WTFA: Chapter 1

            “I’m sorry I won’t be sitting with you at lunch today, babe.”

            May Strider looked over at the guy walking beside her, meeting his blue-green eyes.  Their arms occasionally brushed as they made their way down the senior hall of Bellhart High, ignoring the other students around them.  Class--for them, US Government--had ended a minute ago.

            She smiled.  “Joe, I already told you, it doesn’t matter.  I have to go to the library anyway, remember? I have that project to do.”

            “Oh, right.”  Joe chuckled, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and pulling her close to him.  “Still, I wish you’d come with me to the tour.  It’d be great to have you there with me, and who knows? You might like University of Cincinnati.”

            “No,” she said with a small laugh.  “They don’t even offer a forensic science major.”

            They arrived at her locker.  Joe’s arm fell away from her shoulders.

            “Y’know, I wish you’d think about going to a college here in Ohio,” Joe said.  “Florida’s a long way away.”

            May didn’t have to look at him to hear the smile in his voice, but she also knew he was downplaying his feelings on the matter.  “I know,” she said, stopping with one hand on the dial of her top row locker.  She understood that he couldn’t afford going out of state--really, she couldn’t either, but University of Central Florida was supposed to be a good place for forensic science, so she had her sights set there.  May turned her head toward him.  “We can talk about it more tonight.”  Right after, her faced him slowly, and she felt her smile grow.  “Can you believe it’s been a year already?”

            Joe reached up, his thumb brushing her cheek.

“The time flew, huh?” he asked.

            He leaned in, their lips meeting for a moment.  Regardless of how much time had passed since they started dating, she couldn’t get tired of kissing him, each one making her heart sing like the last.

            “It has,” she said, her gaze lingering on his round, clean-shaven face, his short, red hair, before she turned to her locker again.  “It’s still hard to believe this is our last year.”

            “Yep, but graduation’s a good while away,” Joe said.  “It’s only October.”

            “Yeah, and we’re already a week away from the last day of first quarter.”

            “True.  Well, babe, as much as I like sticking around, I should get going.”

            “Okay.”

            With one last kiss, Joe was off, and May watched him make his way down the hall.  As much as she loved him, she already knew she wouldn’t budge on her decision if they talked any more about attending the same university.  Unless he decided to come with her to Florida, which she didn’t want to make him feel pressured to do, they would have to make their relationship long distance.  She had her goals--her ambitions--and she had her plans on how to achieve them.  Nothing would get in the way of that.

After setting her backpack on the tiled floor, May restarted her combination and opened the door, the streak of color passing through her peripheral vision causing her to look at the inside of it.  Even though they had been there for a month now, the pictures she had put up still caught her eye sometimes.  She didn’t care much for decoration, but she made an exception for pictures.  She loved taking them--not the artistic kind; she could appreciate a photograph of a flower that captured its beauty or one of a model striking a pose for some thematic purpose, but recording life’s special moments and the people she loved was what she liked most.

            Currently, the inside of the door was a little bare, waiting to be covered with the memories that this year would bring.  Until then, there were only a few of them, with three of those being the most important ones.  The first was solely of her.  Like always, her auburn hair was cut to shoulder length with her bangs swept to the side.  She was wearing jean shorts and a white t-shirt--similar to what she was wearing now, only the shorts were replaced by pants.  Behind her was the National Center for Forensic Science at University of Central Florida, where she could begin her path to becoming a crime scene investigator.  Its walls were the same color as her shirt.  She had taken the picture over the summer when she went for a visit.

            As her eyes drifted to the next image, she felt her heart flutter.  It was of her and Joe standing in her living room just before prom, her in a blue dress and him in his tuxedo.  They had their arms wrapped around each other, their faces practically glowing.  She could remember how teary-eyed her mom had gotten as she took the picture.

            Finally, last but not least, there was the third.  Like the others, she was in this one.  Two guys stood on either side of her.  They were in her backyard, her porch behind them.  The one on her right had dirty blond hair styled in a buzz with sideburns lining his face.  Blue-gray eyes were looking away from the camera, and his smile hardly present.  The other guy, broad-shouldered with a sharp-featured face, had his arm around the two of them, pulling them together.  His dark brown hair had lost some of its waviness from being wet, and the afternoon sun cast a glint on his sunglasses.  May smiled to herself at the goofy grin she saw plastered on his face, as well as at the blue coloring on his lips.

            “Wish you’d take that down.”

            May turned around.  Standing in front of her was the blond-haired guy in that last picture"Brayden.  He was wearing his blue and white jersey, like all the other football players, and a pair of black athletic shorts.  She also became aware of how the hall was quieting down, now that mostly everyone was making their way to the cafeteria, if not already there.

She shrugged, a similar smile crossing her own lips.  “I wanted to put something of us up, and until I can get you to take another one, it stays,” she said, leaning down to unzip her backpack.  She inwardly giggled when she remembered how much of a fuss he threw when she proposed the idea that they take the picture.

#

            “I can’t believe we’re almost seniors,” May said, breaking the silence that had settled over them a few moments ago.  “One week away.”

            She, Brayden, and Michael were out on her back porch of her two-story home, sitting at the plastic table her parents had set up on it.  Each of them held a popsicle--or in Brayden’s case, the stick left over from it.  They had been in the pool sitting in the center of the yard not too long ago.  Their towels lay in heaps in front of them on the table.

            “I know, right?” Michael had said from his spot across from hers.  She couldn’t see his eyes because of the sunglasses he decided to put on, even though they were in the shade, but she picked out the smirk that subtly tugged at his lips.  “It seems just like yesterday we were little kids who played kickball and picked our noses.”

            May smiled, lightly wrinkling up her nose.  “Maybe you and Brayden picked your noses, but not me.  But yeah--it’s been…what? About nine years since we met?”

            “When you met us,” Michael said.  “Brayden and I met third grade.  Kindergarten, right, dude? You remember that?”

            “Huh?” he said between the popsicle stick in his mouth.  From his spot to the left of her, Brayden looked between her and Michael a couple of times before seeming to catch up with what they were talking about.  “Oh, yeah.”  He shrugged, leaning back in his chair with his gaze cast out in the yard.  “Same class.  Always Batman and Robin before May showed up.”

            “What? Really?” May asked with a laugh, looking to Michael, who casually shrugged.

            “Sure, we played that when no one else was around,” he said.

            “And you were Robin?” she asked him.

            Michael blinked at her.  “How did you guess?”

            May gave a small shrug, knowing she should pick her words carefully, but, at the same time, she wasn’t one to sugarcoat things.  “You were always following Brayden around on the playground.”  Things hadn’t changed much, either.  Michael practically grew up as Brayden’s right-hand man, but she didn’t want to go so far as to tell him that.  Based on the way his gaze drifted to the table, slowly nodding his head, he didn’t take her words well.  She didn’t want to worsen that.

            “And you,” May said with a playful smile, looking at Brayden, who seemed to snap back into reality.  “You were mean to me back then.”  She lightly kicked his shin.  “Jerk.”

            Brayden smirked.  “You had cooties.”

            May laughed.  It was okay now, but it had hurt her back then.  It was the first day of school and she was new.  Brayden refused to let her play kickball when she asked, simply because she was a girl, and he managed to get all the other guys against her--except Michael.  She remembered that he never joined in with the jeers, but he never put a stop to it, either, not even when Brayden started picking on her outside of her requests to join in on their games.

            Michael laughed.  “You completely whipped his a*s for that.”

            “’Cause guys can’t hit girls!” Brayden said quickly.

            “Don’t make excuses,” May teased him, remembering the way she tackled him to the ground.  She only threw two punches before a teacher pulled her off him, but that had been enough to be a spectacle for the whole playground.  “Admit it.  I beat you because I was stronger than you.”

            “Bullshit,” Brayden said, his smirk unwavering, but she thought he might’ve been blushing a little.  Either that it or was sunburn.  “You caught me off guard.”

            “Right,” she said, laughing.

            After that fight, Michael had been the first of the guys to start talking to her.  The other guys followed suit, and, soon enough, Brayden did the same, when he had gotten over his embarrassment.  Since then, they had become close, and here they were now.

            “You know what?” she said, looking at the two of them.  “We need a picture.”

            Michael lightly quirked a brow.  “Right now?”

            “Yeah.  My camera’s in my room.  Just let me--”

            “Not gonna happen,” Brayden said.

            Her smile faltering, May looked at him.  His attention was back on what lay beyond the porch, a stubborn look in his eyes.  She slumped her shoulders at him, but her smile returned, albeit weakened.

            “Come on, Brayden,” she said.  “I want a picture of all three of us.”

            “You already have some.”

            “Yeah, but they’re all more than a few months old.  I want one of us before we all officially become seniors.”

            “What’s it matter anyway, dude?” Michael asked.  “It’s just a picture.”

            “Exactly,” May said.

            Brayden shook his head.  “Pictures are retarded,” he muttered.

            “It’s okay, dude,” Michael said.  “Your face won’t break the camera.”

            They both looked at him.

            “Thanks for saying I’m not ugly,” Brayden said.  May stole a glance at him, seeing the smirk on his face.

            “I completely messed that up,” Michael muttered.  “Okay, I’m just going to shut up.”

            He shoved his popsicle in his mouth, reminding May of her own.  She looked down at it, seeing that some of it had dripped on the table, coloring it red.  She bit off the little that was left on the stick before looking back at Brayden.

            “Why don’t you want to have a picture taken?” she asked.  “You never had any problems before.”

            For a moment he just stared at the yard, but she knew he heard her.  Finally, he sighed.  “Fine, let’s do it.”

            “Great!” May said, jumping up from her spot at the table.  Although she still wondered why he made such a fuss, she decided she wouldn’t press the matter.  “Let me go get my camera.”

#

            “Surprised Joe didn’t freak out when he saw it,” Brayden said, bringing her back to the present.

            May quirked a brow as she straightened her posture.  From her backpack she had pulled out her AP Calculus textbook.  “Why would he?”

            “Because you’re in your bathing suit with two topless guys,” he said.

            She glanced at the picture.  “Oh, yeah.”  She set her book inside her locker before pulling out her English binder.  “Well, he knows by now he has nothing to worry about.”  But she could remember when, in the beginning of their relationship, Joe expressed his dislike of her hanging out with Brayden and Michael.  It had been a little rough patch, but once she got him to understand she had no feelings for them in that way, things worked out fine.

            “Anyway, you ready to go to the cafeteria?” he asked, holding up the brown bag in his hand.

            “No, because we can’t,” May said, a little annoyance seeping into her tone.  Her eyes didn’t leave his face as she set her English binder inside her backpack.  “We have to finish our Grendel project since someone didn’t come over last night like they were supposed to, since supposedly that someone ‘forgot.’” She used air quotes on the last word. 

            Brayden shrugged.  “I did.  I already told you, I got busy with other things.  S**t happens.”

            “What other things?” she inquired, slipping her Spanish binder behind her English one.  “It better have been important.”

            “Other homework.”

            After zipping her backpack, May stood up straight.  She simply looked at him, and he did the same back at her.  It was clear he knew what she was doing, but it wouldn’t matter.  Like all the times before, he would cave.  It was just a matter of waiting.  And sure enough, she saw that familiar sign: he shifted his weight onto one foot, then the other.

            Three, two, one.

            Brayden sighed.  “Okay, I was watching a movie.”

            “Really?” May said, frowning.  “That’s the reason you forgot? It better have been a good one.”

            “It was alright,” he muttered.

            “And what was the movie called?”

“I don’t remember.  Something I found online.”

May eyed him.  “It wasn’t porn, was it?”

A smirk broke out on his face.  “Oh yeah.  I had one helluva time.”

She slumped her shoulders.  “Brayden, be serious! I was sitting around waiting for you to show when I could’ve been doing other homework.  It was irresponsible for you"”

“Okay, Mom, I get it,” he interjected.  “We’ll work on it over the weekend.”

She shook her head.  “Um, no, it’s due today.”

            “Really?”

            May sighed.  “Brayden, you’ve got to be kidding me.  Why do you think I was telling you we had to go to the library today?”

            “Because you like pestering the hell out of me,” he offered with a small smile.  “But let’s eat first.  Then we can go to the library.”

            He started to turn away, but before he could do so completely, May grabbed him by the wrist.  He stopped, looking back at her.

            “No, we’ll work on it first,” she said.  “We need to make sure we get it done.”

            “We will,” Brayden said.  “We have time, and I doubt it’ll take that long.  Besides, I got study hall next period.  If we don’t finish, I can work on it during that.”

            May sighed.  “Brayden.”

            “I’m starved.  I want to go eat, and Ashley will want to see me.  I’ll meet you at the library when I’m done.”

            He yanked his wrist out of her grasp and May let her hand drop to her side.

“You better show up,” she said as he started walking away.

While continuing down the hall, he turned around.  “I will.  Promise.”

May watched him turn around and take off at a quickened pace.  She heaved a sigh.  Sometimes I wonder why I let myself partner up with him when I know it’s going to be a headache.  Usually, though, her friend wasn’t this bad.  She shut her locker, and after shouldering her backpack, she started down the hall, going in the same direction as him since she would also have to go downstairs to get to the library.

He’ll have to partner with someone else next time.  I can’t keep doing this to myself.  Grades seemed more important, now that this was her last year.  She couldn’t afford someone like Brayden to mess them up.

            Really, though, May knew she wouldn’t do this.  She hated when she had to argue with Brayden like that, but she couldn’t do something like that to him.  After all, Brayden and Michael were her two best friends.  Since they grew up together, they had become such a fixture in her life that there was no way she could turn one of them down.

It was hard to imagine that, once they were done with high school, she wouldn’t be able to see either of them in person except during breaks.  No doubt she would miss them, but she wasn’t worried about what would happen to their friendships.  Their bonds were strong.  Maybe they had had their rough patches--what friends didn’t?--but they would never drift apart completely.

Author's Note

If you see any random quotation marks, those are supposed to be em dashes that WC/HTML code changed.

Reviews

[Fictionborn]

The dialogues are well written, though you might want to balance things up some more by shifting between dialogue and describing the surroundings some more. You did great with the explanation of the appearance of Brayden and Michael for instance.

The switch to another 'scene' is somewhat sudden. By this I don't mean a confusing sudden way, but I feel the interruption to weaken the storyline. Just at the moment you are building up an interesting matter to the reader you stop and start a new scene. This makes the chapter a little tedious.

Now for the praise! I sense you have truly crafted individual characters who are very realistic in context to the story, they are by no means stereotypes. I enjoyed to read about the various characters you present in this chapter and how they interact.

I have not come across any random quotation marks that are out of place, luckily.
Furthermore, I didn't notice and serious grammar problems which makes reading a lot more comfortable as well.

Good job and keep writing!

~Fictionborn

[Chris]

Much thanks for your critique. I -had- been rather concerned with the flashback, mainly due to its length.

But yes, your feedback is much appreciated.