A Change in the Weather- Chapter 1: Welcome to Hell

I took a deep breath.  Hmm, let’s see, high-end clothing brands, sickly sweet perfume, adrenaline, and humiliation.  High school smelled pretty disgusting, but, I’d braved one year of it.  Only three more to go.  Being a sophmore was pretty cool, though.  Too bad I knew no one! I’d just moved to Phoenix from Dallas, Texas.  I was already used to the south, but Phoenix was different.  Though it was a lot hotter than Dallas had ever been, there was something else I just couldn’t put my finger on that gave me a very uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach.  As I walked through the doors of Arcadia High School, I received a great number of stares, some of which weren’t exactly friendly.  Of course, they were from the popular girls.  Expected.  It didn’t matter to me, though.  As long as I made it through one day, I would be satisfied.

I had been placed in all of the honors classes, for which my mother was extremely proud.  As for my father, I couldn’t say.  He abandoned my family when I was merely a baby, and told my mother he wasn’t ready to be a father.  That was fine with us, because we didn’t need him in our lives.  We’ve been just fine without him.  As I made my way to my first class of the morning, I tried to banish all possible thoughts and memories I had of my father and focus on school.  When I entered the classroom, all eyes were on me.  I couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or bad thing.  What were they staring at?  My bright green eyes?  My astonishing height of 5’10”?  I could feel my face burn with embarassment, and I quickly went to the back of the classroom and took a seat.  I could hear a ripple of snickers slowly make its way across the room, and fell silent.  So far, this year wasn’t off to such a great start.  Just then, the teacher walked into the room.  “Good morning class,” she sang out.  Her voice was beautiful; like that of a thousand choirs of angels, put into one single voice.  She then introduced herself as Ms. Roberts.  My new English teacher.  From what I could tell, she was around twenty.  According to the other tenth grade guys in our class, she was something to look at.  Not that I could disagree; she WAS very pretty.  She possessed a very slender figure, however she was also much shorter than me.  Like me, she had bright green eyes, though her hair was a lighter brown with blonde highlights.  Not that physical appearance mattered much though.  Inner beauty mattered more in my eyes.  Her class was probably very interesting, but I didn’t listen the entire time.  A benefit of sitting in the back seats was that most of the time, you couldn’t get busted for not paying attention.  No sooner had I sat down, than had the bell rung to mark the end of class.

As I packed up my things and got ready to leave for my next class, I felt a sharp blow to my lower back and before I knew what had happened, I ended up on the floor of the room.  I looked up to see three girls; likely from the popular group.  Their perfectly curled hair, perfectly done nails, and fake yet convincing smiles said it all.  “Oh, I’m SO sorry Angela,” one of them said, and offered me a hand to help me up.  Foolish me; I took the hand, only to have her humiliate me furthur and    push me back down.  The few remaining students in the classroom began to laugh raucously.  I stood up, glared at them, and left the room.  Of course, the new girl is always the target of immature pranks.  My cheeks were flushed and my hair was coming out of the fishtail braid I had put in it that morning.  I probably looked pretty lost and confused too. It didn’t matter, though.  Not to any of the surrounding students, not to the faculty, so why should it have mattered to me?  Things weren’t going to magically change within the next few minutes, the next days, months, or even years.  Just like in Dallas, I would remain the loner.  But, I liked it that way.

My next class was world history, nothing exciting.  Right when I was about to enter the room, the same girl tripped me again.  I was officially a certifiable walking disaster.  As if things weren’t bad enough, I fell on another boy standing outside the door.  We both fell, and bumped heads.  Great.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry!” I said breathlessly.  Our eyes met.  Suddenly, everyone else in the hallway disappeared.  All I saw was the boy.  He had deep brown eyes, which I easily could’ve gotten lost in.  His hair was black and tousled, yet he still managed to have a clean cut look about him.  And he was most definitely fit.  His smile….well, that was a smile straight from Heaven.  No one else in the universe could have copied that smile.

“Hey, it’s totally okay,” he said, grinning at me.  I melted.

“I’m Angela,” I squeaked out, trying to keep my cool.  “I just moved here from Dallas.”

“Jason….my name is Jason,” he replied.  He seemed to be at a loss for words, but I was unsure of the cause.  “Do you need someone to show you around?”

“Um, I’m fine thanks, but I’ll see you around okay?” I told him.  I didn’t want to leave him.  Damn the bell that had just sounded, signaling the start of second period.

“Yeah, that’d be cool.  Later, Ang!” he called as he walked down the hall in the opposite direction. 

Ang.  He was already calling me Ang.