Chapter 9

A Chapter by Chris

The rest of the summer seemed to pass by quickly. Before I knew it, it was already the start of the new school year. Normally I probably would have been really tired from waking up at six in the morning, but the nervousness I felt for the first day of school was more than enough to keep me awake. I usually was never this nervous on the first day of school, but it wasn't really that surprising. It was going to be my first day of high school after all.

“Relax, you'll be fine,” Jack told me, apparently noticing my nervousness when we were up at our bus stop, which was up the street from our houses.

“Yeah I know,” I said.

“And if someone tries to beat you up, I'll take care of 'em.” He smirked a little and stood as if he was all high and mighty.

I laughed a little and shook my head. “You'd probably get your a*s kicked too if you did something like that.”

“Gee, nice to see how much faith you have in me,” he replied, trying to act hurt, though the smirk kind of ruined it.

I couldn't help but to feel a little better after Jack said that. The nervousness wasn't as bad now and I was starting to feel a bit more excited about starting my first year at high school than feeling anxious about it.

When the bus came, we got on. I sat down somewhere in the middle and Jack sat in the seat across from mine. We didn't really say anything to each other though during the entire bus ride to school. It was sometimes a little risky to anyway because you often had a chance of ticking everyone else off since you were disturbing their extra minutes of sleep.

After watching trees and other things zoom by the bus window for about fifteen minutes, I watched as the bus pulled into the school parking lot. As I got off the bus, I could feel all the nervousness returning to me. Jack walked next to me as we made our way to the building. I heard him chuckle a little a few seconds later.

“What's so funny?” I asked as I looked up at him.

“You,” he replied. “You get nervous way too much. Didn't I tell you to just relax? Jeez, if you keep up like this you'll probably die before you even make it to your locker.”

“Ha ha, very funny,” I mumbled sarcastically.

“What classes do you have anyway?” he asked a couple seconds later as we entered the school.

I pulled out my schedule to look, but when I did, Jack snatched it away from me to look at it himself.

“Awesome, we have Independent Living and P.E. together.” He smiled some as he handed me back my schedule. “If we're lucky, we might have lunch together too.”

I just nodded in response as I shoved my schedule into my pocket. Jack and I parted ways to go to our lockers. By the time I finished putting some of my things into my locker, the bell announcing the beginning of the school day rang and I went off to my first period of the day.

The first three classes of the day went by a little slowly. Going through the course syllabus and rules for every class wasn't really that exciting for me. Also, the exhaustion I had that had been concealed behind my nervousness slowly began to creep up on me until I almost dozed off in the middle of third period. Luckily I managed to keep myself awake though. One of the last things I wanted was to make a real bad impression on my first day of high school.

Fourth period was next, which was Independent Living. I didn't think the class would be too bad. We were apparently going to learn how to cook in that class, so I thought it would be a good idea to take it so I would be able to cook in the future. The last thing I wanted to do was to buy fast food all the time when I get older and become the size of a sumo wrestler. There were also a few other things that we would learn in it too that would be pretty handy to know.

I arrived at the classroom pretty early. There wasn't anyone in the classroom except for the teacher, who greeted me and told me to take a seat at one of the four wooden tables. I nodded and sat down at the middle square-shaped table before looking around the room. To the left was a little section with rows of desks that had sewing machines on them, and to the right was the kitchen area where we would obviously do all the cooking at.

Jack came into the class at the last minute, but luckily no one else had taken a seat at the same table as me, so he was able to sit with me. We talked a little until the bell rang and class began. Like all the other classes, we were given a course syllabus, which we went over during the entire class after the teacher spent a couple minutes trying to learn all of our names. When it ended, Jack and I left the classroom before parting ways.

When I arrived at my fifth period class, I learned that I had the last lunch of the day. It didn't bother me too much though because I was never usually that hungry during lunch, so eating late wasn't really too bad for me. Not only that, but I always packed my lunch anyway, so I didn't have to worry about hurrying to lunch to get something to eat of whatever was left.

Fifth period went by pretty quickly. I headed to the cafeteria when it was time for lunch. When I got there, I looked around, but I didn't spot any of my friends yet, so I just sat down at an empty table while I waited. It wasn't too long though until I saw Jack walking over.

“Ew, I don't know if I wanna sit with a Freshman,” Jack said, smirking a little.

“That's fine, I didn't want to sit with a loser like you anyway,” I replied, also smirking.

Jack chuckled a little before sitting down next to me. “I'm actually kind of surprised to see that you're still alive. I thought you'd have a heart attack by now since you were so nervous before.”

“I wasn't that nervous,” I muttered.

“Sure you were. But there's still half a day left anyway. We'll just have to see if you can survive that much more.”

I chuckled a little before taking a bite out of my sandwich.

“Hey Jack,” said a boy as he walked over to the table with a tray in his hands.

“Hey Justin,” Jack greeted back.

“Why're you sitting with a Freshman?” Justin questioned before looking at me as if I was some communicable disease.

“Eh, he's cool,” Jack assured him.

Justin gave a small shrug before sitting down. Jack took the privilege of introducing us to each other. Neither of us said anything, but just nodded towards each other in acknowledgment. I didn't really talk too much as I sat there. Instead I just let them carry on a conversation. Jack tried to get me into the conversation every now and then though, but I didn't really bother saying much. A couple of Jack's other friends later joined us too.

When lunch was over, Jack and I began making our way to the gym since that was our next class. I dreaded having this class because it was always the worst class for me. My athletic ability was low and I was bad at just about every sport. The class was required for two years though, so I didn't really have any choice but to take it. Of course though, Jack would be in my class this time. Since I would have a friend in there, maybe it wouldn't be so bad?

Jack didn't mind having it though. Actually, he was excited to have it. At least one of us was happy to be taking it though. I didn't bother making any complaints about having P.E. because I didn't want to upset Jack any or possibly get into some kind of argument about how cool the class is.

The bell rang about two minutes later and the teacher came out from her office. She had us sit down before passing out the course syllabus. Everyone sat there, bored out of their minds as the teacher went over it. I had to admit though that it didn't really bother me any. To me, going over a syllabus beat playing sports any day.

After spending about half of the class going over the syllabus, the teacher told us that we were going to be picking out lockers now. There weren't enough lockers for everyone in all the P.E. classes to have their own, so we were forced to pair up with someone. It didn't matter to me though because Jack and I were able to pair up. We got our lock from the teacher before heading into the boys' changing room to pick out a locker we would use for the semester.

“Gym was real exciting today, wasn't it?” I asked with a smirk as I put the lock on the locker we chose.

“Okay, so maybe it isn't exciting all the time,” he said. “But this was only the first day. It'll be better tomorrow.”

I shrugged.

“Besides, we're allowed to do whatever we want for the rest of class and they have the basketballs out,” he said. “Come on, let's get a ball and a court before all of them are taken.”

I reluctantly agreed. When we got back into the gym, Jack grabbed a basketball and we went over to a vacant court. We started to play a game and a few other people joined us. Jack's team ended up winning though by the time class was over. After we left the gym, Jack and I said bye to each other and parted ways to head to our next class.

The last class of the day went by pretty quickly. When the bell signifying the end of the day rang, I quickly left the classroom, glad that the first day of school was finally over. I didn't bother heading to my locker because I didn't have anything to get, but instead went to go find my bus. When I got on, it was empty, but Jack got on a couple minutes later.

“Scoot over,” he told me as he reached my seat.

“Nah,” I replied. “I don't feel like sitting with anyone.”

“You suck.” He sat down in the seat across the aisle from mine. “So how was your first day?”

“It wasn't too bad.”

“See? I told you that you'd be okay, but no, you just wouldn't believe me. You should listen to me more often.”

“If I listen to you too much you'd probably end up getting me killed.”

“Hey, I'm not that bad.”

I didn't say anything else, but chuckled instead. We continued to talk as everyone else got on the bus. About five minutes later, the bus left the school to drop all of us off. Jack and I got off the bus last and we made our way down the street. When I reached my driveway, both of us said bye to each other as we parted ways.

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