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The most enticing smell

I had recently moved to West Virginia. Never having moved before I almost felt as if I didn't know how to make friends. What to people do? Just walk up to someone and be like, "Hey I like your face. We should hang out more?" I shook the thought from my head as I walked into the classroom. Friends would come, I would just have to be ready to accept them when they did.

Something I noticed about this school is that it seemed almost more cliquey then I thought high school to be. I mean I know everyone has their preference of people to hang out with, but this one seemed... even more so.

The biggest group I named as the populars were mostly filled with pretty girls and jocks, your typical popular crowd. But somehow they were distanced from the rest of the population. They didn't bully nerds or other cliques they just truly stayed within their own group.

About a month into school I got a glimpse into the popular clique as I was paired with Darren, he was the backup quarterback, as we were only sophmores, but he showed lots of potential and I didn't doubt he would be the star quarterback next year when the current guy graduated. He was also the leader of the popular clique. We had to do a science project together. We had just finished a segment on electricity and we decided to keep with that topic for our project. We were going to make a small Van de Graaff generator with a soda can and other pieces. With the idea in mind I went over to his house on Saturday so we could put it all together and work on the presentation.

I was really nervous. I had never talked to him, or any of the populars for that matter. Everyone knew who they were but they always rejected anyone who tried to hang out with them, so nobody tried anymore. Being paired up was apparently a sign of the universe or an act of fate or something, because it changed everything for me.

He opened the door before I even had a chance to knock. "Oh." I said surprised.

He chuckled, "Hi. I heard the car pull up."

"Oh...ok." I whispered and glanced behind me to see my mom pull out of his driveway. I would call her when we were done.

He moved to the side of the door and ushered me inside. His house was a large two story. We walked past a large living room with a huge flat screen and two sofas, through a small hallway into the kitchen where we turned left and went through a swinging door to the dining area. There was a large table with at least 12 seats. On one end he had all the pieces we needed for our project. I walked to the end of the table and sat quietly.

He sat down next to me. "I got all the pieces together and here is a sheet of instructions. Are you ready to get to work?"
I nodded.

"Hey," I looked up and saw him looking back. "Are you nervous or something?"

"No." I shook my head. "Just shy... I guess."

His face broke into the most beautiful grin. "Well we'll just have to fix that right?"

My lips turned up in a sort of lopsided smile and picked up the sheet of instructions.

"So you just moved here right?"

I nodded my head yes as I read the instructions.

"Where are you from?"

"Flagstaff." I replied not bothering to look up from the page.

He was silent for a moment, "Where is that?"

I rolled my eyes, nobody knows where Flagstaff is. I put down my paper and looked him in the eye, "It's in Arizona. But not the hot part. It's in northern Arizona. We have pine trees and snow. Lots of snow actually. We have a place called the snowbowl where you can ski and everything."