Love, Drugs, and High School

Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Annabelle

          Getting ready for school, I was shaking. I wasn’t ready for this. I couldn’t do this. No matter how much I tried to tell myself that nobody would even probably care about what happened, they wouldn’t know me, or even ask me any questions. It would be easy. I just had to keep telling myself that.

          “You ready to go?” My uncle called up to me.

          I felt like I was going to lose my breakfast, but I sucked it up, grabbed my backpack, and walked downstairs.

          “Good! You are all ready to go?” He asked, more excited than I was about my first day of school.

          “No,” I said truthfully, but my uncle just nudged me and laughed, his mustache curling up.

          “You’ll have a great time. I’m sure you will be just fine,” he rambled.

          “Glad you think so,” I muttered quietly enough so that my uncle couldn’t hear. He was the last person that I wanted to upset.

          Small talk in the car was ok, but I’m still not convinced about this school. We pulled up to the curb and I got out, looking at all of the students stare at me.       Yes, I was the new kid, but it wasn’t like I was coming in in the middle of the year. This was my first day along with everyone else.

          I walked into the school, found my locker and picked up my schedule from the office. Nothing was going to happen.

          Half of the day had gone by just like that. It was so easy to get lost in the flutter of all of the students shuffling around in the hallway.

          When I finally found my locker, there was a girl standing next to me with her locker open. “Hi,” she said, looking at me with sparkly blue eyes.

          “Hi,” I said politely, definitely not ready to talk to someone yet.

          “Are you new here?” Was it that obvious that I didn’t fit in? Did I really stick out that badly?

          “Yeah,” I said lamely, trying to come up with something better to say but failing to do so.

          “I’m Linzie,” she said smiling at me. Maybe one day I would be able to talk to people that comfortably again.

          “Annabelle,”

          “Can I see your schedule?” I handed it over to her and finished up at my locker. “I can show you to your next class if you like?”

          “That would be nice,” We started walking to class. I was checking out all of the new faces, trying to take them in although I know that I would probably never talk to any of them.

          “Who’s that?” I asked. This boy was walking down the hallway and all of the students parted so he could walk through, disgusted looks on their faces.

          “Ryan Mallach. He is the school druggie. You don’t want to mess with him.” Her expression matched that of the rest of the school.

          I’m not sure what it was about him, whether it was his attitude, his shaggy brown hair, or the way he dressed, but I had a feeling that I wanted to get to know him. I couldn’t explain it, so I didn’t bother saying anything.

          “Thank you,” I said turning to Linzie.

          “Wait here after class. We can go to lunch together.” She turned and walked off to her class with a smile.