Chapter One

Just short of 16 years after the events in the prologue, we get to experience what it's like to be an introverted, slowly maturing Candice Cornell from inside her own mind.

You’ve all experienced it; the crowded walkways, the shoving, the overwhelming hustle and bustle. Grand Central Station? Not exactly. High school hallways? That’s more like it.

                There’s the loud, high pitched squeals from the freshman girls ecstatic about the approaching Homecoming dance. Likelihood that any of them have dates? They’re going stag. All of them.

                On the other side of the coin is their male counterparts who have yet to discover the deodorant aisle at any grocery store their mothers drag them to. They smile awkwardly at every passing girl; myself included.

                Granted I was a freshman just five months ago, but that’s beside the point. I was never them. Isn’t that what every sophomore convinces themselves of?

                “Candice!” Hearing my name shouted above all the other noise, I turn to see a smiling face. The dusty round clock hanging up above the lockers indicates two things. One: it’s almost time for class. Two: it’s way too early for this girl to be that perky.

                “Shannon…” I counter with barely half as much enthusiasm. Can’t blame a girl for trying.

                Her dark hair is parted down the middle, hanging down long past her shoulders. I’m grateful we’re nowhere near a mirror because on days that I tried my hair never looked as good as hers. And today I didn’t try. “You don’t get to be Pouty Candy today, okay? They’re announcing the fall musical which means we need to be on our A-game. The seniors in the drama club are like vultures and they will have that audition sign-up sheet filled up faster than you can say ‘and the VMA goes to Lauryn Hill!’”

                My eyes practically roll into the back of my head as a freshman with his entire inventory of textbooks sprints right in front of me, just barely missing my foot. “I hate today. I hate everyone. I hate everything.”

                “Okay. Now just think the opposite of that and you’ll be good!” She tears off from our little arm-in-arm walk and bends over a nearby drinking fountain, the waistband of her denim skirt slipping down just a little too far.  

                My eyes jump around our immediate surroundings before I walk up behind her, crossing my arms over my chest as I block the view.  I can hear the soles of her knee cut boots scraping the cheap tile floor as she turns into my back. “Oh, hello there.” She wraps her arms around my waist, and even though I can’t see it I know she’s batting her eyelashes behind my back.

                “Stop,” I chuckle as I turn around to look her in the eye. Have to give her credit, she was one of the few people who could get me to laugh. “Pull your skirt up.”

                “Oh, s**t.” She has this signature dance that she does when she’s trying to pull her pants or skirts up, and the whole school is getting treated to a performance of it right now. Her left and right legs rise one at a time while she shimmies. Quite the sight, really. “Was I mooning teachers again?”

                My lips part to release another laugh. I told you she was good. “You were coming awfully close. Do you own a belt?”

                “A belt? For a skirt?” She rolls her green eyes and sighs as she re-links our arms,leading me further down the sea of bodies. “Candice, remind me to buy you a fashion magazine for your birthday.” As if questioning my very practical suggestion isn’t insulting enough, I can feel her eyes doing a double, and then a triple take over my wardrobe of the day.

                “What?”

                “What the hell are you wearing?”

                I peer down at my grey sweatpants and black tennis shoes. Complete with a white zip up hoodie. “I’m comfortable. Let it go.”

                “Comfortable isn’t going to get you a homecoming date, Candy baby.”

                I scoff, pulling off my brown hair tie only to replace it in a slightly tighter ponytail. “Oh God, not you too.”

                “Candice, it’s homecoming! Everyone’s excited. Well, everyone but you but you don’t get excited.”

                “I do too get excited.” I furrow my eyebrows, knowing my friend well enough to know that she’s expecting me to provide examples. “Like last month, when Christina’s album came out. I sang I Turn To You at the top of my lungs.”

                “Yeah, and I bet your shampoo and conditioner bottles really loved it.” She’s smirking. She’s shorter than me, but looking down out of the corner of my eye, I can see that bright shade of red lipstick inching up just a little on the left side of her mouth. “Too bad no one else has heard your voice. You’d be the next her.”

                “Would you shut up? I’m not even that good.” Shannon’s always telling me that I can do things that I can’t and that I’m better at things than I am. What a pain in the a*s. ‘That’s what best friends are for’ has become her catchphrase. My typical response: ‘Shut up.’

                “I’m not even that good,” she mumbles in a fairly decent impression of my own voice as we finally arrive in our first shared classroom of the day. “Candy, if you say that one more time I’m going to take this choker, and guess what I’m going to do with it.” Her neon green finger nails are right beneath a black choker, indicating it just in case I somehow missed what she was referencing.

                “Uhm, you’re going to hug me with it.”

                “I will choke you until you finally stop with this self-doubt s**t.”

                “Miss Matthews!” The deep voice of our history teacher silences the entire room.

                Shannon, being the smooth talker that she is, walks right over to his fading green metal desk and slaps her palm down on it. She leans in, never taking her eyes off of me. “Mr. Thompson, can you please tell her that she needs to be just a little more confident?”

                Just like that, she’s changed the subject and successfully avoided another detention. “Miss Cornell, listen to your friend. Then maybe you’d see some improvement in your grades.” He has a single gray eyebrow raised in the air. Hearing the snickers and the laughter from my classmates behind me, I just want to run over there and rip it off. If I were confident, even just a little bit feisty, I would. If this were a movie and I were the school’s resident bad b***h like Courtney Shayne, I would. But this isn’t a movie, and I’m not a badass. I’m Candice Cornell and I’m the shy girl that sits in the back of the classroom trying to avoid most forms of human interaction.

                This burning sensation in my cheeks " not a good sign. It means that I look as embarrassed as I feel. Shannon grits her teeth as she hurries away from the desk and grabs onto the strap of my backpack, hauling me off to the back of the classroom. She shoves me into one of the desks, the one with the attached green chair that’s not screwed in tightly enough to prevent that awful squeaking noise whenever you try to shift in your seat. Taking the red seat right beside me, she offers me a comforting smile as the bell rings. Mr. Thompson pulling the door closed immediately after.

                The classroom is laid out the way you’d expect. Five rows of five desks. The chalkboard occupies the entire front wall, the open tub of lost and found items coated with white powder beneath it in the center of the room. Thompson’s desk is off to the left, shaped like a large L to offer him maximum efficiency. That’s supposedly what they told him when they gave him the desk twenty years ago, but in all honesty we only ever hear him muttering about how he can never find anything.   

The jocks, dressed in either warn out Letterman Jackets or their favorite sports team’s jerseys, sit on the far left against the wall. Typical. Be as far away from the teacher as possible so you can crack inappropriate jokes and not get caught.

                          There was a cluster of intelligent kids gathered in the front row. Not exactly dressed like the typical geek, only one of them wore glasses, but more the ‘we’re relying on scholarships and our parents are strict’ intelligent type. They’re dressed up, not trying to fit in but certainly still concerned with their appearance much unlike myself. Khaki pants and collared shirts for the boys, three quarters buttoned up blouses and Maxie skirts for the girls.

                The art students are scattered throughout seats not occupied by the swimmers radiating the scent of chlorine or the burnouts who really didn’t want to be there at all.

                I guess I most closely resemble the burnouts. My lack of trying on my appearance and my slipping grades certainly makes me look the part. The only difference is that I want to be here. At least, it’s better than the alternative of being at home.

                “Alright, who wants to tell me where we left off?” Mr. Thompson is pacing the front of the classroom as the cream of the crop cluster shoots their hands into the air in unison. His black slacks are hovering over his brown dress shoes as he practically kicks his legs with each step. I can feel my stomach turning as he looks right past the row of hands belonging to eager faces. Crap. “Candice, where did we leave off?”

                You know that feeling when you’re frozen and fifty eyes are all looking in your direction just waiting for you to make a fool out of yourself? Recurring story of my life. “Uhm, we, uh…” I cast a sideways glance to Shannon, but she looks just as lost as I do. “We left off on Pearl Harbor.”

                “Yes we did!” He shouts. But his expression indicates that’s not the end of his sentence. “Two weeks ago.” That disappointed look on his face? Yeah. I’ve been seeing a lot of that lately. “Can someone please help out Miss Cornell?” There’s that damn row of hands at the front again. “Adam,” Thompson says as he finally selects someone to call on.

I never paid all that much attention to this guy. He’s a senior, not as much of a try hard as the rest. But he looks good - presentable. He looks presentable.

“World War II, The Pacific Theater,” Adam announces, his voice deeper than the rest of the class’s. After he says it, he looks over his shoulder at me. I don’t make direct eye contact, mainly because I expect him to be silently mocking me. I’ve got pretty decent peripheral vision, and I can see a sort of smile. Not like he’s laughing, just like a ‘don’t worry’ sort of friendly gesture.

Damn. There’s that fiery sensation in my cheeks again.

“The Pacific Theater!” Thompson repeats back to not only Adam but to the whole class. If megaphones hadn’t been invented, the world would be okay. You can just pay Jeff Thompson to make announcements for you. He certainly has impeccable projection.

I slump down into my squeaking seat, my hands pulled inside the baggy sleeves of my hoodie. It’s an odd way to gain comfort, but it’s what we introverts do. My arms cross over my chest and my legs stretch out in front of me with my left calf resting on my right shin.

 

Flashing lights. This is it. I’m on a stage, nothing but a microphone stand separating me from 20,000 people packed into an arena. I can see my brother sitting right there in the front row, giving me a thumbs up and a smile. More flashes. I’m going to be a magazine cover story. The piano begins playing as I part my lips, singing with perfect pitch into the microphone. “And I will always love you.” Those are the only words I have to sing to draw thunderous applause from the crowd.

               

“Candice,” that booming voice draws me out of my fantasy with a jolt. Regrettably, that little jolt makes the chair squeak, and all eyes are once again on me. “Interesting, don’t you think?”

                 I grit my teeth in an attempt to form some likeness of a smile. “Yes…”

                “Do you have any idea what I said, Miss Cornell?”

                “No…” I shake my head slowly as that all too familiar snickering echoes through the room again.

                “I didn’t think so,” Mr. Thompson scowls at me. “Try and keep your head in history and out of the future. Daydreaming won’t help you graduate.”

                The cheers ring out as the bell goes off. Already? I couldn’t have been daydreaming that long. The mad dash for the door is already underway, my peers looking more like a stampede than a group of students.

                “Why are they so excited? It’s just second period.”

                Shannon shakes her head as she laughs at me. “Dude, Homecoming Pep Rally.”

                Of course. How could I forget my two favorite things: Homecoming and pep? Please end my suffering now. Tranquilizer. Firing squad. Guillotine. Whichever works the fastest.

                “Stop that,” Shannon says. Even with her super cheery voice I can sense a slight undertone of frustration.

                “Stop what?” I say as if innocent of all pessimistic wrongdoing.

                “Stop frowning. Seriously. I’m about to super glue the corners of your lips to your ears so you have no choice but to smile.”

                My face scrunches up into a look of pure disgust. “Well that just sounds awful.”

                “Then freaking smile!” There goes that eye-roll again. And she’s off. Walking away with her skirt drooping just a little too low.

                My turn for the eye-rolling. That might be one thing that I’m better at than her. What? A girl’s got to start somewhere. “Hey, wait up!”

 

Reviews

[Lalochezia]

I like your style; it sounds natural but sometimes you use above-average expressions such as 'what she was referencing' or funny remarks like 'yet to discover the deodorant aisle'.

The difference between cranky Candice and perky Shannon is obvious; you did a good job there, and I can really relate to Candice's awkwardness and her wish for invisibility.

Contents-wise nothing to criticize, only one question out of curiosity: Is high school society truly this heterogenous and split up into all these groups? It is portrayed thus in most movies but do you agree?

[Mark Alexander Boehm]

There is a reason for Candice's inconsistency as a narrator, in terms of her intellect and choice of words. Just hasn't been fully explored yet! I may tone it down slightly so it's not as drastic, though. Thank you!

I attended a Catholic high school from 2009-2013 and the sort of "status quo" and division was almost non-existent, but Candice is in a public high school in 1999. I'm sure every school is different, but this is certainly the common vision television and novels like to go to. The cliques aren't as quintessential to the story as Candice being an outsider or a 'loner' is.

Much appreciated!

[Lalochezia]

No toning down needed; her utterances do not sound inconsistent! I merely meant to say that her occasional choice of words bespeaks her intellect.

[Cyndy Robinson]

Very well written second chapter. Good characterizations. For the red pen, typo on This burning sensation in my cheeks"not. Quotation mark should not be there. Well written.

[Mark Alexander Boehm]

Thank you very much. I've actually noticed stray quotation marks a few times. For whatever reason when I copy and paste from Microsoft Word to Writer's Cafe, they replace (-) with a quotation mark. Helpful hint to any site user!

[Cyndy Robinson]

That is a helpful hint, I will have to watch for that.