Being Hope

That Strange Boy

"Good morning!" My teacher said cheerfully to me. "Hi." I mumbled slighty. Why was everyone at this high school so happy? "Okay, good morning class, my name is Mrs. Castellano, most of you already know me because I was your physics teacher last year, but we have some new students in our class, so I'd like them to stand up and please introduce themselves." Oh god, my fear was coming true. I was absolutely terrified of public speaking especially when I didn't really know the audience. "Ms. Radley? Would you please stand up and introduce yourself to the class?" I stood up, again I could feel that all eyes were on me. "Hi. I'm Serenity-Hope, but you guys can call me Hope. My absolute most favorite thing to do is draw, I've been drawing ever since I could pick up a pencil basically." I could feel myself blushing. "Um, my favorite type of music is jazz but I also like rock and pop." I sat down not knowing what else to say. While everyone shifted their gaze to the next person, one boy kept staring at me. He was gorgeous too, with his light brown hair, his hazel eyes, and that perfect prince charming smile, why would he ever be so focused on a girl like me? He looked like he wanted to say something but he couldn't, so he just turned away awkwardly. The rest of the class period went by pretty fast. I wasn't really paying attention to the new student introductions, but one in particular made me lift my head from this somewhat extremely comfortable desk. "Uh, hello." She said just as nervously as I did. "I'm Athena Moraley. I just moved here from California not to long ago. Um, some interesting things about me are I hate to be the center of attention, and like Hope, I have a strong passion for drawing." She sat down. "Alright class, that's it for today, tomorrow I want each of you to be able to name an ionic compound." With that class was dismissed. That strange guy ended up waiting for me outside of class. "Hey, I'm Shane. I would like to be your friend." He started laughing. "Aw man that was cheesy. Let's try that again. Hey, I'm Shane, do you maybe wanna get some coffee or something later? It's on the house." I bit my lip and cheerfully responded, sure. "Great! See you at seven?" He said happily. "Yeah. I'll give you my number 335-674-8924. Call me and I'll give the address." He smiled and walked off. I had just enough time to catch up to Athena. "Hey." I said trying not to be awkward. "Hi!" She said cheerfully. "Since we don't really know anyone around here, you think we can be friends?" I asked trying my best not stare at her but she was so beautiful it was almost impossible. But something seemed a little off about her. "Sure! I love making new friends. You can call me Thena if you want. I'm not really good at small talk so just text me." We exchanged numbers, then went to our next periods which happended to not include each other. At lunch Athena and I sat together. One of the head cheerleaders gave us a weird look and then said, "Move out of my way lesbos. You're sitting at my table, hogging up all the oxygen reserved for me!" Wow something was seriously wrong with this chick. Finley ran over and yelled at Holly (the head cheerleader). "You can't just yell at people who've never did anything to you." "But Finley, their in my seat, and it's getting contaminated by the minute." Finley walked happily over to me and said "Would you guys mind moving? Holly's a clean freak and she has to have her special 'seat' disinfected every five minutes. So it's nothing personal." Finley gave me a forced smile, some how behind all those laughs and hugs she seemed broken. Like the part of her that truly cared about everything and everyone had died and been replaced by an impostor demon, slowly killing her from the inside out. Maybe I was wrong but something wasn't right, who wears a thick jacket like that in the middle of August...not unless she was truly 'hiding something'.