Chapter 1

I dropped my books on the floor, reaching up and slowly turning the dial to my combination lock. I didn’t want to be the first one at our lunch table, since it was the first day of school. I didn’t want to seem like a loner on my first day of sophomore year.

Suddenly I felt someone run into me. I was thrown against my locker, scraping my elbow on the corner of the locker door.

“What the hell?” I heard a voice say. I tensed up. Why did I have to go to a school where there was swearing inserted into every sentence? “Oh, sorry,” the voice said, turning to me. I turned to face whoever had run into me. “Sorry, that was my friend, John. Are you okay?” He glared at his friend. His friend just grinned.

“I’m fine,” I said, blushing. He was cute. He has long brown hair, although not long enough that it got in his eyes-his beautiful chocolate brown eyes. Usually I didn’t like brown eyes; they were too plain. But his were… deep. He was about a head taller than me, which wasn’t a surprise since I was only 5’1’’. Yeah, I was short. I held out my hand, saying, “I’m Faye. Nice to meet you.”

“Ben,” he said, shaking my hand. “It’s nice to meet you, too.”

I smiled at him and turned to my locker again. When I finished putting my books in and getting my lunch, I began to walk to the lunch room. I kept thinking about Ben. I wondered if I would see him again. I hoped I would; he seemed really nice, besides the swearing.

I got to the lunch room, found my friends, and threw my lunch down on the table. I must’ve still been smiling, because my best friend, Grace, asked, “Why are you smiling? You run into a cute guy?”

“Something like that,” I said, sliding into the seat. “He actually ran into me. Do you know anyone named Ben? With brown hair and eyes, and about 5’10’’?”

“Yeah, he was in my art class last year,” my friend June replied.

“That’s weird. Why don’t I know him?” I asked. Most of the people in our school had been there since the beginning of middle school. You knew most everybody’s name.

“He was new last year. He came from that Catholic school that only goes up to 8th grade,” Grace said.

“He’s really cute,” I said, biting into my sandwich. “I wonder if he’s in any of my classes. He wasn’t in my first two classes, but those were electives. Maybe he’s in my core classes.”

In most cases, if you were in all honors, like my friends and I were, you had all of your core classes together if you were on the same ‘team’. I was on a different team than all of my friends, though, so I didn’t know many people in my classes, considering I tended to stick with a tight group of friends, plus I was pretty shy.

“You know, I heard that he took Algebra 2 last year, just like you,” my other friend, Ana, said.

“Then why wasn’t he in my class?” I asked. In 6th grade, I had taken a test to see if I was smart enough when it came to math to be able to skip 2 years of pre-algebra and go straight to Algebra 1. I was, so I took Algebra 1 in 7th grade, Geometry in 8th grade, and Algebra 2 my freshman year. This year I was going to be taking Calculus with the juniors who were taking honors classes. All in all, it was pretty confusing. There were 3 other guys who had taken all these same classes with me, and we were good friends, considering we had been in all of each other’s classes since we met in 6th grade, our first year of middle school. Ben hadn’t been in our class last year.

“I don’t know. I think his mom had him taking some online classes, though. Like, he half went to school here, but half didn’t. I’m not really sure, though,” Grace replied.

“Well, maybe he’s going to school here full time now. I certainly hope so. He seemed nice. And if he went to a Catholic school, that means he believes in God, right?” I asked hopefully. I was a very strong Christian, and had grown up hearing that you should only get close to and be good friends with people that you knew believed in God. I had a strict policy that I would only date practicing Christians/Catholics. At that point, I didn’t think it mattered whether or not you were a Christian or a Catholic, as long as you believed in God.

“I sure hope so. Can you imagine going to a Catholic school for 8 years and not believing anything they taught you?” Grace asked, looking concerned.

“Kind of like going here,” I replied, disgusted. I had been voicing my opinion on public school since 8th grade when we first learned about geology. I thought it was kind of hypocritical that in Science class we were told that teachers weren’t allowed to teach a certain religion (which I understood), but then we were told that we evolved from monkeys and the Earth was created in a Big Bang (which I did not understand). Wasn’t that basically teaching us that Atheism was right? I knew that was science, and it wasn’t directly teaching us to be atheists, but wasn’t it influencing people to believe what they had been taught and, as a result of this, become Atheists?

I had never voiced this opinion in class, obviously, because I was not bold at all and I didn’t like getting into arguments over religion. So I only voiced this to my friends, who were all Christians, and made sure no one else heard me.

My friends rolled their eyes at my comment. They had heard me say this many times, and were tired of hearing it. They agreed with me, although they thought I focused too much on it. Maybe I did.

Of course, that wasn’t the only reason I didn’t like my school. It was also because of the amount of swearing I heard on a daily basis, the number of perverts, and the number of s***s in skin-tight jeans and very low cut shirts with no undershirt. Basically, everything that could lead a Christian astray from what was right. Sure, I accidentally let a few cuss words slip sometimes, and I wore skinny jeans and low-cut shirts, but I always wore a modest undershirt and made sure my jeans fit well and weren’t completely molded to my skin. And the swearing was completely accidental. It came along with hearing it everywhere I went.

When lunch was over, I walked back to my locker, alone. My friends’ lockers and all of their classes were on the other side of the building. When I got to my locker, Ben was there again, talking with John. John was also standing in front of my locker.

“Excuse me,” I said. John didn’t hear me, because my voice was naturally quiet. I got that from my mom. I said it again, louder. John heard me this time, and jumped. I had scared him. “Thanks,” I said, laughing.

“You’re welcome,” John said, gripping his chest. “You almost gave me a heart attack!” He turned to look at Ben, then back at me. “You know, at lunch Ben was talking about how cute you are. He likes your shortness.”

I blushed and looked at Ben. He was also red-faced. “I don’t like my height, I’m glad you do,” I said, smiling, and walked toward my next class. My faced burned red. He thinks I’m cute! Me! The little Christian girl! I can’t believe it! I also can’t believe I said that to him. Where’d the shy version of me go?

When I reached my Calculus class, I found the few people I knew, my “Math Buddies”, as we liked to call ourselves. Yeah, we were kind of dorks. I went to sit by Graham, Chris, Michael, and Paul, who were already camped out in the back row. Sadly, the desks were in rows of four, with an aisle and then another row of four, so I had to sit by myself in the aisle seat. I smiled at them, and sat down at said seat. I focused my attention on getting my notebook out of my pile of books. I took a lot of notes, and had been doing so since I took Algebra 1. The guys liked to make fun of me for this, but I was okay with it. I usually did considerably better than them on midterms and finals. It was a wonder they were still in such advanced classes with me.

Suddenly, I saw someone set their books down beside me. I looked away from writing the date on the top of my paper and drew my eyes up to the person standing to my left. I gasped. It was Ben.

Author's Note

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