Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Chapter 2

August went by quickly, and with September, came school. I had not been looking forward to the first day, and when it arrived, Mom has to reassure me several times. All too soon it was time to leave for the bus. I was not worried about getting lost in the new school, because I had gone there before to register and fill out forms about which electives I wanted to take, etcetera, etcetera.

Anyway, as I neared the corner in which I was instructed to wait for the bus, I'd noticed a girl there already. I could see that she was short, about five feet at the most. She had dark brown hair, so dark that it was almost black, and she was wearing mirrored sunglasses. She had on a blue jeanskirt and was wearing a white tanktop. She seemed to be studying me as I studied her. When I was fully at the corner, she smiled and said hi.

I said hi back to her and then she introduced herself.

"I'm Suzannah Rawlings. I live down the block about six houses away from you. Really, I should be mad at you since you moved into my best friend's house."

I did not know what to make of this, but Suzannah seemed like an interesting person. She certainly had displayed a strong personality in that last sentence.

After I didn't reply, Suzannah lifted her sunglasses up, and placed them on top of her head. I noticed that her eyes were a deep brown and big, like the kind a deer has. She cocked her head to one side and impatiently waited for me to introduce myself.

I thrust out my hand. "I'm John Stein. Nice to meet you."

Suzannah grasped my hand firmly and shook it. "A pleasure, I'm sure." She flipped the sunglasses back down over her huge fawn brown eyes.

"I don't mean to give a bad impression of it, but I hate this school. It's the pits. No one's ever heard of it." She sighed.

The big yellow bus rolled to a halt at the moment, and we boarded. Suzannah plopped down in an empty seat and motioned for me to sit next to her. Quickly, I did so and the bus gave an uneven lurch forward.

As the bus lumbered on down the street, Suzannah began to talk again. First, she asked to switch places, so she'd be on the aisle. After doing so, I started to ask why, but she had already begun to talk. I got the feeling that when Suzannah Rawlings spoke, people usually listened.

"As you know, my friend and loyal ally Catherine has moved and we always sat together," here she paused as if reflecting on the past, "and we made a great team."

The bus made a jerky stop and a awkward-looking kid got on the bus. I now found out why Suzannah wanted the end seat. At the last minute, she stuck out her foot and the kid tripped and almost fell flat on his face. She then preceded to say, oink, oink, little Scotty," until his face turned tomato red. Personally, I was disgusted. My impressions of Suzannah changed and I did not want to sit with her any longer. Suzannah took one look at me and knew what I was thinking.

"Let me finish explaining!" Suzannah exclaimed. "That was Scott Oaks, the biggest nerd in our school. Last year, he caused a lot of trouble for Catherine and me and we vowed to get him back. If you want to know what he did, I can tell you later, OK?"

I decided I liked Suzannah again. So I asked her whose homeroom she was in. (Murphy School is very small and has only three 8th grade homerooms.)

She snapped out of her thoughts. "I have Goodson, what about you?"

"Same!" I replied. Her face brightened.

"Basically, it's a real good class this year. I went through hell to find out who was in whose class, but it was worth it. Stick with me, I'll show you where we go."

With those words, the bus sharply pulled up to the front of the school and slowly opened its squeaky doors.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Oh, the hilarity!