Chapter 1

A Chapter by E. Kang

The school bell rang, signifying the end of the day. Reyna Kal gathered her things and walked out of the classroom to her locker. She put her things away and got the homework from other classes out and put them in her bag. Reyna was closing her locker when she spotted her best friend Tae Lorent.

Tae is Korean, despite his American-sounding last name. He is handsome, and is often mistaken to be 17 years old by many strangers, even though he is only 14. Reyna often teased him of his young age, but Tae would retort that Reyna was only one year older than him. She is 15, a sophomore while he is a mere freshman. Tae would go on to tease her about her height, always comparing his 5'10" to her 5'2". Reyna would then shoot back that he has ugly brown, chinky eyes, while she has large, beautiful silver eyes. Tae would usually gesture at her long hair, which went all the way to her lower back, and call her a mermaid. In his exact words, "what kind of normal human being has hair that long and eyes that color? You've got to be a mermaid, Rey."

Reyna punched him every time he called her that, but of course Tae never felt a thing. Reyna liked being called a mermaid because it made her feel unique in the identical crowd of tan, rich San Diego kids.

"Tae!" she called out. Tae looked up, along with several other boys walking through the hallway. Rey only had eyes for her best friend, and bounded over to Tae.

"You know how to pronounce my name, right?" asked Tae.

"Of course," said Reyna.

"Then why did you just pronounce it 'Tay' instead of 'Teh'?"

"Only to annoy you, sweetie," was Reyna's distracted reply. She wanted to get out of school and head over to Infinity Books, where she spent most of her time. Reyna loved Infinity Books because not a single soul from Westview High School had ever set foot in the book store. They were always too busy emptying their parents' credit cards to have time for books. There were several more reasons why Reyna loved Infinity Books, an obvious reason being that she loved to read. Infinity Books has an amazing cafe that serves food that is fit for a king. Reyna is such a regular customer, spending all her afternoons there as well as buying books every day, that the manager of the store lets her have anything she wants from the cafe. It is basically an all-you-can-eat buffet for Reyna.

"Tae, I need to get to Infinity Books right now to--"

"Yeah, yeah, 'to eat their blueberry cobbler, or else you'll eat me instead'. I don't feel like being eaten today so let's go," said Tae, rolling his eyes.

"Oh, today must be so inconvenient for you to get eaten. Let me push back your appointment," smiled Reyna.

"Wow, you're so considerate," said Tae, also smiling. They had reached Reyna's Lexus Hybrid.

"Hey, is your brother working at Infinity today?" asked Reyna hopefully. Reyna was in love with Tae's older brother, Trevor. Trevor was perfect in Reyna's eyes. They had spent the previous summer getting to know each other more, since they had lived across the street from each other for over fourteen years. After two and a half months of seeing one another every single day for 13 hours each day, Reyna had fallen in love with the perfect, incredibly hot 16 year old who happened to see her only as a friend. Trevor had had feelings for her at one point, but as far as Reyna knew, those feelings had ended with the summer.

Tae squelched the unpleasant feeling that had risen from the depth of his heart. His heart sank like it always did when Reyna mentioned his brother, but Tae did his best to ignore his anger.

"No, he's got soccer practice, and then tennis right after," said Tae, keeping his voice as cheerful as he could. He was head over heels for Reyna, which was such a cliche that all best friends of the opposite gender seemed to go through. Tae hated that his summer had been full of hip-hop/b-boy camp. If camp hadn't been all summer long, maybe Reyna wouldn't have had any opportunity to fall in love with his brother.

"Oh," said Reyna, clearly disappointed. Tae wondered if she even realized how he felt when she was around him. How he felt when she smiled, laughed, or even when she tried to punch him. She was so caught up in Trevor that she probably wouldn't care even if she knew.

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© 2011 E. Kang

Author's Note

if there are ANY spelling or grammatical errors, i'm sorry. i've been watching the deathly hallows red carpet premiere, so i was going back and forth between the premiere and this.