First Day of My Life

Chapter 1 4 years later...

The day is chilly outside on a January morning. You can barely catch the sun peeking through the clouds. It's like the sun is shy to be seen or it's afraid to see the world. Weather like this in Whistleville is pretty rare. It mostly gets really cold here, so sun, I understand that you're not comfortable being here. Something we both have in common...

"Honey you're going to miss your bus!" My mother yells loud enough for me to hear from my room, which is down in the basement. It's not spooky as you may think it is. My late father fixed it up and made it seem like a girl's bedroom.

"Going mother!"

I grab my backpack and look at the mirror once more. I sigh at my outfit. I'm wearing a denim skirt, a blue-collar shirt, and flats. Why can't I afford anything in this era?

I hear the bus come to a stop outside my house. It screeches so loud when it comes to a stop. I feel like it's the busway of yelling my name to announce its arrival.

I run upstairs and grab my lunch money from the kitchen counter, kiss my mother goodbye and jog outside to the bus.

"Hi Mrs. Williams," I say to my bus driver as I enter the bus.

"Good Morning Lisa."

My bus driver is Hadley Williams who is married to my boss. He's been working at the library ever since he was my age. He started to like me: collecting books and storing them in their correct places, then took ownership of the store after the rightful owner, Mr. Mcarthur, passed away. Mr. McCarther didn't have any family around, therefore, Mr. Williams was honored to run the library when it was announced in Mr. McCarthur's will.

I rush to the school's library every day before school starts and bury myself in a good novel. I'm interested in novels that are based on adventure. I plan to one day be like Katie, a character from a nonfiction book I had read called Time is Found. After college, she left on an exciting adventure to find missing information on the lost era. After two years of hard work, she discovered the real story behind it. This story encourages me to discover a hidden mystery as well.

I feel someone's hands lay on my shoulders and begin to shake them.

"Lisa, we got to go. The bell rings in 2 minutes."

I look up to find Carlos, as usual, waking me up from the book I got into. It's called The Mystery at Lilac Inn by Carolyn Keene.

Carlos is my best friend. We have known each other ever since freshman year. I am a poor girl who attends a prestigious school that likes to read, and usually wears the same clothes every day. I suck it up and manage to handle the mistreatment of everyone in school because I can't destroy my mother's happiness. She brags to her friends how her daughter attends a prestigious school and is on the dean's honor roll.

The first time I ever got bullied was in my first week as a freshman. I wore the same outfit practically every day. People started noticing so they began to gossip about me. I would walk by the hallways and hear whispers and laughter. Then it started getting worse. I got pushed around like if I was invisible, I was hit by paper balls in class, and people would write mean things on my locker. I couldn't take it anymore. One day I just had an anxiety attack, I ran down the hall to avoid it all but they just kept telling me cruel things. One common phrase I always hear is, "You don't belong here slum." When I couldn't take it anymore I would ditch school and stay at the park. When school ended, I headed home. I didn't want my mother worrying about me. I wanted to continue making her proud. So good thing we don't have a phone so that the school can reach my mom to tell her that I have been missing class.

My father passed away when I was five years old in a car accident. My mother works as a maid for many rich families to keep paying for my school. I am a senior and nowadays, no one bothers to talk to me because they don't want to be seen talking to the "slum". Fortunately, I met Carlos. In my second semester as a freshman, it was lunch and at the football field, Carlos was running track. He heard me crying behind the benches. He came to see who was crying and when he saw it was me, he sat next to me and picked my head up. He had told me, "Hey, your tiara is falling. Keep your head up. Always. No matter what okay?"