighth grade hallway.

“I need to stop at my locker,” Gabi says.

“Same,” I silently curse to myself. The math room is at the other end of the hallway. I should’ve just brought my stuff up to gym.

“That’s fine, I’ll wait for you,” Alex says. I walk up to my locker, which happens to be about eight down from Gabi’s. “You guys are in the same homeroom! Lucky!” I pull out my math binder, accordion binder, math book, and pencil case.

“Bye guys,” Gabi says and walks off towards whatever class she has next. Alex and I walk to math class. Once inside the classroom, Alex puts her stuff down at a desk, her seat, I assume.

“Um, Mrs. Meldrum?” I approach my teacher.

“Oh, just sit anywhere you want. It doesn’t matter,” she responds. I nod and take a seat in front of Alex. Nicole Gibbard sits in front of me, and a girl with straight black hair, a friend of Nicole’s, is in the first row. Alex stands up and introduces me to a few of the girls around us. Her friends. The girl in front of Nicole is Kennedy. She gestures to a couple of girls to our right. They’re wearing identical outfits, pink tanktops over another white tanktop, black running shorts, and their hair pulled back into a high ponytail secured by a bow. Alex tells me that the twinning girls are Ari and Bria.

A minute after the bell, Mrs. Meldrum tells us to take out the homework that had to do with tracking how much time we spent doing stuff over break and how since I didn’t have the assignment she would give me an example copy that was already filled in. Then she directed us to find our average time for each thing and then write them on the board. I obeyed and found that every average for the example sheet were all whole numbers. How convenient. We spent pretty much the whole class doing that. The bell rings and we head into the hallway.

“Next class?” Alex asks me. Nicole and the possibly Aubrey stand to her right.

“English, Ms. White,” I respond.

“Seriously? Why can’t you be in Mr. Wallab’s class? We literally do nothing, we just sit around and talk about stuff. Plus, the class basically consists of just me, Alex, Aubrey, Gabi, Torri, Ari, Nevaeh, Kendall, Carlie, and Morgan. And a few popular people, but that doesn’t matter,” Nicole shouts. Those are practically nothing more than names. Nicole is good at just listing off names, she did it during gym too.

“Nicole, shut up. You are so not helpful,” Alex shouts. “Anyways, bye. Good luck in LA!” The three of them walk into a classroom and I keep going down the hall. I turn into Room 100. Ms. White is standing in front of the door.

“Becca, just wait to put all your stuff down. I’ll find you a seat in a minute,” she brings me to a halt.

“Okay,” I walk into the classroom and kind of just stand by the corner. When class begins, Ms. White comes into the classroom.

“Becca, see those two open chairs near Kamryn and Delilah?” I nod because she’s pointing to two specific chairs. Kamryn and Delilah? Who are they?

“Yeah,” I respond.

“Pick either of those,” my teacher walks away. Time for my big decision. Looking at both of those girls, I realize I recognize them. The one on the far end is Delilah, one of the girls Mrs. Wood called up to demonstrate. She happened to be in my math class as well, and I think homeroom. The other one was also from gym, she was on my basketball team. The blonde squad. The girl whose name I never learned. I guess she’s Kamryn. Who do I sit by? Kamryn or Delilah? Delilah sits across from one other girl that I don’t know, and diagonal from the Mari girl from gym. Kamryn sits to the right of a different girl I don’t know, but I recognize her from the large group of girls sitting on the mats. Across from her is Taylor Rosales, diagonal is another unknown face, and to the other side, my neighbor, Camden Lacosse.