I'm stuck at the mid-point of my Chapter Three. Opinions of it, please. :)?

Chapter Three:


Penumbra











Anna


1st Period AP English III


2nd Period AP Pre-calculus


3rd Period AP Physics


4th Period Aquatic Biology


Lunch B


5th Period French III


6th Period Leadership


7th Period AP European History








Relief conquered anxiety. I’d been worried I wouldn’t get all the classes I’d asked for in my transcript. Taking five Advanced Placement classes was a lot of work, too much for most people, but I knew that I could do it. The classes weren’t necessarily hard but the colossal workload attached to them was extremely tedious and time consuming.


Fear overshadowed relief; eclipsing anxiety. A new school, a new life, a new home. The three glorious gifts I’d been given by moving down south to Killeen. It was with my concession that it was done, Mom didn’t even have to drag me from the lushes’ comforts of Austin to come to the mundaness that was and would always be Killeen. I turned the yellow sheet of my schedule over for the crude overview map of the school, searching for my first period English class in Room 108. I sighed and walked off to make a desperate attempt at finding it.


I made it to class a couple of minutes late having to ask a random person in the hallway to escort me to class, but I found this didn’t matter anyways. The teacher wasn’t even there. I bent my head over, carefully examining the laces of my shoes, and stalked off to an empty seat in the very back of the room. I shrugged off my empty book bag into the space below my chair, gazing around the classroom to view this foreign habitat that was my new one.


The first thing I realized was how overly decorated it was. Literature posters plastered every space of the walls, overlapping the original white behind so thoroughly that not even a speck of it was visible. The teacher’s desk was despicably messy: Papers books, and pens were scattered all about it, even from this distance that was plainly visible.


The second thing that I realized was how segregated everyone was. There was an invisible line in the class dividing the band geeks and anime nerds on the left of it and the jocks and other people who wore extremely tight clothes on the right of it. This was nostalgic; it had been exactly the same back in my old school. Though there had been a middle group, which I had been a part of, that served in place of the invisible equator. Both groups seemed to have liked us equally; I thought of us as being neutral. It seemed things would be different at this school. Inevitably, I would no longer be able to remain neutral and would have to chose between one of the sides, being that weird new kid in the back of the classroom would soon no longer be an available option. For now though, it was a more appealing alternative.


I sighed and dropped my gaze from my surroundings and looked down at my heavily graffitied desk, contemplating the events that led me to be here. Mom’s and Dad’s divorce had not been as dramatic as I thought it would be, considering the enormity of their personalities, but in fact it turned out to be a clean, mutual break. Mom was exhausted of the city life in Austin and had out rightly said to Dad that she wanted to move back to her hometown of Killeen. Of course Dad didn’t take this well at all; he had been born, raised, and even went to college in Austin. He refused, Mom filed for divorce, he agreed, and I was left betwixt the two.


I truly did love my dad just as much as I loved my mom, but if it were a question as to whom I’d rather live with, he wouldn’t be the one to come out on top. So a week after my birthday on the twenty-second of June, I was packing my bags and getting prepared to spend the remaining month of my summer vacation in Killeen. After moving everything into the new house, which was actually only slightly smaller then the one back in Austin, I went around town to see if there was anything to whisk away the unavoidable hours of boredom from being inside the house for too long. I drove around the small town, went inside its shops, and even took a brave stab at going inside its disappointedly tiny mall, when I came to the conclusion that I had willingly moved to the most dismal, boring place in Texas; possibly in the whole U.S.A. I could not understand Mom’s affinity for Killeen try as I might, and soon found myself privately wishing I had chosen to stay with Dad back in Austin.


A beep over my head pulled me out of my thoughts and the sound of a girl’s voice issued around the classroom, announcing to stand up for the Pledge of Allegiance and Texas Flag, which were succeeded by a moment of silence. After sitting down back in my graffitied desk to buckle in for the silence, I noticed how everyone’s heads all darted towards me as soon as they too had sat down. I felt my cheeks turn red and quickly looked down at my desk, starring intently at the name someone had carved into it. Nicholas.


“Thank you,” came the girl’s voice once again. “Now will you please turn on your T.V to channel 76 for E.T.V; today’s Eagle announcements.”


I looked up at the T.V, a more satisfactory distraction, expecting for someone to turn it on, but no one bothered. I could no longer feel anyone’s eyes gazing intently at me, but I looked around anyways just to be positive. The people on the left were all grossly emerged in a conversation about the newest episode of an anime involving ninjas; the people on the right were recounting the events of last Saturday’s party with extreme enthusiasm.


Nobody was paying the slightest bit of attention to me, having found their own social life much more interesting than the new kid in the back of the room. I relaxed a little, my disposition becoming less rigid. I looked up at the clock above the whiteboard behind the teacher’s desk to see what time it was. 9:05. This must have been a pretty horrible teacher to be late for her own first period class on the first day of school.


My eyes casually looked around the class before sinking down to my desk again, but before they did I saw not quite everybody had looked away from me. A boy with short brown hair and deep chocolate brown eyes on the right side of the room had looked up from his cell phone that he had been avidly texting on and met my gaze expectantly. I considered dropping my eyes from his but thought that doing so would have been rude, so I simply stared back. I had anticipated for this to be awkward but instead found the unasked attention he was extorting toward me was contrarily pleasant.


I weighed the few option presented to me. There was a wide open door for me to walk through if I was to submit to its provocation, but I knew how conceited and selfish people on the other side had the potential to be and ordinarily were. The other door beside this one was marginally open; only a fraction of light escaped from its crack. If I were to forcefully open this door then I knew that that meant I would be skyrocketed to the bottom of the school’s food chain. Even if the people down there with me were much kinder then the people higher up, I didn’t fancy being a lowly producer; not even close to being a primary consumer. I felt an unfathomable longing for the middle group that had always been there, I only now acknowledged how much I missed them.


Unsure if I was making the best decision or not, I felt the muscles of my mouth uncomfortably twitch as I gave the gawking boy a timid smile. This had evidently been the sign of reassurance he had been looking and hopefully expecting to see because he flashed me an unabashed smile, revealing the braces on his teeth that didn’t mitigate the radiance of them in the slightest.


The handle of the classroom’s door turned as someone from the other side opened it and I was forced out of curiosity to drop my prolonged gaze and instead look at who had entered the classroom: A squat women with short, fly-away, brown curly hair with some traces of gray in it who was wearing glasses that framed outrageously gray eyes. The people on both sides of the classroom quickly shifted their desks away from each other and stared placidly at whom I assumed had to be the teacher, silently evaluating how strict she might be. I gave a final fertile glance at the boy I was starring at and saw he had decided to take the same course of action at the same time I did. He winked at me before turning back around to face the front of the room and I surprised myself by genuinely smiling. Perhaps this place wouldn’t be as horrible as I had expected it to be.


By now, the teacher had sat down in her own wooden, arched chair and was shuffling through the untidy items spread out among her desk. Once again, I looked up at the clock and saw only five minutes had transpired since I last looked at it. She was fifteen minutes late.


“Ah, here it is!” she exclaimed in a heavily drenched Irish accent as she extracted a white paper from the top of a teetering pile of papers that looked as if the most gentlest breeze could cause them to topple over. “Now when I call your name, I would like you to respond with “here. I’m very sure you are all used to this by now anyways….Anna Adkins!”


“Here,” I responded quietly, looking back down at the embedded name on my desk as I felt the eyes of turned heads piercing through me.


“Eh? No Anna Adkins?”


“No, no. I-I’m here,” I stuttered helplessly, speaking a little louder then before. My eyes still hadn’t left the name on my desk and my cheeks burned even more fiercely from the drawn out attention focused on me.


“Well, speak up next time,” said the teacher in a tone meant for someone who had done her a deep wrong. She muttered something unintelligent under her breath, more then likely in Irish just in case somebody in the front row overheard her, and continued on with the roll. “Justin Armani!’


I looked up from my desk to see whom the named belonged to. If I was going to spend about two more years with these people than having a name to match their face was the concrete first step to furbishing any kind of relationship. I waited for a “here,” but none came. The people on the left were looking annoyed at something I couldn’t fathom. The people on the right were all glancing at each other with smiles on their faces, as if they were enjoying some kind of private joke. I could find no apparent connection between the abrupt changes of persona.


“No Justin Armani?” asked the teacher, looking up from the roll sheet and scanning the class with her gray eyes as if expecting the person in question to jump out of their seat.


“Here,” came a quiet voice from the right side of the room, an outbreak of stifled chuckles and snorts came from there as well. I looked at the boy with chocolate brown eyes and saw that he was also looking at me with a sly smile etched on his face. I didn’t understand what was going on.


“Did someone say something?” asked the teacher at apparent loss as to if she was hearing a voice inside her head or not. I felt a surge of sympathy towards her: She was experiencing the unavoidable symptoms partnered along with old age.


“Here,” came the voice again. This time I saw whom it belonged to. I was still looking at the boy and noticed that his mouth narrowly opened after the teacher had asked again.


“Eh?” she said.


“Here!” he blasted, causing me to startle in my chair, my heart beating in profuse mummers. An eruption of laughing issued from the people around him, whereas the people on the other hemisphere of the equator were starring daggers at its other half.


“Now really Mr. Armani. Such yelling is not permitted in my class. I will not warn you again. And all of you, stop laughing!” said the teacher glaring at who I now was completely sure was Justin.


He laughed to himself with everyone else as the teacher continued on with the roll and the giggles began to slowly abate. I dropped my gaze from the side of his face as he turned his head to catch my eyes again, looking at my desk for what felt like the infinite time. I knew he was looking at me, analyzing to see if what he had done was humorous to me. I tried to keep my face as stoic as possible but felt that some traces of hurt were plainly etched there.


I was extremely borderline. I truly couldn’t decide if what Justin had done was funny; making fun of an old lady with a hearing impairment was about as funny as taking candy from a baby. To me they both had the potential to be hilarious, but were also extremely potent to being hurtful. Even if I had ignored the evident contradictions my conscious was giving, I still would have found it very hard to even pretend this was funny. I don’t know if I was being paranoid or not but I felt like he was poking fun at me for being shy when the teacher had called upon me. Admittedly, this hurt me even though I knew it was too small a wound to worry about. I didn’t like being the scapegoat for hilarity, being laughed at instead of being laughed with. This might be insight into Justin’s character, or maybe I was being too judgmental based on first impressions alone. They were often wrong anyways.


The groan of a chair skidding against the floor caused my head to snap up and look at the front of the room to see that the teacher had gotten up from her chair. She carried in her arms the familiar beginning of the year packets introducing the teacher and their many rules. She passed them out to everyone and when I received mine I looked at the top of the first sheet and saw the title “Ms.___ Guidelines” followed by the materials needed for her class. I was about to sigh quietly but thought better of it just in case it someone found this as an excuse to turn around and look at me, more unwanted attention. I slumped deeper in my chair, preparing for the droning speech about her various rules and what she expected from her A.P classes. She assigned us a two page, front and back, paper about any kind of obstacle we’d overcame in our life that made us stronger, due Wednesday. My right hand moaned with foreboding. I could imagine how much pain it would be in by tomorrow night.


The bell sounded above us from the intercom and everyone scuffled to get their book bags, in a rush to escape the confinements of the room as quickly as possible. My reflexes, already slower than most people’s, would have slowed me down naturally but I decided to dramatize getting my book bag from under my chair to perfectly ensure I would be the last one to leave, which I was. As I walked out the classroom’s door and turned bearing right toward the staircase further down the hallway, I walked headfirst into the warm, muscular chest of somebody leaning against the wall by the doorframe. I hurriedly staggered away from them, ready to stutter a quick apology and leave the escalating awkward scene. I lifted my head up and parted my lips slightly, but when I found myself looking at the tanned face of Justin my mouth just dangled wide open, the words about to flutter from it extinct.


He smiled. “Need help getting to your next class?” His voice was deep and husky. I was positive if he were around his friends it wouldn’t be. His eyes traveled down from my own and to my wide-open mouth. I quickly closed it, feeling my cheeks turn red once again.


“Yeah, I probably do.” The corners of my mouth twitched up, forming another genuine smile. The truth was I actually did need his help unless I took the risk of being late again.


“ Kay, what is it?” His voice was soothing to me; the red patches on my cheeks began to fade away.





“Um, let me look real quick.” I said, raising the schedule in my left hand up to my face and searched for second period. “Pre-Cal. Room 209.” I looked up at Justin; his eyes weren’t looking at my own anymore but had drifted down to the logo branded on my white shirt stretched across my chest. I cleared my throat and raised my schedule to my chest, wrapping my arms around it.


“Oh, I have Pre-Cal next, too.” Justin said, looking up from my chest after I had covered it, completely unashamed. It didn’t bother me either; honestly, I had grown used to the bestiality of men back in freshman year and the fact it was Justin only made it easier to ignore. I felt oddly comfortable around him, but since he was a guy it was only typical that he would give into one of his initial instincts: Being hungry, sleepy, and, of course, horny.


“A.P?” I asked, making an effort to hide my disbelief


“Nah, regular. The only A.P class I have is English,” Justin said, leaning off of the wall. “But my class is right next door to yours, it’s Room 211. I can walk you there if you want.”


“Sounds like a plan, “ I said as we walked down the hallway to the staircase. It was amazing how easy talking to him was. A hello hadn’t even been necessary.


“So, you’re new here right?” Justin asked me as he opened the door of the staircase.


“Yeah, I came from Austin,” I said as we walked up the first set of stairs.


“It’s a big jump from a city like Austin to a place like Killeen,” he said stopping on the landing in between the first and second staircase when we reached it.


I didn’t respond to this truth. It was too big a jump. For the first time since I had started talking to him, I felt uncomfortable. Instead of stopping on the landing like he had, I turned my back to him and continued up the staircase. I heard him walk from the landing, his footsteps lingering in the almost absolute emptiness, and he appeared beside me.


“Do you like it here so far?” Justin was delving too deep for our first conversation. The uncomfortable feeling of the situation was becoming paramount, forming an invisible barrier around me, warding me against any particle of Justin’s aura.


“I like it here so far….I’m still getting used to the place.” Lying wasn’t easy for me, but since half of this was the truth it made things a bit easier to do.


Still, Justin wasn’t fooled. “You don’t look happy,” he said pushing upon the handles of the door that led up stairs and holding it open for me.


“I’m still getting used to things here,” I repeated the truthful part of my half-lie. A silence issued between us as we walked pass Room 205, maneuvering around the sparse, stationary crowds. I noticed some of the faces were familiar, they had been in my last period class. They glared at us with scrutiny, disbelief. For one fleeting second I wondered if Justin’s pleasant exterior was all just a show and that he was using me or making fun of me again.


“Room 209, ma’am,” Justin said flashing me another wide smile of his. He inadvertently sent a final blast of comfort that broke through my invisible force field. All previous suspicions and discomfort were washed away. Justin was something pretty amazing.


“Well, thanks for the help Justin.” Even though I would thoroughly miss him when he was gone, I was eager to escape to the back of my classroom. Again. It was my only sanctuary from the majority of these impending stares.


“No problem, no problem.” He seemed to be in a different world completely. I noticed his forehead wrinkle; his eyebrows contracted together. He was gazing intently at me and I was gazing right back, making me completely oblivious of anything else going on outside our little bubble.


“I guess I’ll be seeing you in a little while then?” I said after pulling out of my trance, unsure of how long we had been standing there in silence. Hopefully it had been brief, but my mind told me something different. I grudgingly popped our bubble and took a step towards the door of my next class.


“Wait real quick.” Justin gently grabbed my arm and I turned around. His brows were separated and his forehead was smooth again, but his eyes still glinted with purpose. “What lunch do you have?”


I tried to recall my designated lunch without glimpsing at my schedule. “B, I think.”


“Cool.” Justin’s eyes relaxed but they still burrowed into mine. It was like he was attempting to read my thoughts. I blinked. “You should come eat lunch with me.” He said the words slowly, making them sound awkward.


I hadn’t given much thought to where I would sit at during lunch but to a school socialite like Justin the social order of the tables were stupendously important; status quo and all. I understood the dire risk he was taking by inviting me to join his table. “That’s kind of what I already had in mind.” This lie was easy.


Justin’s face brightened and he shot me another wide smile of his. We were both evokers of jubilation. “See you later then, Anna.” He gave me a brief wave and I returned it with a smile. We both walked away to our classes and once again I became aware of the sheer amount of people that had witnessed our transactions. I made a mental note to constantly remind myself it was too early to harbor any kind of crush. The mere thought echoed in my head.


Crush. Crush. Crush.


Justin’s face and wide smile emanated into my thoughts; my heart lagged with longing. As I entered the classroom I looked at the clock even though I knew it would be an hour until I would be able to see him again. I would be positively pining by then. With a nostalgic rush of déjà vu I sighed, looked down at my shoelaces, and headed toward the back of the classroom.











Nicholas


The day was going by too slow. It was difficult to believe that it was only halfway over. Of course lunchtime would have the complete opposite effect, going faster rather than dragging in lulls like the last four classes had. Forty-five minutes of freedom would not feel so. Time had a horrible habit of speeding itself up when I wanted it to slow down, slowing down when I wanted it to speed up.


I stabbed at my baked potato with my fork as I watched Jared and Tom wait in line for their lunch. A single girl separated them from Tony and his friend whom I was pretty sure was called Justin. I had never spoken or had any classes with him before but, like Tony, his name was often heard in the hallway. I looked away from Tony and sought to find something distracting, the beast was beginning to manifest. I knew my fervent search would be hopeless if I allowed it to take over; my will power wasn’t strong enough yet.


Then my eyes fell upon the perfect distraction. Her.


The girl in between Tom and Justin had swung her bleach blond head around and was laughing at what the latter had said, revealing a dazzling set of teeth that glinted in the sunlight shimmering down from the windows above. Even from this distance I could see that her eyes were a true shade of cerulean blue, her skin pale. Extremely pale, ivory even. I looked down at my hand that wasn’t holding the fork and noted that she was possibly even paler then I was, a fete I had not thought possible.


I looked back up at her, mesmerized. She was entering her pin code and her mouth was forming words I couldn’t hear. The cafeteria lady she was talking to went to the ¬¬¬_____ behind her and grabbed Vitamin Water and then handed it to the girl. She walked off to one of the circular tables that were in clear view from my corner booth.


“Hey, man,” I looked away from the girl and saw Jared standing over me with Tom; they slipped into the bench across on the other side.


“Hey,” I rested my elbows on the table and balled up my hand into a fist, cupping it with my other hand, and positioned my chin on the top of them. Thinking.


“So how’s your day been so far? This is the first year I won’t have all my classes with you.” Jared said. As he spoke, I noticed how oddly perfect his teeth were. I was used to the haphazard mess they had been when he had braces. Another thing I would have to get used to this year.


“Boring. And long.” I looked away from them and back at the girl who was now sitting at a table with Tony and Justin, positively gaping at the latter. My gaze turned into a glare, a totally different monster then before growled inside of me. “ I think I might skip the rest of the day.”


She tucked her long hair behind her ear and the sun shined down on her, illuminating her the way it did paper. Why was I so intrigued by her? No other girl had ever peaked by interest this thoroughly. But then again, no other girl I had met before was an Albino. Maybe I had some kind of unknown fetish for them.


“You shouldn’t do that.” I knew it was Tom’s voice without having to look. “At least not this week, wait ‘til next week.” Always the voice of reason amongst the group, he’d be saying the same thing again next Monday.


“ Sure thing. Only for you, Tom,” I smiled even though my eyes remained a glare. I heard Jared bring up a topic about Tony, malice implanted in every syllable. I, thankfully, wasn’t needed for this conversation. My smiled dropped back into a frown.


She was trying to unscrew the top of her bottle but Justin grabbed it from her after watching her struggle for a few seconds. She smiled feebly at him as he opened it and set it in front of her. She didn’t drink from it but instead surveyed the cafeteria while Justin began talking to Tony. Her eyes wondered to the “Got Milk?” poster above our booth, then at Tony, then at Jared, and then at me. Our eyes met.


The beast was let loose from its cage.

I%26#039;m stuck at the mid-point of my Chapter Three. Opinions of it, please. :)?
i think if i actully gave a **** about reality t.v., I would think you%26#039;re a genius. Bottom line: true journalisim doesn%26#039;t mean your OWN journel. Expand yourself, you%26#039;re a good writer,however this is a bore.......goood luck
Reply:I really liked it. Update it soon.
Reply:hmm. What can I say, you rawk!



Nanny