Ridiculously Out of Reach

Chapter One

Florence's POV

    "Earth to Florence" said my friend Summer. She had broken me out of my hypnotic state. When I looked up, I now noticed that all of my friends were surrounding me; waiting for me to finish locking up my bike. I continued with the process. The click of my bike lock queued them to continue with their conversation.

"Are you guys going to the party tomorrow night? I heard Keaton will be there." Natasha said, winking at Summer.

Summer has had a crush on Keaton since freshman year. She is more than convinced that he doesn't feel the same way, but our whole friend group and even total strangers can see that he is head over heels for her. Summer quickly answers the question with a yes. And we all start laughing at the lack of hesitation in her timid voice. Summer has never really been sure of anything. But that all changed when she met Keaton. But Sarah is the opposite of Summer. Sarah has always been very opinionated. I have known Sarah since I was in first grade. She was the first friend I had made at my new elementary school.

"Well we see that was a hard decision for you Summer" Sarah said sarcastically between vibrative laughs.

"What do you expect, she's been in love with the boy forever" comments my friend Maria. Maria is the mom of the group and she is also the most athletic one. Maria has been infatuated with sports for as long as any of us can recall. So far she has played Softball, water polo, volleyball, basketball, and cross country. She is the biggest fan of the Oakland A's. She also has a secret obsession with the third baseman Matt Chapman. But she doesn't like people knowing. So we all try to keep it on the downlow. Fun fact, Maria absolutely detests boys. She claims they are a complete distraction and waste of time. I met her at an afterschool day care place where we basically made fun of the teachers there.

Then there was Natasha. Natasha was the outgoing, rambunctious, and playful member of our troop. She already gave off that vibe with her dark hair and its turquoise tips. She was always up for a party. And she always managed to drag us with her. And we always ended up enjoying it. Despite her habit of partying she still managed to pull off some remarkable grades. Never getting less than a B+. I had met her in 7th grade after my other friends introduced me to her because they met her in their yearbook class.

I guess that leaves me. I'm Florence Fleming. I am seventeen like the rest of my group of morons. I have a brother and his name is Felix. He is kind of annoying even though he is older than me. He is 30 years old and still lives with me and my parents. That's right. A four person Italian family living in a small 2 room apartment. Not the cosiest picture. But hey it is what it is. I love my family more than anything and wouldn't have it any other way. My parents have been married for 26 years and are still going strong. They are also on the older side with them both being in their late 50's. I always appreciated their style of parenting compared to younger parents, not that there's anything wrong with younger parents, but I just found myself appreciating the maturity my parents had while raising me. Moving on, I was very much like Natasha in the outgoing and extroverted parts. I was the more rebellious of us because I have gotten in trouble for a few different reasons:

I once called my fat, bald teacher Humpty dumpty when he was sitting on his desk and fell off of it and broke his left hip. I mean how can you expect me to pass an opportunity like that up? Anyways, long story short, I guess that's the only thing he chose to hear and so then he told the principal and got me a months detention. Needless to say, freshman year was rough.
Now back to the conversation.

    "Well me and Maria are going, her parents are out of town this weekend and mine don't care." Sarah exclaimed.  With that said, it left me. I didn't feel like going to a party this weekend, which was very uncharacteristic of me; but I had a mountain of homework to do and the end of the first quarter was sneaking up on me and I had to get all of my work turned in. Especially if I wanted to maintain a gpa that was good enough for me to get into Stanford. I wanted to be a lawyer when I grew up, something about ensuring bad people get put behind bars justifiably was so appealing to me. Even at a young age I always wanted to help the world.