Little Touch of Heaven

1

Michelle woke up the morning of August 15th, and as soon as she realised what day it was, a feeling of dread manifested in her stomach. A new school, and two weeks after everyone else had started. This sucked. She didn't even try to fix her unruly curls, and resorted to putting it in a ponytail and leaving a few out on each side. She threw on a pair of blue jeans and cuffed them. She put on a her favorite shirt, a yellow one with "The Great Wave off Kanagawa" in white outline, and tucked it into her jeans, grabbed her floral Vans and her black-and-red backpack kind of skipped into the living room down the hall, to find her mother passed out on the couch with her computer next to her, dark with no battery left. Her mother really never stopped working, but somehow found time to be a committed mother and community volunteer.

MJ placed a kiss on her mother's forehead, and quickly wrote a note, saying she was going to head to the high school by skating the mile. She grabbed a protein bar and the lunch she'd packed the previous night and stepped into the hallway, sucked in a deep breathe, and took the elevator downstairs. 

"Hellooooo, MJ!" Michelle heard behind her, and turned to see the blasted redhead Mary Jane, aka MJ. 

"What's up MJ?" Michelle said, slightly friendlier than usual, because although Mary Jane was vaguely annoying, she was glad to know that the shorter girl was across the hall, ready to help and give advice whenever necessary. And she would know someone at her new school. They moved along, with the two of them making slight comments along the way, as MJ relaxed to the feel and sound of the roller skates against concrete.

As it turned out, the two MJ's had the same homeroom and first three classes together, so they walked together, and arrived at the lockers, and MJ had to yank and pull at the lcok because it was stuck. Michelle walked slightly behind Mary Jane and reached a room with lots of pop culture posters, then Mary Jane squealed and ran to a gaggle of girls that all hugged and kissed each other's cheeks, and Michelle stood awkwardly in the back, waiting to see if the seats were assigned. Then two boys walked past her, one looking as though there was a frog in his mouth, and the other one with black hair and an innocent look about him. That boy whispered to Frog-Mouth and goes "That girl in the back is hot" and then Frog-Mouth turned back to look at her and quickly turned back as he met her angry glare.

"Ned!" the skinny boy whispered with slight alarm, looking back at her and quickly moving away from her.

"Call me beautiful, I'm a girl, not coffee." MJ vocalized her thoughts, feeling like this new start should change her.

The other kid, now mentioned as Ned, nodded with a blush, and the two boys sat down right in the middle, and MJ noticed that nobody else really wanted to sit by them, except two girls, one blonde, who sat by Ned, and she thought perhaps that was Betty, and someone taller than even MJ herself, with dark hair.

Eventually the class quieted down and the teacher noticed her standing.

"Oh class, we have a new student today. Umm..would you come up here please?" The female, known as Miss Reynolds, asked awkwardly so MJ shrugged and walked up to the front, feeling uncomfortable being at least three inches taller than the teach. Being 5' 10", she ended up being taller than a lot of people.

"I'm Michelle, my friends call me MJ, which is to say, one person calls me MJ. Also, umm, where should I sit?" MJ said in a slightly bored tone, and the teacher pointed out several empty seats, one next to Frog-Boy and Ned and their "girlfriends", four empty seats in the back corner, on behind Mary Jane, and two on either side of rich boy known as Harry Osborne, who also lived in her apartment complex. 

"So these are who I'm supposed to work with for the rest of this year?" she asked, and people around her nodded, some of the boys looking eager, and the girls friendly. She made her way past Harry Osborne, past Froggy, but she did notice he blushed and then looked a little sad as she passed him, and took up 2 of the 4 empty seats in the back. She took out her notebook and lazily scrawled the outline of the project assigned, and was glad to be working alone. After class, she gathered up her things and moved throughout the beginning of her day without really talking, and then it was time for lunch.