Unnamed

My name is Kara. I’ve been homeschooled for all of my life, and today just happens to be my first day at a real high school. My parents think that they’re helping, but they’re really just adding more stress to my  situation. Ever since I knew I was soon going to be at a real school and not homeschooled, it’s been hard to cope with anxiety and stress.

“Here’s my phone number if you need it,” my mother says to me.

“Here’s your lunch,” my dad says with care.

I step in the car, my mom driving and my dad in the front seat. The drive is about five minutes from my house to the school. When we arrive at the school, I nervously step out of the car.

“Be safe,” Dad tells me.

“Call me if you get too nervous,” my mother says.

I give my parents a look that was a mix between, “Please help me,” and, “I don’t want to be here right now.” They didn’t seem to notice, evidently shown by them giving me a look that only said, “Close the door, we have to go to work.”

So I anxiously slammed the car door and waved to my parents from outside the car, but they drove away so fast, the couldn’t see. Felt almost as if they didn’t care.

As I was walking towards the entry of the high school, I found myself dodging sweaty teens from left and right. It seems like the kids here are merciless, like wild animals in a zoo, where all the cages have been opened.

I finally made it into the high school, already worn out from all of the pushing and shoving from outside. The paper that I examined (several times) before leaving the house said that my first class was in room 146. Math class. I open the door and am surprised to see approximately 30 students, all yelling and throwing any object that was in the reach of 3 feet. I looked around to see if there were any seats left. I take a seat, front row and center. The girl who was sitting behind me shook her head.

“Wouldn’t recommend sitting there. Splash zone. Ms. Carina spits a lot,” she says. She spoke as if she had already said that to another new student.

I took her words of advice, got up, and tried finding a new seat. It was tough. It looks like the kids have taken up most of the real estate here. So, I was glad (but kind of worried) to see a new seat open up next to the girl that had given me advice on where to sit. I sat down next to her.

“That’s a pretty good seat,” she told me.

A couple minutes after I sat down, the teacher walked into the room.

“Good morning class. It looks like we have a new student. Her name is Kara.”

She pronounced it wrong. She said “care-uh” when it’s really pronounced “kar- uh.”

“Uhm, actually it’s-” (I tried speaking. It didn’t work)

I was so nervous all of first period, I basically blanked. The bell rang, and it was time for second period. I had remembered what class I had next, just not the room number. I decided to ask the girl next to me.

“Hey, uh, where’s French class?” I asked. The girl looked at the boy next to her, who seemed to be her friend. They whispered something to each other that I couldn’t hear.

“It’s in the second building,” they both said in a nervous tone. After they had said that, they both looked at me like everything was okay. I was still confused on where that class was, though.

“Where’s the second building?” I asked.

“We’ll show you,” the girl said, grabbing my hand and leading me out the classroom door. Her friend followed us.

She led me out of the building hurriedly, as we passed several groups of teenagers huddled up by their lockers. I examined everything that was around me as we ran out of the building. The teenagers seemed miserable, and there were groups of girls with long hair and extremely short shorts. There were groups of teens with dark clothes and lots of eye makeup, all of them listening to some sort of loud rock music. There were the stereotypical sports jocks. Each group seemed to look different. My only problem was that I didn’t know where I fit in.

After we passed everyone in the hall, we came to the end where there was a door that led to a field. The girl and her friend led me out to the field, where they found a shady place to sit. I looked at them, even more confused.

“This doesn’t look like the second building,” I claimed.

“It isn’t,” the girl told me.

“French class is boring anyway. The only good part about that class is watching the teacher sneak baguettes into his desk,” the boy said.

“What’s your name again? Karen? Kara?” the girl asked, pronouncing both names incorrectly.

“Actually it’s-”

“I’m calling you Kara. I know, I’m pronouncing it wrong, but.. It’s easier. I’m Jenna, and this is my friend Colten,” Jenna said.

Colten suddenly looked like he had seen a ghost. I turned around and looked in the direction he was looking in.

What I saw wasn’t shocking. It was a group of girls with extremely tight clothes. What was shocking was the way that Colten and Jenna described them.

“They’re evil,” Jenna said, squinting her eyes, as if it would let her see a better side in them.

“They’ll ruin you,” Colten said with anger, but hope in his eyes that maybe they weren’t that bad of people.

“They’re the Plastics,” they both said in unison. The hope faded from their eyes.

“They’re the most loved and hated people in the school,” Jenna said.

“You never want to get on their bad side,” Colten whispered to me and then tried hiding, as he saw the girls walk a couple steps towards us. I don’t know why it was such a big deal, because they were literally across the field and didn’t even see us sitting where we were.

“That one, with the shoulder length brown hair, that’s Heather Dean. No one really knows how she ended up as a Plastic. She kind of just cracked one day, and started hanging out with them,” Jenna said. “And that one with the short, curly hair, is Jane Duke. I don’t think she’s very intelligent. She fits right in,” she continued, “And the tall one, with that (extremely iconic) pixie cut, is Elise Chandler, the all mighty. Everyone pronounces her name wrong, too. And us... we just do it on purpose. Those girls are truly, and amazingly… nothing special,” she said.

I had never heard such detailed things about a specific group of people. And I never knew that a group of young ladies could look so miserable and unintelligent. The more I looked at them, the more it looked like they hated themselves.

“They’re pretty rude,” Jenna said. “They float above everything. Drama, fights, you get it. But they’ve also done stuff to us. We’ve gotten used to it.”

“Anyway, enough talk about them. Where’re you coming from, Kara? Why’d you move?” Colten asked. I wonder if he wants an extremely detailed answer or just something simple. I tried being as accurate as I could.

“I came from France. I was born here, but we moved to France when I was about six because my mom had a job offer there. Then we moved back this year, and now I’m stuck here. It’s hard to explain,” I said.

“France? Do you speak French?” Colten asked.

“Yeah, I do,” I said.

“Say that in French then,” Jenna said.

“Oui mes amis, je parle françias,” I said as accurately as I could. It means, ‘Yes my friends, I speak French.’ They applauded, with smiles on their faces. Jenna said something else in French, but I hadn’t learned those words yet. The only word I could understand was ‘ami,’ which meant ‘friend.’

“Si tu vas être notre ami, tu dois aimer les mèmes,” she said, with emphasis on the ‘memes’ part. I understood that well, as I had learned that word just for the purpose of saying ‘memes’ in French. I’m guessing that she said, ‘If you wanna be our friend, you have to know memes,’ but my French is a little off anyway. I could’ve been wrong, but I gave her an answer that I thought was correct. I said, “Je connais beaucoup de mèmes,” which means ‘I know many memes.’ She smiled, and then shook my hand.

“Welcome to the club,” she said. Colten shook my hand as well. “Colten here is learning French too,” she continued, “We would’ve all been in your French class for second period, but we skip every Monday,” she said. It was nice to know that my friends were in at least two of my classes. I hoped that those weren’t the only two classes that we all had together. With my luck, I’ll probably end up with one of the plastics in my class.

It’s Saturday Morning. The week is over. (Hello) weekend. Brief summary of my first week: I never thought school would be so.. describe>(bleugh). I gave Jenna and Colten my number, and got their numbers as well.

I heard my phone ringing and rolled over on my bed to grab it. It was Colten calling me. I picked up the call.

“Hello, this is Kara,” I stated nervously.

“Hey Kara, it’s Colte-” He was cut off by someone, it sounded like Jenna.

“hEYYYYy karAA!!1!” Yep. It was Jenna.

“Hi Jenna,” I said. “Whats going on?”

“Nothin’. We’re just kind of eager to hang out. We wanted to discuss something,” Jenna said.

“Can’t we just talk about it over phone? I don’t want to get up, really. The first week of school has kind of exhausted me,” I said with an exaggerated tired tone.

“No. Let’s go out somewhere. All three of us. Let’s go get breakfast or something. Colten can drive us,” Jenna said.

“I’m too (tired) to drive..” Colten said in an equally exaggerated tired tone, mocking me. We all laughed. “Jenna and I will pick you up. Where do you live?”

“214 Arche St. I’ll get ready to go right now,” I said.

“Alright, see ya when we get there,” Colten said.

I got ready in a quick five minutes. I heard a car pull up in front of the house. I look out the window to see Colten stepping out of the car and Jenna sleeping in the backseat. I opened the door for Colten.

“Hi Kara, you should probably tell your parents that you’re leaving, (if you haven’t already).”

“They don’t really care. Let’s go,” I said.

Colten opened the passenger door for me and I hopped in the car. I started to smirk as I noticed several air horns hanging out of the glove compartment. Colten and each other looked at each other with smirks on our face, checked to see if Jenna was still sleeping, and then grabbed two air horns each. I couldn’t help but chuckle a little bit, but Colten hushed me and then quietly started to count down from three.

Three.

Two.

One.

Jenna didn’t really yell, which was kind of sad, but you should’ve seen her face! Man, I was upset about not getting a photo of that. She was all wide-eyed and confused. It was fun while it lasted, but then she started yelling at us. After that whole fiasco, Colten started to drive to an iHop that was about five minutes from my house. When we finally got there, we sat at a table, ordered out food, and started talking.

“So you guys said that you wanted to discuss something with me,” I said.

“Ohh right.. Which one of us should be the one to tell her, Jenna?” Colten asked her.

“You,” Jenna said while chugging containers of all sorts of syrups.

“Ok. Don’t take this the wrong way, we’re not trying to use you or make you suffer. We’d like to ask you for a favor,” Colten said. He looked at Jenna concerned. She didn’t notice, because now she started mixing the syrups together and drinking them like shots. “We’d appreciate it if you could hang out with the Plastics for a while. If you don’t want to, that’s ok, we just want information. Power. Power that we could share together or something.. I don’t know, it’s stupid. But you seem like the perfect person for the job. They’re always nicer to more beautiful girls. Plus, they don’t know you that well because you’re new, so you can make a false impression and then they’ll know you as some basic, miserable girl.

I don’t want to be with them. I want their power. To not be bugged or harassed, to be left alone for once. You know how Jenna said that they ‘did stuff to us’? They bully us, Kara. Elsie told everyone that Jenna was gay, Estelle took me into the girls’ bathroom and wrote “Loser” on my forehead with leftover crap in a toilet that didn’t flush. Then she brought Jenna in and dunked her head in a toilet, while her two little goons stood there laughing. Kara, they don’t know you. We don’t want it to seem like we’re using you. From the five days that we’ve known you, you act like the kind of person that would love to get revenge. If you hang out with them, you’ll see how bad they really are!”

Colten looked helpless, as did Jenna. It’s interesting how people can ask you for such a difficult favor. I know I knew these kids for only five days, but the fact that they can trust me with this information and that they’re so nice.. I’d feel bad if I didn’t do this for them. And plus, how bad could they be anyway?

I looked at Jenna and Colten. They were staring at me intensely. I agreed to try out their little ‘experiment’.

“Promise you won’t turn on us?” Jenna asked.

“Or that you won’t tell them that this is all our plan?” Colten added.

“I promise. You guys are my best friends, I wouldn’t betray you. You two made my first five days of school a little less than hell. I’d also like to be in charge of something for once, see how this school runs on the inside. My only concern is how I’d pull it off,” I said.

“You’d just.. Act like them. Say things like ‘That’s so.. Very!’ or ‘OMG! That’s so FETCH!’” Jenna said. We all laughed after she said ‘Fetch’. I knew that this plan would be tricky. I had hope in myself that I’d be able to do this.

We finished breakfast and headed towards a shopping mall. When we got there, Colten started spewing out words that I could barely comprehend at the time because he was so nice.

“Ok Kara. Time to fix up your closet with low collared shirts and short skirts. Don’t worry about the money, I’ve got you covered. I forgot to tell you, but I work part time as a waiter at the burger joint just down the street from school. I already got my paycheck, so we have about $300 to spend right now. We’ll go to the cheap (but fancy) stores first and look for some flashy clothes.”

I looked at him, shocked. No one besides my parents have done something this nice for me before. (It’s kind of sad). I hugged Colten and we started walking to the Forever 21 that was on the other side of the mall. When we walked in, it felt like every girl on social media packed into one store. The air smelled of strong cologne and cotton-candy-like perfume. It became more and more difficult for me to breathe. Jenna could see me struggling to grasp a breath of air. Colten was laughing because he thought it was a joke, but it really wasn’t. If the plastics wear this much perfume, I don’t know how I’m gonna survive!

“Here Kara, take a cough drop. Whenever I feel like I can’t breathe I just take one of these and it fixes me right up,” Jenna said, handing me a cherry flavored cough drop that she pulled out of her pocket.

I popped the cough drop into my mouth. After a few minutes of walking around, the cough drop had set in and I could breathe a little bit better. I’m going to need several bags of cough drops before Monday, and I need a good place to store them on me.

“Look at this dress,” Colten yelled from across the store, holding up a light blue, sleeveless, short cut dress. He motioned for me to go and look through the clothes he had looked through, but Jenna grabbed my arm and pulled me away.

She dragged me through half of the store until she stopped and turned me around.

Jenna had dragged me to the lingerie section.

She looked at me dead in the eye, her face stern and serious.

(and then bursted out with laughter)

“Kara! I’m just kidding. The stuff that’s on sale is right there, we don’t wanna spend too much today. Colten works hard enough for his money, I think we should save some for him,” She said as she pointed towards a small area with several racks marked, “CLEARANCE!!”

I looked through the clothes that were on sale and found several shirts that looked like what the girls at my school would generally wear. I felt super bad afterwards though, because the cost of all of it was around $200, which only left Colten with $100, and assuming he payed for breakfast, left him with $60.

“Colten I can pitch in for the cost if you want, I’d hate to have you pay for all of this,” I said.

“Yeah, let Kara pitch in. I’m broke sorry lol,” Jenna said.

“No, none of that is really necessary. I feel like we pressured you into

(Not relevant to the story line ?? transitions too quickly from school to murder)

It’s Friday afternoon. Schools’ over for the week. The days passed by pretty quickly. Every day I talked more and more to Jenna and Colten, and they seemed to not be bothered by me. They genuinely seemed happy around me, which made me happy too. I ended up with one of the plastics in my 3rd period science class. I’m pretty sure it was Elsie, because the only thing I can remember the teacher saying in that class was, “Elsie, pull up your shirt,” about 50 times. All she would do was pull her shirt down more, distracting half of the class. She was pretty annoying, and I could see why she was the leader of her clique. She was a bossy girl, one who thinks that everything will go her way if she just takes charge. I saw her spit on someone’s paper, and then yell, “Stop cheating, nerd!” They weren’t looking at her paper. Her shirt was just really low.

My fourth period class was language arts. My teacher told me that I was doing extremely well in that class for my first week, and that she might just move me into a more challenging language arts class.

The students at my new school seem nice. Sometimes some of them are almost too good to be true, like Jesse Anderson in my American History class. He’s a nice kid. He’s super polite, really funny and really cute. Everyone seems to think he’s pretty shady, but he’s not that bad once you get to know him. He gave me his number and asked me to call him if I was free this weekend. I said, “I’ll be sure to.”

I walked out of my room and into the living room to ask my dad if I was free.

“Hey, dad, what do we have planned this weekend?” I asked.

“Nothing, not unless you wanna go somewhere or do something,” he said. I didn’t have anything planned, and I didn’t really want to do anything. The only thing I really wanted to do was get to know Jesse a little more.

“Do you mind if I hang out with a friend? I kind of promised to meet them downtown either today or tomorrow,” I said. My dad looked at me weirdly. He seemed concerned.

“Who is this.. Friend of yours? You’ve only been at this school for a week, are you sure you really know this kid well enough to be hanging out with them? Unsupervised?” He asked.

“Dad, I’m 16, I should be old enough to make that decision by myself. If anything bad happens, I’ll text you. I’ll be ok. And this is a friend from my American History class who I met on Tuesday. So what day works best for you?” I asked, nervously.

“Kara, I told you, we don’t have plans this weekend. Whichever day works best for you I guess. Just be careful, and text your mom or I if you need anything?”

“I will,” I replied. I sped through the house and back to my room. I grabbed my phone and looked in my backpack for the paper with Jesse’s number on it. When I found his number, I entered each digit (very precisely) into my phone. I sent a text saying, “I’m free tomorrow if you wanna meet somewhere.”

It took him five minutes to respond. I counted.

“We can meet downtown tomorrow at 3, maybe grab a snack while were down there, if that’s ok with you,” he said.

   “Sounds good,” I said. “See you tomorrow.”

If I had to be honest, I was certainly more scared than excited.

   

I woke up the next morning, very anxious. I set an alarm for 2:15 so that I could get ready half an hour before I start to walk downtown. After many hours of laying in my bed and binge watching Bates Motel, my alarm went off. Time flies by when you’re (not) having fun.

I threw on a little-less-than-trashy shirt, combed my hair, brushed my teeth, and put on my shoes. By the time I was done with all of that, it was 2:45 and I was ready to walk out the door. My parents were gone for the day, but they knew I was going to be out. I took the keys from the table and rushed out the door. I’m pretty sure I forgot to lock it.

Jesse and I planned to meet at a small cafe on the corner of Main St. and Hamilton St. I ran the whole way because I was stuck at a crosswalk for five minutes waiting for someone to make a left turn.

I finally got to the coffee shop and was relieved to see Jesse already sitting at a table.  

“Hey Jesse,” I said nervously. He smiled back and waved.

“Greetings and salutations,” He said with raised eyebrows. I sat down in the seat across from him.

“So, how’s the first week treating you? You like it here, or do you kind of want to kill everyone who thinks they’re better?”

“I haven’t really seen school like that, yet. I mean, I do get annoyed with some of the girls-”

“The plastics?”

“Yes.. Uhm, Elsie, who is in my 3rd period s-”

“Science class, yeah I see you around there. Uh, Elsie, right. She’s quite a handful. Only the lowest collared shirts belong in her closet. That’s not the only thing that bugs me, in fact, that doesn’t really bug people, it’s just one of the only reasons people like being around her. It’s sad. Anyway, she goes out of her way to make a fool of people. She’s difficult,” He said. He continued with his rambling. “Then there’s Zachary and Justin. They’re awfully rude, and they look pretty intimidating. They are the (smartest) guys on the football team. It’s almost like being the tallest dwarf,” he said with sarcasm.

“I think that one of them is in my class. Really broad structure, always wearing a letterman jacket?”

“There’s a lot of guys who look like that, you’re gonna have to be more specific. Zachary is in your French class, Justin isn’t in any of your classes. You’re good to go, for now. Just be careful who you associate with. I kind of want to kill half of the people at the school, if you know what I mean,” he said, staring blankly at the centerpiece on our table.

“Yeah, the people at school are kind of.. meh. I get your point, but I don’t really see a need for violence. And plus, I don’t want to be sent to prison at the age of 16. And when you kill someone, you’re taking their life away from them. Everyone is crappy in high school, but it doesn’t mean they have to be punished so severely. Let alone take their life from them,” I said, nervously starting at the centerpiece to see what Jesse found so interesting about it. I know I’ve only known him for five days, but I feel a strong connection with him and I don’t want murder to get in the way of us.

“Look, Kara, it feels like the feeling is mutual here. I like you, and I want to keep talking and hanging out with you. But trust me, with your life, that I have been here longer than you have, and I know that it gets worse each year. Why should we deal with three more years of this bullcrap when we can easily end it?” He asked. His eyes were getting watery, and I immediately started to feel bad. I don’t really know why though, because we were fighting over whether or not to murder a few high school kids.

“I’m not discussing this anymore. I’m not killing anyone.” I said. I didn’t know what to say after that, but Jesse acknowledged that I was upset and offered to walk me home. I let him walk me home, which was extremely silent and awkward. When we got to my house, I thanked Jesse for walking me home. He walked halfway back to the sidewalk before he turned around and yelled my name.

“Kara?” he yelled.

I turned around and squinted my eyes to block out the sunlight behind him. I threw my hands by my sides and said, “What’s there to say?”

There was an awkward pause. He looked at the cement like it was about to kill him. The last three words he said to me before he headed towards his house made me wary.

“Think about it.”

   I couldn’t tell Jenna about this. I couldn’t tell Colten. I can’t tell my parents, or they’d kill me (even before I got to kill anyone). I’m in a tight situation here. I really do like Jesse, and he was right, I do want to keep talking and hanging out with him. Just not stuff about murder. It’s not right. His state of mind is wrong. Could I fix him? Do I need to fix myself? Whose view of the world is better?

Reviews

[Niketh]

Wow great book. Can wait to see the rest!

[Fish]

This book is good like that dat boi art project you did. Keep writing and dont screw up!