Illéa High

Letting go of Jewels

"We back and better than ever!!" Marlee exclaims and jumps onto my bed.

"I've missed you so much!" I gush and take my spunky friend into my arms. "How was your Thankfulness Day? Good I hope!"

"It was great! I ate so much food and my family and I played lots of games. Took a trip to the ER one day, because my little cousin swallowed a battery. Overall I was just so thankful for Illéa becoming a new and approved country, I mean that's what Thankfulness Day is all about, right?"

I nodded.

"So what did you do?"

"I had a Thankfulness Dinner with my family and Aspen's. It was really nice because Aspens mom is a really good cook. Most of my time at home was just May asking me a bunch of questions about this school. I know it was only a week and a half, but I missed it here."

"Yeah, this school and its people grow on you."

~•~

"I know you all are coming back from a long break, but we still have a bunch of work to do. Starting with the project of redesigning a broken down house only using geometric shapes, you all should know your partners and I'll give you all your broken down houses right now. So everyone get with your partner and get to redesigning!" Mrs. Smith instructs.

Maxon and I are already sitting next to each other so we just wait for the teacher to give us the broken house.

"Isn't, like, almost any shape geometric?" Some random dude raises his hand and asks.

"Oh, I forgot to tell you guys, my bad, only squares, rectangles, triangles..." Mrs. Smith went on but I wasn't listening.

For the whole hour Maxon and I work on our house together. We got most of the first floor finished and planned out. Since this was a richer house it had four stories we needed to design for.

"America, can I ask you a question?" Maxon asks while we were packing up our things, getting ready for the bell to ring.

"Sure, ask away," I respond and zip up my bag.

"We are good, right? No hard feelings, just friendship?"

"Yeah, of course. We're friends," I state. The bell rings and I make my way to the next class.

When Gym rolls around we are starting a new unit, volleyball. "Okay class teams are, like always, up on this board here and since I already sent out the rules and how to play on the class website I expect everyone to know how to play. When. I blow my whistle you guys can come up here and look at the teams," Mr. Joseph says and then blows his whistle.

I wait in the back for everyone else to see their teams first, then I go up and look for myself.

Marlee Tames
Celeste Newsome
Cedar Wills
America Singer
Maxon Schreave
Hunter James
Guards on the team
Aspen Leger
Carter Woodwork

"Wow, it's the whole gang on one team. We are totally going to dominate the other teams!" Cedar says behind me. I look at her and behind her are the other three people.

"Yeah, this is going to be so much fun!" Marlee exclaims. "And we have some of the coolest guards on our team," she adds.

"Marlee, we all know you only mean Carter. You guys have something between you that's undeniably gross and disgusting," Celeste brashly says.

"What's that suppose to mean?" Marlee sounds hurt.

"Maxon! Get you and your team's butts over to this court! We aren't waiting all day for your team! We wanna get at least two games down today," Me. Joseph yells over at us before Celeste could respond.