Outside the time, p.3
Outside the time, page 3
Holding Junie's hand tightly, Mom watched the three of us as we headed off to the school. The school had a tall wrought iron fence stretching all the way around the grounds. The back end was nestled at the base of a couple of hills that were covered in woods. They weren't tall enough to be considered mountains, but they weren't tiny lumps either.
Jez pushed past us, walking her bike up the pathway to the steps leading up to the main campus of the school. There were two levels, the lower level encompassed the student and teacher parking lots, a gym complete with indoor pool, offices and the sports fields.
Bike racks littered the base of the steps and were nestled against the front offices. I could hear Xavier mutter 'bye to Jez as she left us without so much as a wave. I knew we would see her again in the office but it was still kind of rude. But that was Jez for you. I just know she wished she were an only child.
The returning kids all stopped to watch us, eyes gleaming with curiosity. They knew we were the fresh meat on campus, and they were trying to decide if we were worth their time or not. It made me uncomfortable watching their eyes undress me like a piece of meat. Of course, all the boys turned their heads as Jez walked by. ignoring their drool.
"Are you ready for this?" Xavier asked as he kicked his board up to his hands and adjusted the straps to his backpack. He wasn't looking at me. Instead he was keeping his eyes on the steps like I was. They were somehow very intimidating, and I pictured them swallowing us whole before spitting us back out with an evil laugh. Sometimes my imagination got the better of me.
"Not in the slightest," I sighed. He deliberately and softly kicked my backside with his foot. Then he winked and tugged on my shirt before heading to the office.
Part of me wished we were in the same grade. At least then I could have stood a chance at having him in a class with me and not feeling so alone. Begrudgingly I followed behind him, walking my bike to an empty slot in the rack. He stopped long enough for me to lock it before proceeding to the office to get our new schedules.
First period had already begun by the time we each were settled in our new lives. A map was provided to us to help us find both our classrooms and our lockers, but it seemed simple enough.
The upper campus was laid out in mostly a circular pattern with the drama building at its center. Only the art, woodshop and FFA classes weren't within the circle, but rather nestled just outside of it. Once Xavier took off for his first class, I was completely on my own.
I groaned quietly as I looked down at my schedule for the first time. I had sex education to start my day. It didn't matter that I had already taken a course in the sixth grade. My new high school required every sophomore to take it regardless. Nervously I readied myself to enter my first class.
A parade of thoughts jumped through my head. They ranged from the class standing up and cheering at my arrival, to having various forms of vegetables thrown at me and being heckled until I died of embarrassment. Helplessly, I turned away from the class and pressed my back to the wall. A small squirrel was standing at the lockers opposite me. Its little whiskers twitched with its nose.
Don't you dare talk to me, hairball! I am already on edge as it is! I hissed in my head. The last thing I needed was to add a talking animal to my morning. It made a soft chirping noise but scurried off without saying a word. Grumbling, I took another deep breath and forced myself to enter the class room.
"Ah, you must be Paulina," Ms. Fitzpatrick said as I entered the room.
I flinched at the sound of my own name. It had taken me several years, and many a knuckle sandwich, to get the kids at my old school to not call me by my full name. The idea of having to do it all over again didn't sit well with me.
Almost all eyes lifted up from their syllabi to look at me. I could feel my cheeks began to flush red from the embarrassment. I kept my eyes glued to the ground as I hesitantly shuffled toward the desk.
"I prefer to be called Paula."
"Very well, Paula. I'm Ms. Fitzpatrick and here is your syllabus for the year." She handed me a piece of paper with a kind smile.
She was a younger teacher with fiery amber hair. Dimples formed as she smiled. She wasn't what I would consider a normal teacher as her ears were filled with earrings, both on the lobe and on the top. I waited as she checked me into her attendance log and signed the course book out to me.
"Standard rules to go over: take care of that book. If it comes back with more then standard wear and tear they will charge you for it. And trust me when I say it will be more then the book is worth. Bring it with you every day. I do not want to hear any excuses about leaving it in your locker, another pair of pants, at home, dog ate it. I will not care. You forget it and you will be docked points toward your grade." She was quickly barking out the orders that I am sure she had already gone over with the class, and it irritated her to have to do it again for me. "If you ever forget your homework assignment for the evening, you can check your syllabus or with your partner. You will have the same partner all year long."
I cringed at the word "partner". I knew what that meant in those kinds of classes. At some point we would be given a "baby" that we had to nurture and take care of. At some point this partner and I would become one big happy family. I was just beaming with excitement at that prospect.
"Okay let's see who I have you with," she mumbled. She pulled out a binder and opened it slowly. "Looks like you will be partnered with Mike, second row to the right of me."
Taking a deep breath I grabbed the strap of my backpack and turned to face my new partner. That's when I saw him.
Mikeua. He didn't even bother to look up when he heard Ms. Fitzpatrick call his name. Instead he kept his focus on whatever he was doodling on a piece of paper. He wore a sleeveless shirt that revealed subtle muscles beginning to form - as much muscle as a fifteen-year-old boy could have without working out obsessively or popping steroids like they were going out of style. On the front of his shirt I could just make out the hints of a band logo.
A bunch of string bracelets were tied to the wrist of his right hand. They were multi-colored and seemed more like something a girl would wear. They clearly had been on his wrist for a long time. Some were faded and appeared to have been tied and re-tied multiple times.
His skin wasn't overly tan, but it wasn't the ghostly white color like mine, and he had a faint raised scar on the side of his right upper arm. The front of his jet black hair was spiked up in the center, almost like a Mohawk. It kind of curled upward and to the left rather then going straight up, his sides were much shorter but still long enough that he could spike them outward with gel.
I shuffled over to the seat to his left and sat down, carefully pulling my notebook out of my pack before tucking it under the desk. I felt extremely short as soon as I sat down as my feet didn't quite reach the ground.
Mike glanced at me out of the corner of his deep eyes but still made no effort to look at me or make any kind of greeting. A closer look at him revealed that his finger nails were painted black, not via nail polish but instead with a marker of some kind. I had to stifle a snicker, I often found myself taking a black sharpie to my finger nails when I would get bored in class.
Discreetly I turned my head to study him. I didn't want to be obvious in my curiosity, but I fully admit that meeting people for the first time always brought it out. The muscles in his arms flexed as he moved his pen smoothly over the paper. His entire syllabus was covered in an assortment of doodles.
Most of the doodles were of dragons or lions' heads, the kind of doodles that I figured were common for boys. Girls would probably draw unicorns and puppies - cute things like that. At least that's what I would always doodle in my papers. I admit, I wasn't the girliest of girls, but my art tended to bring out the girl in me. Art was one of the things I was very good at, so I really could sympathize, and appreciate, Mike's propensity to doodle.
"I will give you some time to talk with your partners and set up schedules of when to meet once your family projects began," she said after she finished with the syllabus. I twisted my pen in my hand, not wanting to be the one to speak first.
"Mike," he said finally, still not looking at me but holding out his hand for me to shake. His voice was deeper then I expected, and it took me aback slightly.
"Paula." I returned the greeting taking his in mine.
His hand was incredibly warm. I'm not talking warm as in he had been sitting on them or holding them in front of a heater, but warm as if they were literally on fire. Suddenly the fire felt like it was moving into my hand and drifting up my arm, wanting to surround me. I quickly pulled my hand away and I thought I saw him smirk in response.
"Just move here?" he asked. I could just make out the hint of an accent in his voice but couldn't quite put my finger on where it was from. I wasn't sure if it was European or what. He turned his head toward me and I could see his face rather than just the profile.
His eyes were a light brown but right next to the pupil they lightened to more of a gold color. I had never seen eyes do that. Normally the lighter color extended out from the pupil and the darker color was just a thin line at the edge, if it was there at all. His eyes almost looked like there was a halo encircling the pupil.
Spattered across his face were light freckles that were almost invisible against his tan. Around his neck he wore a silver chain with a jagged, thin emerald pendant almost covered by his shirt. I blinked, realizing I was still staring at him like a moron. He arched an eyebrow at me when I didn't respond to his question.
"Um, yeah, I just got here from Minnesota a week ago."
"Cool." He rubbed the corner of his nose with his knuckle. Silence fell over us again. Awkward Moments, thy name is high school.
"So you like to draw?" I asked. I don't know why I asked, but it was the only thing I could think of to break the torturous silence. Sure, it would have made more sense to talk about our project, but it was awkward thinking about how this boy I knew nothing about was now my partner for a year. I felt like I needed to get some kind of information on him.
"Yeah." I waited for him to say something else but he left it at that. Nervously I bit my lip and played with my pen some more. I turned my head to look out the window. A soft breeze had rolled in and ruffled the leaves on the trees outside. Most of the campus was covered with oak trees but there were smaller pine trees as well. "So…."
I turned my attention back to him. He was looking at me directly, tapping his pen rhythmically on the desk. I could see the muscles in his square jaw tensed as he swallowed. He coughed quietly.
"I guess we should exchange numbers or something, seeing as we will be married for the next couple of months," he said. I couldn't help but laugh.
"Yeah, how awkward is that exactly? Being in a family unit with someone I've never met before..." I closed my eyes tightly trying to fight back the rest of my verbal diarrhea. I hadn't actually wanted to say something like that out loud - always with the foot-in-the-mouth disease. At least that was tame in comparison to some of the things I normally said. His chuckle made me relax.
"Oh no, nothing awkward about being bonded in holy matrimony to a perfect stranger in high school. Nothing at all," he said dryly. He turned his attention to his notebook and scribbled down his name and number on a piece of paper before ripping it out to give it to me. "That's my cell."
"Why do you spell your name like that?" I asked. He spelt his name MikeEwah- Mike capital-E wah. He shrugged.
"Mommy always said I was special." He grinned.
His teeth were a perfectly, immaculate white. There was not a single Coke stain or anything on them. It made me a little self-conscious, knowing my teeth were yellow from all the dark soda I religiously drank.
Ms. Fitzpatrick went back to addressing the class, stopping any further conversation. My next two classes were more of the same. Mike was in my history class as well, but he buried himself in the back of the room, and by the time I got to the classroom only the front row was available. He didn't make eye contact with me when I entered. He was too busy staring out the window with a glazed look in his eye. A thin veil of fog had rolled in across the campus.
When the bell rang for lunch, I cringed. I wasn't looking forward to going into a cafeteria full of strangers and trying to find some place to sit. Courage wouldn't suddenly find me in time for me to sit at a random table and just start chatting people up. Hell, just the short conversation I had with Mike amazed me. I was beyond terrible with even things like that.
I quickly discovered the cafeteria was just a building with windows that fed into the kitchen. Only the kitchen staff was allowed inside and kids stood in line to order their food. The seats were scattered throughout the upper campus or, if you wanted to, you could sit in the lower campus. From what I could tell, most of the kids tended to congregate in the upper campus.
After paying for my lunch I turned to face the hurdle of trying to find some place to sit. Like any high school, the students had their cliques that they would gravitate to, and of course, if you didn't fit into their clique you could forget about trying to sit at their table. In fact, it was social suicide to even try if you weren't previously invited.
As expected, I saw Jez sitting amongst a group of peppy, unfairly good-looking, girls with their just as unfairly good-looking boys hanging on their arms. You didn't need to be a genius to guess they were the jock and cheerleader types. Next I found the brainiac table.
Almost all of them wore glasses and had their faces buried in their laptops. Two boys, covered in acne and with thick braces glued to their teeth, were working together to build some kind of robot or erector set. I couldn't quite figure out what it was. If there was any group I would fit in with, it would have been them, but something about them made me think they would have no idea how to talk to a girl.
Moving through the teenage jungle was like walking onto the set of a National Geographic film shoot.
Every cliché clique you could think of was out in force and naturally segregated. Looking down at the lower campus, I could see the tweekers (drug users for those not in the loop) hanging out by a baseball dugout, laughing while they passed something around. My uneducated guess was that it was a joint.
On a grassy patch, just before the stairs leading down to the lower campus, were the musicians. Naturally Xavier was among them. A couple of them had their instruments out and were either tuning them or playing them. Xavier was too buried in discussion with a girl to notice me staring at him.
I knew if I'd gone over there he would've introduced me and invited me to sit with them. If I was smart I probably would've done that. But I really wasn't that smart, despite my grades.
The next group were the poets and would-be writers. They had their faces buried in their books, and no amount of talking to them would ever shake them from their Jane Austins or J. D. Salinger'. They were immediately followed by the gay and lesbian club with their Out-and-Proud kids. I honestly had to admire them for their confidence in who they were.
Sighing hopelessly, I was about to give up my search for a place to sit and slink off somewhere with my tail between my legs, when I saw Mike sitting quietly on a brick wall that overlooked the lower campus. Taking a deep breath, I moved toward him, not knowing what the result would be. His face was buried in his iPod as he searched diligently through his play list. He looked up only when he saw my feet appear behind his iPod. He pulled an ear bud out of his ear.
"Hey," I said. I made no motion to sit down, still unsure how he would react.
"What, you think because you're my class wife that means I'll allow you to sit with me?"
I swallowed hard. I thought he was being sarcastic, but I simply didn't know him well enough to know to be sure. Nervously I looked around, searching for any out I could possibly come up with. Maybe I could get away with saying, "No, I was actually just heading over here," and scamper off before things got worse. An out plan was always a good thing to have in high school.
The plop of his bag as it fell on the floor brought my attention back to him. He'd kicked it off the wall to give me a place to sit. I smiled and sat down next to him as his focus returned to his iPod.
"Thanks," I mumbled.
I still wasn't sure if he was just being polite and I was actually annoying him, or if he was legitimately okay with my sitting next to him. Without saying another word, I started working on my pizza.
"Not hungry?" I asked when I noticed he wasn't eating.
Mike smiled slyly and pulled out a small bag that had been tucked by his side.
"Gummy bears, the lunch of champions," I said jokingly as I swallowed my mouth full of pizza.
"Natures candy!" he replied proudly.
"Ah, and here I thought that was nuts, apples and other such healthy choices and not gelatin-filled, sugar high creating gummies." I bit my lip hard as it came out a lot harsher then I had intended. He flashed a finger to his lips and shushed me. Pulling the bag to his chest he petted it gently.
"Don't listen to her boys. We all know the truth," he whispered to them. I tried hard not to laugh, but I failed miserably and ended up spitting the entire mouth full of Dr. Pepper I had just drank. With a shrug he reached inside his bag and pulled one gummy out. He pretended like it was dancing before he bit its head off. Mike was amazingly nutty and I found myself quickly calming around him.
"May the gummies rest in peace," I muttered as he tore the head off three more in rapid succession. He offered the bag to me but I waved my hand to pass. "No thanks, I don't partake in gummy carnage."
"So I have to ask, why do girls do that?" he asked as he motioned at my skirt and knee length leggings. Heat from a sudden rush of embarrassment flooded my face as I quickly averted my eyes.
"I have no idea," I admitted. He continued to stare at me, waiting for a further explanation that I wasn't sure if I wanted to offer up. "I personally think its stupid, myself, but I've never been comfortable in skirts, so this is my way to work up to them."
