Chapter 1: Moonville High!
The morning dew can be seen on the roofs of houses, it’s the break of Dawn of our beloved city, Moonville.
“I’ve got Pancakes ready to be gobbled,come down kids!!!. Breakfast’s ready!” Mom voice echoes through the corners of our four bedroom apartment.
I wake up to the sounds of cars passing around the streets, I hear a few lawn mowers roaring from different angles. It’s time for my everyday morning routine.
As a 15 year old, life isn’t as beautiful as it is describe to be in the movies. This is the stage where you have to either Peak or flunk. I myself, don’t fit in with big crowd at my high school. You can say; I’m kind off a known nerd; I don’t that it a bad sense–don’t get me wrong. I’m the type that gets into trouble at random encounters, I don’t really make the trouble, it just finds me.
I take a quick shower to feel pretty, the hot water washes down my back, it gives such relief and the warm air leaves a harsh dry sensation on the tongue; it’s a surreal feeling. I face the mirror, using a comb, style my hair, I still feel hot from the shower minutes ago. I scan through my huge closet for an outfit for a chilly day like this. After much thought, I conclude on my final outfit. I walk to the long mirror by the side of my bathroom door, I’m on black baggy jeans with long-sleeved shirt, I wrap my puffy jacket on, to give me more warmth.
I stare out the left window, the one facing Her house; I don’t see signs of her inside her bedroom, the window is shut and–yes I sound like a creep. I turn my gaze back to my mirror, feeling embarrassed of my actions just now.
I head down for breakfast whilst ignoring the loud noises buzzing everywhere from inside my own house.
“Mom, I can’t see my blue skirt!”. My big sister, Riele says as she walks around on tights with her bedroom door open.
“Check around, honey. I can’t come upstairs right now” Mom says.
“Maybe a ghost stole it, hah-“ my little brother, Jamie says with a mocking tone as he puts on his shoes by the door side of his little box he calls a bedroom.
“Was it the same ghost your grades too?” Riele backfires with swiftness.
“Fair”, Jamie says admitting defeat.
I walk past each of them as they roam the halls like roaches on a quest to find their missing loot. With my foot on the stairs, I hear a creak and turn around swiftly to gaze on Jamie trying to sneak into my room.
“Hey, Don’t go in there and why are you naked?!” I say as I stare at him, he’s on a long tool with no boxers on.
“I just wanna see if you have my–“.
I cut him off, “Nope, close it. I don’t have anything you want” I say to him. He sighs. I make my way downstairs.
With the smell, I can tell Mom is frying eggs. I look at the figure next to me, Dad is just snoozing on the couch.
“Leave your Dad alone, he had a rough night yesterday. Come and sit, you guys will be late”, Mom says as she makes her way from the kitchen to the dinning.
I drop my backpack on one of the couches, I walk over to the dining area.My little sister, Mary is already dressed, she’s sitting on the dining chair with her doll in her hands.
I glance at her, “Hey Mary” i say in a soft tone. She takes a glance at me, turns back to her doll. This girl just ignored me like I was a broccoli placed next to a burger.
“So annoying” I say with a loud voice.
“Mom!!,Jewel said I’m annoying” Mary reports me but Mom ignores her. Hah!!!,I stare at her while sticking my tongue out, she make an ugly face filled with mockery. I laugh.
As I eat my breakfast, someone knocks on the door.
“I’ll get it!!” Riele yells as she swiftly races downstairs. She opens the door, she takes a moment staring at the figures outside our house.
She walks back in with the door open,“Hey, Jewel it’s your nerdy friends”, She says.
“Don’t call them nerds, they’re just weird” I say with food in my mouth.
“Ouch dude” My friend, Diego says as he walks in with Lana, both of them are my faithful comrades and I love them so much.
“Hi, Mr. Dad and Hi Mrs Mom!” They greet my sleeping Dad and my ambitious Mom.
“Oh Reggie (My Dad) is asleep, welcome guys. Are y’all hungry?”, Mom asks them in a loud voice from the kitchen while frying more eggs.
“No, I’m pretty full.” Lana says.
“Yes ma’am” Diego says with voice filled with pure gluttony. Lana takes a sit on the couch across from my dad while Diego walks over to the dinning table and takes a sit with us. Mom hands him a plate of our breakfast.
Riele races downstairs to the dining table, picks a couple pieces of pancakes, she shoves them in her mouth.
“Bye mom”, She says with a mouthful.
“Riele slow down!, aren’t you gonna eat some more?” Mom ask her but she has already made her way to the porch, I spot a car passing by, with her friends on it and now I hear it blazing off. Jamie runs down with uniform not even worn right.
“Hey my Senior nerds, How are ya?!” He says to Lana and Diego, their voices are blurred by the sound of the car I was expecting, it was hers; she has gone to school, I’ve got to go!.
“Okay, we gotta go. Bye mom!” I say as I race out in high speed with my back pack on my arm.
“Wait for us, you fool” Diego says. He grabs a takeaway plate and stuffs it with the remaining food he can’t finish and more.
“Bye ma’am”. Lana and Diego wave to my mom as they race in swift move to catch up with me. We head to the bus stop to school.
A school is a place where bonds are formed and students try to fit in with trends and quirky attributes. Moonville High, a school where things can trend quickly, and popularity can be ranked especially when you keep the right company. I have my two best friends, we have no trendy attributes–we don’t even fit in. The only thing we have going for us is Good Grades!!; that’s a good thing, right?. Who am I kidding…..we are at the plain middle of the school hierarchy.
“Did you guys do your homework?” Our class rep, Anna asks. She’s a glass wearing pale skinned girl, she’s a very confident person; that’s why she became class rep, she’s also high in our school ranking–lucky goose.
We are at the hallway, the noises of students filled the air, it stinks of education in here. I hate it.
“What homework?” Lana replies in a flat tone, she doesn’t realize the situation at stake here.
“The one the teacher gave on Friday?…, the one that I printed out so you’d give it to Jewel for missing classes” Anna said.
“I didn’t recieve any homework” I say as I stare at the three of them.
“Oh, I forgot” Diego says with a blank expression on his face.
I sigh. “We are cooked”.
We head to class, as we head in, I stare around and there she is, Eleanor. My hands are getting sweating just by gazing on her glowing skin, my chest feels heavy; this is love sickness but I can’t help loving the way I feel everytime I gaze on the girl I dream for.
She’s engaging in a conversation with the others, Her long hair floating around with the dry wind as she moves in a cinematic motion. She has a habit of playing with het hair strands when she is engaged in an interesting conversation, it took a lot of observation before I could notice that trait about her; it made me love her more. Her red gown brings out the glow of her skin tone, making her stand out, she’s truly the girl my heart aches for–
“Your mouth is open Jewel” Lana says, completely cutting my out of my thoughts.
I look around, “huh, what?!”.
“I could throw a hotdog in there” Diego says with his fingers stretching the corners of my mouth.
“You still hung up on her huh?” Lana says to me as she search for her notebook in her backpack.
I look down at my desk, I sigh; my face is all red.
I gaze at Eleanor again, “I’m not hung on anything”, I mumble.
Lana and Diego give each other a “oh,brother” look and I just shrug them off.
The teacher storms in.
“Take your seats,I’m gonna do a role call” He says,he proceeds with the Row call.
He says my name while staring at me “Jewel Nolan?!”.
“I’m here, sir” I say with my arm in the air.
“How’s your health now?”, He asks.
“I’m fine now” I reply in a loud awkward tone which for some reason makes everyone laugh.
He rolls his eyes,“Alright, welcome back” he said as he continues the role call.
Lana leans with her head lowered down, “you think, he’s gonna ask about the assignment?”, She whispers.
“Probably” Diego replies, also leaning downwards and whispering.
“He wouldn’t forget, I wish–”
“Lana Reeves and Diego Walter,stop whispering, we can still hear !!!,everyone asides Jewel bring your assignments out now”,Our teacher said in a dry tone.
“I’m saved”, I whisper..
The teacher walks around row by row collecting the assignments from everyone, he approaches our desk and stare at us with a blank face.
“Lana and Diego, hand in your papers .Where are your assignments?”.The teacher asks.
Diego attempts an excuse but was cut off before he could finish
“Umm, sir you see we lost–“.
Our teacher sighs,
“How are you three–“, he points at each of us while speaking in a tone filled with pure exhaustion.
“-the top of the class but also the most careless, what went wrong this time?!”
“Umm, sir actually we just forgot about it”, Lana says.
He sighs again, “both of you do it right now, submit on my desk before the end of today”. He walks past us while Lana and Diego start grinning at each other.
The entire class session is normal after that. The bell for lunchtime rings, students rush the hallways in a quest for the cafeteria food. Diego, Lana and I take the other route that will lead to our spot; the school rooftop. We’d dine at the cafeteria in the past but that all ended over an incident which Diego caused two years ago–A food fight.
So two years ago, Diego got into a food fight with our classmate Steve over a dumb concert comparison. The case got turned disastrous, Lana and I had to join in the battle. The lunch lady threw a fit and the school didn’t take it kindly with us, so we eat at the rooftop now with our home meals and snacks from the vending machine. In short, we were banned from the cafeteria; popularity in the gutter indeed.
“So what do you have in there, Lana?”, I ask.
Lana unzips her backpack, She brings out her lunch box, she drops it on the floor. I open the box, the whiff of fried chicken lingered with the hot air of the rooftop breeze. It was a couple of boneless chicken aligned with a Shawarma wrap and ranch sauce.
I grab her box, “That looks amazing, your mom makes fire wraps”.
“She does, What do you got,Diego?”, She turns her gaze to Diego, he has a pen in his mouth.
Diego brings out his box, He raises it up in the air making a lion king reference.
“Well, I got scrambled eggs, some rice, plantains and Jewel special pancakes from this morning”, he says.
I bring out my box and gently place mine in the floor. And to my surprise surprise it had bacon inside accompanied with the original breakfast meal.
“Is that bacon?, I didn’t see that this morning?”, Diego asked in a confused manner.
“Me neither-”,I say feeling genuinely shocked at the sight of a beautiful pig remnants. It’s beautiful.
“I perceived it the moment I stepped inside, but I couldn’t see it so–“, Lana says.
Diego shouts in a loud voice.
“Let’s dig in”.
We cheer as we are each other’s blended combinations of delicacies. Everything blends so well, it’s perfection. We finished our meals minutes later. Before we head back to class, Lana picks up multiple bones from the chicken we ate then turns around with a fierce look in her eyes; I know that look, she wants to dare.
“Bet you couldn’t throw this down the roof”, She says with a dark tone laced with a forced deep voice. I smile.
We all stood with fury as we echoed, “oohhh!!”.
A smug grew on my cheek,
“I can to, give it here”, I say respond coyly.
“Wait!!!….Let’s make it more fun, hand it here”, Diego says.
I hand him the pieces of a bone, the scene felt like a witch group about to do some bloody witchcraft. He gazes around then grabs my backpack, he opens my bowl and cast his eyes on bacon strands, he joins piece by piece to form a bacon chain(rope)….He ties the bones with it.
“Alright, stand over here”, he goes further back and I follow him behind.
“Now here!, toss it out”, Diego places the tie bones on my palm and moves to where Lana is standing.
I do a whole basketball streak, I toss it off the roof. Lana and Diego run to the edge of the rooftop, I run to them to see where the bones landed.
Oh my!….Yes!, on a girls head,the bones are scattered on the ground, I gaze at the girl below arranging her hair to clean the bacon pieces that go on her.
Wait a minute. Oh my days.
It landed right on her–my crush, It hit the wrong person. She’s sitting in the midst of two girls; Sonia and Madison, they all look up to identify the angle the bones fell from. They look at our direction. Shoot!, we panic and swirly lean back before they spot us.
“It hit someone”, Lana says In a loud tone filled with worry. She was not worried theater it landed on someone, she was worried about being caught.
“Shh!, don’t talk so loud, I think it was a girl” Diego says.
“Guys, it landed on her head” I say.
“On whose?”, they both ask at the same time but before I answer they realized who i meant and went “ohhhh….”.
“We gotta go, now”.
We hurriedly sprint down the stairs, if we are fast enough, no one would suspect us. We made our way down to the second floor.
We hear some voices coming just by the corner so we run to the big storage room close to the stairs. The voices start getting closer, our bodies are tightly pressed together in the tiny room filled with gardening equipment and mops–this is the janitors office, as the voice get closer, I can feel my chest pounding; I can’t breathe. We hear the footsteps getting further away, It gets quiet.
“Are they gone?”,Diego asks in a whisper
“There’s a tiny hole hear, I’ll peek through” Lana whispers back , she peeks through and sees no one.
“Hurry up, he can’t stay in here much longer”, Diego says to Lana.
“The coast is clear”, She says.
Lana opens the door slowly, we all look around. I breathe slowly, my chest is feeling normal now. No one is here, we head back into the crowded hallway and proceed to blend with the crowd.
The bell rings just before we step in our to classroom, it’s just five people here. We made it in time, we take our seats.
Everyone else outside arrives including Eleanor now. I feel guilty, my chest burns at the thought of her being the victim of our games, I hope she never finds out that I did this, she could hate me.
Our Teacher, Mr. Smart (yes, that’s his real name) comes into the class with a swift pace and stares at the whole class.
“Who was it that threw some bones off the school roof today?!”,He asks in a loud voice, the whole class goes silent.
“Throwing food off the roof isn’t smart at all; it’s childish (I bend my head, I feel targeted)– it landed on a student, luckily she was alright and pressured me to not look for the culprit”, he says as he scans all of us.
Diego pinches my back, I raise my head with a neutral expression so we are not suspected. I feel guilty but I will not be caught by her– I can’t lose my chances at talking to her one day over a bacon prank.
He stares for a moment,turns around and leaves to the next class to give the same speech to the other students in the next classroom.
I turn my gaze around, to stare at my her. I can feel someone, burning daggers into my brain. I glance from the corner of my eyes; it’s the class rep, Anna staring right at us.
“She’s suspicious of us, isn’t she”, Diego says in a low tone while squinting his eyes.
He blows her a kiss and she slaps her head with her palm, her face right now gives a disappointed but amused expression.
****
Ring.Ring.Ring
It took forever and Yes!!!, School was finally over for the day.
We pick our bags and head to the lockers to drop our text books and notebooks.
Anna approaches us slowly as we drop our stuff in the lockers.
In a curious tone, she asks “It was you guys that did that, am I wrong?”.
“Whatever could you mean Anna?” Lana says In a posh voice.
“We are but caring folks” I reply joining in the joke.
“We would not do such a thing”, Diego joins in too.
We all stared at Anna while doing so.
Anna stares at us, she sighs and smiles.
“Y’all are annoying, see you tomorrow”.
She walks with her hips swaying as she waves goodbye.
We head out to the bus stop, the outside air hits hard, it’s streets clustered with students, workers and civilians. We stand around waiting for the bus. A car passes by slowly with the windows down– it was Eleanor’s ride. She waves her friends goodbye, the wind blowing her hair around. She looks over at our direction and for a moment, it felt that she looked at me with a little smile. Did I see that right?, I keep my eyes on the car as the window rolls up. The car speeds off.
“Did she just look this way?”, Diego asks us. I stare at him, shocked at the thought of a shared discovery that is about to emerge.
“You saw that, I thought I was the only one ”, I say and He nods, I gaze at Lana and she nods also. I smile so hard that my teeth would blind if it could reflect the sunlight.
The bus arrived, the ride home was breathtaking although I was lost in my thoughts the whole ride.
I wave goodbye to Lana and Diego, their houses were located at the street after mine. I walk over to my streets with a spring on my feet.
I enter my quiet home, my little siblings aren’t here yet, just Riele. I walk past her room and walk into mine, I throw my bag on the floor, I jump in the air, I land on my bed as the thoughts Eleanor gazing at me with a smile even if it was for a moment; it makes my heart race.
If She really smiled at me, is this a sign?. But what If there was someone behind me at that exact moment!?…
I let the thoughts flood my mind which helped me drift into sleep minutes later…
