Why Is It This Way?

Chapter One Maggies P.O.V

Normal. That is the one word I'll never be called. Whether I was that girl who listened to Broadway shows like 'Hamilton', or that one person in the classroom who was way too obsessed with 'Harry Potter', normal was never a word that came up when people thought about me. Sitting on the seat of the bus I silently contemplated how other people would think of me. That was my problem. Whenever I was alone with my thoughts I always worried about what other people thought of me. The only time I wasn't consumed by my thoughts like this was when I was at school because when I was at school there was never time for a silly thought like this. But as always, school is a double-edged sword for me. Although It was never the work that I minded, it was the people.

The bus comes to a screeching halt, which causes me to bash my head on the seat in front of my own. The two girls sitting in front of me turn around and peer over the back of there seat so their heads face me. "You okay Maggie?" the girl on the left asks as she grabs her backpack off the floor of the bus. "Yeah I'm fine" I reply, plastering a fake smile on my face. I turn away from them and proceed to get off the bus, almost running into a boy with blond frizzy hair who was in the seat across from me. I walk off the bus after saying a brief but clear thank you to the bus driver, who didn't even hear me. I walk to a grey SOS™ storage box and sit on it while I wait for my friends to arrive. I take out my book and begin to read. Unfortunately, I was only able to read for five minutes before Marrissa walked over to where I had been sitting. Marrissa was always the first person to arrive, sometimes she would even be at school before I was. "Hi, Maggie," she says in her permanent tone of sarcasm, that really never seems to go away. After saying hello she puts in her headphones and gives one to me. I was surprised because she doesn't usually give me one of her headphones. Sometimes I'll just be standing there while she has both headphones in jamming away. We listen to a couple 'Hamilton' songs and sing along to the music. I see a couple of people staring at us but I didn't care what they thought right now, as long as I was with my friends no insecure thought came to mind. I'm sure once I was at home, alone in my bedroom, I would harp on the fact. I look up ahead and see one of our other friends Gwen walking towards us. "What are you doing?" she asks while laughing. Gwen's laugh was different then everyone else's. She had a way of sounding genuinely amused and sarcastic through her way of laughing which I thought fit her personality well. She immediately starts to sing with us after we tell her what song we're listening to. The next person to arrive was Elaine. Elaine and I are neighbours but she liked to walk to school whereas I preferred taking the bus. She walked with two other girls from a different friend group that she was a part of. She and the other two girls walk past us. I watch her greet the other people in her other friend group. After that, she comes and sings 'Hamilton' with us too. Elaine was the one who got us into hamilton, along with Gwen. The last three people who are a part of our group arrive. They are Ren, Nash, and Alex. Ren knows some songs from hamilton so stays with the rest of us girls and sings when she can. However Nash and Alex choose to stand a little ways away from us and talk about whatever it is that boys talk about. I talk the headphone out of my ear and hand it back to Marrissa, and walk over to the two boys. I catch Nash telling one of his famous stories about something weird his younger sister did. After only two seconds of me being there The bell rings. "Saved by the bell," I say. Nash chuckles while Alex gives me a 'did you really just say that ' look.

The seven of us enter our grade 6 class together, to see our terrible teacher waiting inside. She's mean, gives unfair deadlines, and gives us the most tedious tasks. One of those tasks, math journals, just happened to be the first thing we had to do. The reason we hated math journals wasn't because of the math itself it was that we didn't learn anything from them. She would just write down a problem and then solve it herself and tell us to copy it down. Then you had to write down what we learned and make a mini project to on the topic that the question was on. How does she expect us to write down what we learned if she did the work for us? I power through the math journal as quickly as possible so I can read while the rest of the class finishes up. My other friends, Nash and Ren, who sit at our assigned table both finish soon after, although Ren and I did have to help Nash finish up. After that we all just talked. After another 20 minutes, we finally switched over to French. Today we were doing something called a photobomb. That's when you have to look at a picture and describe what you think is happening in the picture, but in French. After you have a week to make a small play with 2 or 3 people to tell your story. I end up doing my skit with Nash and Marrissa. Marrissa and I end up doing most of the writing, and Nash just looks up words for us on his phone. Nash was never really a smart person but I didn't mind. But I know for a fact Marrissa does. All class she kept yelling at him for not helping, and every time he tried to help he would end up doing something wrong and then she would yell at him some more. Nash did help add our own weird essence to our play though.

The rest of the day went by with a blur. Although we did decide on something today. We had all read Harry potter, Except for Nash who had only seen the movies (which if course made Marrissa yell at him), So we all decided that we would be characters for the second generation of harry potter, Elaine was Rose, Gwen was Scorpius, Ren was Hugo, Nash was Albus, and despite being a boy Alex was Lily. Marrissa and I ended being the parents so she was Hermione and I was Ginny. We also decided that since Elaine and Gwen were Rose and Scorpius, they would be dating in our little role play. I broke out of my train of thought as I saw my bus coming. I was a late busser so I stayed 15 minutes later than everyone one else. By now even some teachers had left. I got back on the bus only to realize I was in the same place I had started my day. Contemplating the word normal.