kent

superman

Everything has changed and nothing has changed. Five years is a long time for someone still in high school, but the thing with this sort of change is that it is only noticed in reflection. As tastes evolve and social circles are shuffled, Carly doesn’t think she has changed much at all. Most people don’t notice the microscopic shifts, the subtle read-between-the-lines changes that accumulate, until years later, when the person of the past is buried under new memories.

Carly hasn’t noticed any extreme remodeling of ideologies and she certainly doesn’t notice any changes in physique. She’s maybe grown a scrubby inch and a half since the seventh grade, and if she wanted she could probably still rep the awful tween fashion. Then again, nobody wants to return to middle school.

Carly has remained a quiet, butt-kicking mass of curiosity. Rebecca is still the lighthearted, fast-smiling bundle of optimism. Taylor is still magnificently gorgeous and talented.

Clark, too has remained the same in terms of personality. He has hardly changed, still the ultra geek from seventh grade. He is still quiet and devastatingly intelligent and cripplingly nerdy. But somewhere along the way, he has grown into his growth spurt. He swapped out his glasses for contacts, but never managed to shake the action of rubbing his forefinger along the bridge of his nose, pushing up lenses that he forgets don’t exist anymore. High school is a fresh start, and Clark finds his niche among all the other inquisitives.

This is the macroscopic change that Clark is all too aware of. The sudden reversal of fortune from nightmare to fairytale seems uncalled for, the transition much too quick to completely heal the broken edges. But he is happy now, and that is all he could ever ask for. Anything to bury the middle-school years when the children are rabid dogs fueled by the societal belief that status is all that matters. Now, they know that there is more.

Seventh grade has made him soft whereas most people have turned hard. High school sets the course of erosion, weathering away the hard masks people have put on or maybe creating new masks all together.

Soft serves him well. He sits at the front of the room, letting his lanky legs stretch out in front of him. His fingers gently fiddle with a mechanical pencil as he attempts and fails at a baton twirl. The writing utensil falls to the ground, where he easily scoops it up. With his current posture and the length of his arms his fingers easily wrap around the plastic, brushing against the carpeted floor as the pencil makes its way back into his hand. Somehow he makes all this look graceful.

Carly watches him do this from her seat to his left, and curses internally, forcing her wandering eyes back to the smartboard. She knows she can’t afford to miss out on the information being presented. Unlike middle school, missing out on notes for physics would completely obliterate her GPA, and Carly wants to have some sort future. What kind of superhero forces herself to sit through AP classes? However, one can not have crime fighting without pain, and so in true masochistic fashion, Carly sits through physics, feeling as though she needs to know how those on the other side of justice feel.

And no, she is not being overly dramatic. Physics sucks.

Childishly, Carly forces herself into the routine of racing Taylor in notes, but now actually attempts to retain the information. She has gotten better at combining the epic note battle with actual learning, but Taylor’s test scores argue that she is better at learning than Carly.

So annoying. But if unwarranted envy is what is necessary to keep Carly on top of her classwork, she’ll take it. In fact, she nurtures this hard edge of competitiveness. It’s not wrong to want to be the best.

Carly’s eyes slide back over to Clark, and she manages to catch Taylor’s crystal gaze. Carly tries to hold back the desire to vomit, and just grimaces instead. She doesn’t look away though, taking the eye contact as yet another unspoken challenge. Taylor just chuckles lightly to herself, shaking her head just enough to make her blonde hair dance and resumes taking notes with font-like handwriting.