New Girls and Code Blues

 

Audrey

     She didn't even speak yet and I already knew she was going to annoy the crap out of me. She was small, with an extremely big, fake looking smile plastered on the bottom half of her face. Her hair was brown and straight to her shoulders, with her bangs pinned back with a flower clip. And the ultimate taboo at this school: she wore her uniform correctly. She looked like such a prep. It was irritating.

     “Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a new student,” Miss Campbell said as she gestured to the new girl. The new girl waved excitedly at us, her fake smile getting even bigger, which I didn't think was possible. Barf.

     “Her name is Sadie-” Sadie? You've gotta be kidding me... “Jones. Be nice to her,” she said, looking right at me.

     “Since when am I ever not nice, Miss Campbell?”

     “I'll get back to you on that.”

     I rolled my eyes. Even though I detested Miss Campbell with an indescribable passion, this back and forth game we had was pretty entertaining. And at least it gave me something to do.

     “You can sit there,” she told Sadie, pointing to the desk in the far back corner.

     “Now, it's time for warm up. Glad to see you bothered to show up on time for that today, Miss Lawrence,” she said, again, looking right at me. I waved at her with a cheesy smile.

     She waddled her way to the board, and wrote a sentence that read 'The ball went over the neighbors fence and I had to go get it.' I almost laughed at how juvenile the sentence was. We are juniors, Miss Campbell. Give us something more advanced with that.

     “Can someone tell me what this sentence was missing?”

Sadie's hand nearly shot up out of it's socket. She was actually eager to answer the question? What? Miss Campbell turned around, and almost burst into tears, she looked so happy. It made sense. Everyone else just kind of put there head down. At least they did whenever I was here for warm up.

     “Yes, Sadie?”

     “It;'s missing a comma between 'fence,' and 'and.'” her voice was extremely upbeat, and perky. Oh dear God. Yeah, she was definitely gonna annoy me.

    “Thank you, Sadie. Your off to a nice start in here.”

     “Now, as we've been doing this past week, we will be getting in our partners.” I slowly started to get up, until Miss Campbell interrupted me. “Oh wait, Miss Lawrence, it seems as though your partner isn't here.”

I looked over at Noah's desk to find it empty. Why hadn't I noticed he wasn't here earlier?

     “Well, isn't that an inconvenience?”

     “Tragic,” I said.

     “Well, we definitely can't have you working alone, now can we?” With sly eyes, she moved her gaze over to Sadie, who sat there, confused. Don't you dare, you miserable, miserable b***h.

     “You can work with Sadie for today. Actually, why don't you become a group. You know, like permanently?”

     Slowly turned my head to Miss Campbell, who was staring at me like she had no idea what she had just done. I flashed her one of my 'I hate you' smiles. She flashed one back to me with a flick of her nonexistent hair.

     Sadie was already perkily bouncing over to me. I don't even know why perky people bothered me so much. Maybe it was their attitude, how everything in the world was chocolate and rainbows and perfect, to them, when that couldn't be farther from the truth. I should know. I have ghosts and other things that stalk me.

     “Hi,” she said.

     “What's up?” I said.

     “The ceiling,” she said with a goofy smile, giggling into her other palm. I raised my eyebrows at her. Did she seriously just say that? Please, don't tell me she just said that.

     “We should get started on the project, don't you think?” Before I could answer she already grabbed me by the wrist, and was dragging me to her seat. This girl had way too much energy.

     “So,” she started as she plopped in her seat, “what is this project about?”

This girl dragging me across the room made me a little dizzy, and I had to refocus myself before answering. “Um,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose between my eyes, “we're doing this thing called character twitters, and we update them as if, we were Romeo and Juliet.”

     There was no point in fighting her. If she was going to be working with Noah and me for the whole project, might as well be nice to her too.

Oh crap. I made the twitter a couple days ago, and I haven't updated it yet. Noah was gonna kill me.

     Noah. My gaze wandered over to his vacant desk. Why wasn't he here? Was he sick? No, wasn't sick a couple days ago on the bench. On the bench he seemed perfectly fine. That is, until he started talking about how his attempted suicide. And until Desmond walked by...

     You don't have to help. I got this. By myself. When he said that, his eyes looked so dark. They were a little bloodshot, and they weren't that warm, calming, deep blue ocean color that I liked. They were hollow, and cold, like ice. His voice was even harder and colder, and felt like ice shards literally going through me, sending a shiver up my spine. It was like he was possessed or something.

     I looked at Noah's desk again. Wherever he was, I really hope he wasn't off somewhere doing something that would get himself hurt.

     “Hello, can you hear me?” Sadie snapped her fingers in front of my face.

     “Huh, yeah, I can hear you,” I told her, which wasn't a lie. I could here, her, it was just her words that didn't register.

     “So can I?”

     “Can you what?”

     “Can I be Benvolio?”

     “Oh, yeah sure if you want.”

     She nodded up and down like a bobble head. I looked at my desk to conceal my eye roll.

     “So do you want to read?” She asked me.

     “Ehh, not today,” I replied.

     She slammed her book on her desk, making me jump a little. “I don't care. I need a good grade on this,” she said, in a serious tone, which due to her upbeat voice, was hard to not laugh at. I raised my eyebrows again. Who did she think she is?

     “Oh I'm sorry. Do mommy and daddy not love you enough to get you a trust fund? Boo hoo, and hoo again.” I shot back.

     I couldn't resist. That was a big pet peeve of mine. When every little rich person in the world talked about how miserable they were, when their lives could be a lot worse, I just wanted to punch them in the face. I'm not gonna lie, it utterly pissed me off.

     “What are you talking about? I'm not rich,” she said with tiny little eye slits.

     “Well, you're definitely not here on a scholarship,” I snapped.

     “And how would you know that? You didn't ask me.” She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms across her chest. “I get it. You're one of those people,”

     “What do you mean 'one of those people?'” I asked with extra stiffness in my voice.

     “You stereotype people. You think just because of the way I carry myself, that I have everything. Right?” the way she was talking to me now surprised me. She was actually... mad.

     “I don't stereotype people,” I said.

     “Sure you do. I heard about Noah by the way. And how he's kind of weird. What did you think of him when you first saw him?” she leaned back on her desk, getting close in my face.

     I thought he was a depressed at everything for no reason, emo, cutter freak. I labeled him. Without knowing anything about him, I wrote him off. Now I knew this was not the case. Last week, when we were first assigned as partners, we were walking through the garden outside the lobby. That was when I found out he was a scholarship student. He didn't mean to tell me, it jut kind of slipped out, but he didn't seem to care. But he wouldn't talk after that.

Plus, it's only when Desmond's around that he's a little scary. And only a little. I've been dealing with paranormal stuff most of my life, so Noah compared to them is nothing. But I wasn't going to tell Sadie any of this.

     “Just like I thought,” Sadie said, snapping me out of my inner babble. She went back to her book.

     “Wait, so if you don't have everything delivered to you on a silver platter, why are you so perky all the time?”

     “Well, when things seem down, there's always something to be happy for, right?”

     I chewed over this. I didn't necessarily agree with her, but at least she made sense.

     “CODE BLUE, I REPEAT CODE BLUE!” Mr. Hall's voice blared over the intercom, making me jump out of my seat about five inches.

     I knew exactly what code blue's were. Someone was hurt. My head snapped back to Noah's desk. Oh God. He did do something stupid. The revenge in his eyes a couple days ago said he was dead serious, now I just hoped he wasn't dead. Why didn't I tell him Desmond wasn't human when I had the chance? All this probably wouldn't have happened. I hoped he would be smart enough not to get involved with him then. Oh why didn't I tell him? Who cared if he was keeping secrets also, this was his life at stake now? I jumped out of my seat, and ran to the door, grabbing Sadie and dragging her with me, shaking my short red hair in front of my face.

     “Where are we going?” she asked.

     “We gotta find Noah. No time to explain,” I answered.

     “Miss Lawrence, you know the rules. We're not supposed to leave the classroom!” Miss Campbell shouted after me.

     “Bite me, old lady!” I shouted back over my shoulder.

     “We're not supposed to leave? No, I can't get in trouble. I'm on a scholarship!”

     “Just trust me okay?” I asked.

She hesitated, but she eventually nodded.

     “Good,” I said, and proceeded to drag her down the hallway, desperately searching for Noah.