The Way Of Cecily

1

Chapter One

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     Cecily Lush scurried through the corridors of her new school on the first day of school. Her dark chestnut brown hair fluttered around as she moved. White lockers lined the bustling corridors that she passed through.

     She caught wisps of conversations of groups as she passed by. "...What do you have for first period?..Is that a new laptop model?..Is that a new student?..."

Cecily looked down at her feet abashed. She knew that the acceptance rate at her new school was really low, but she didn't think she would be actually talked about. The marble flooring was spotless. Cecily observed all of this with her dark brown eyes as she continued to look at her feet. She looked up after the nearby conversations moved onto different topics from her.

     As she continued to sprint from corridor to corridor and intersection to intersection, a smell of freshly-baked cookies wafted into the air. Cecily sniffed the air, halting for a moment to look out one of the large but high windows that lined the walls of the corridor that she was in. Light glinted off the transparent glass panes.

     She managed to get a glimpse of a grand flower bed outside, that was lined with lavishly white roses and white jasmine plants.

     Cecily tore her eyes away from the flowerbed and resumed her sprinting through the buildings. Yes, buildings. Eight, to be exact. The buildings were connected by transparent tunnels that weren't really tunnels since they weren't submerged into the ground, but they were passageways that connected the campus together.

     Cecily attended Valley High, which was not only a prestigious high school but a middle school none or less. VH, short for Valley High, was an enormous plot of land that was stationed at the top of a grassy hill and made up of several buildings. Eight, to be exact.

     Two buildings used for visual arts along with theater arts, a top right wing, a top left wing, a bottom right wing, a bottom left wing, a middle top wing, and a middle bottom wing. Cecily was currently walking in the bottom right wing of the colossal VH campus.

     Cecily made twists and turns, but she ended up in the wrong place every time. So basically, she was lost. The fact that there was the same chandelier in each intersection of the corridors probably didn't help. The spirit color of VH was royal blue, but Cecily had forgotten to wear the specific color to school.

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     Tugging on the sleeves of the ivory turtleneck that she was wearing for the first day of school, she stood there, as the doors that were considered the entrance swung open and a stream of students came in. Along with a brisk gust of wind that made Cecily shiver. Even though it was just the beginning of autumn, the weather had already dropped several degrees, more than enough to make anybody shiver.

     Cecily seemed to observe her surroundings. Everybody else mostly stayed in crowds. Nobody else seemed to be lost except for her. Cecily attempted to navigate her way out of the crowd of students, but ended up bumping into a random person instead. 

     "Sorry!" She said, apologetically. The person just shook their head and walked away without bumping into anybody.

     From past experiences, Cecily knew that she was terrible at directions, but stubbornly refused to look for a map of the campus in her schoolbag. She instead turned in the other direction to continue sprinting through the brutal labyrinth of corridors and intersections of VH.

     Cecily finally managed to get to homeroom on time, but not before running into several dead ends and being the clumsy person she was, tripping over her very own schoolbag several times. She sighed as she walked toward a desk to sit at, and put her schoolbag under her seat.

     She observed her classmates and the classroom she was in until she was called for attendance.

     "Cecily Lush? Ms. Lush?" Her homeroom teacher asked in a monotone voice.

     "H-here." Cecily stuttered, caught off-guard.

     Last year, Cecily had lived in America but had moved after being accepted into VH. VH was located in Canada, so her family moved a bit north. "Are you new?" Cecily looked up to see a girl, with golden blonde curls, hovering over her desk.

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     "Yes," Cecily replied. The girl, who had asked Cecily a question, flashed a empathetic smile while curls of her golden blonde hair bounced around. Cecily curled a loose strand of her dark hair around a finger nervously.

     "I'm Leila by the way," the girl, now known as Leila to Cecily, said with an unsurprisingly dulcet voice.

     "Cecily." Cecily says to Leila. "It's nice to meet you!" Leila's honey brown eyes suddenly lit up. Cecily followed Leila's line of vision, and saw that Leila's eyes had landed on something on Cecily's desk. Not really a surprise, as Cecily had dumped a bunch of papers onto her desk. The pile of papers was a mixture of drawing paper, her schedule, a map of the school and some crumpled paper with messy scribbles.

     "What is that?"

     Cecily watched as Leila started to take out a crumpled piece of paper, that did not have messy scribbles, but some writing. Cecily reached out to grab it from Leila's grasp, not wanting to share a draft of a story that she was writing. Leila frowned slightly. Cecily looked up, and apologetically said, "Sorry, it's just a random draft of a story that i wrote, and it's not that great." Leila's disappointed expression disappeared, and she looked excited again.

     "What is your story about?"

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     "How about i read it out loud?" I questioned. Leila nodded enthusiastically.

     If only i knew that Leila would tell the entire class to come listen. I took out my tablet that i had finished revising my story on, and flipped to the first page.

     Leila gathered everybody in homeroom to come and listen, and they brought their chairs to form a half circle around me. I gulped in surprise.

     "Okay then..It all started when Bree fell down the rabbit hole. Literally." I began reading. Everybody gave me their full attention.

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