“Mom!” I called desperately, running down the stairs like the house was on fire.

“MOM! COME QUICK!”

This was an emergency! A full blown, traumatic emergency! I didn’t think I’d survive another second if she didn’t come right away!

Okay…so, I admit it. Sometimes people would tell me that I’m too loud. Alright, alright, and over-dramatic too. Well, I didn’t think so. I was using the perfect amount of loudness and dramatization. Anyone who argued with me will be haunted by my ghost for eternity.

Er…ignore that.

Anyway, I’m telling you that this time, it really is an emergency!

I ran down the stairs, out of breath. My mom had her earbuds in, humming a tune while vacuuming the tiny, invisible dust specks off the shiny floor. I didn’t feel like mentioning to her that she just vacuumed last night, right before we went to bed. She was very particular about a clean house.

“Mom!” I cried, shaking her shoulders. She looked down at me and popped an earbud out, her face full of concern. Switching off the vacuum with a faint click, she studied my face with her bright hazel eyes.

My mother sure was the image of beauty. Her hair was flowing and soft like silk, trembling in golden waves around her shoulders. Her skin almost glowed, and her eyes twinkled in the light. Even still, she was always so modest.

I sure was lucky to have a mother like her.

“Sloanne? What’s wrong?” she probed.

“It’s such a problem! I don’t know what I’m going to do! I’m going to die!” I sputtered out, clutching my shirt like my life depended on it. That sure got my mom’s attention.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt?” she exclaimed. I could hear the worry in her voice.

“I lost my science notebook!” I revealed. My mom stared at me, not sure what to do. Her lips pursed, with anger or suppressed laughter I couldn’t tell. She just shook her head and sighed, putting her other earbud in again.

“It’s the first day of school, I’m sure you won’t need one anyway. If you do, use a page of your math one. I’ll get you another notebook later.”

I shrugged, giving her a small smile. Now that I thought about it, it didn’t seem like that big of a problem.

“Okay,” I said simply. Glancing at the clock, the panic resumed as I realized.

It was 8:05!

Charging up the stairs like an action hero, I darted into my room, grabbed my backpack, and went right back down again. If anything, I was sure burning some calories with all this running around. Not that I needed to---my grandmother never let me forget how tiny I looked.

“You look sickly,” she would say, “It’s not normal for anyone to be that size!”

Truth be told, I was tiny. 4-11 at fourteen years old, looked like a rake, and no sign of anymore growing.

I blame my dad. Good for nothing short fathers. Why couldn’t I have had one who was 6 foot three tall like Jimmy’s dad?

I ran right through the kitchen on my way out, but my mom stopped me. She gave me a gentle smile before saying, “Where are you going in such a hurry? It’s only eight after seven.”

“What?” I glanced at the clock again. Studying a little more closely, I realized she was right.

Here’s another thing to add to my ‘To Blame Later’ list: Non-digital clocks. They can be miss-read so easily.

My mom just laughed at me and asked if I wanted something to eat. A long breakfast later (consisting of some cereal, a bowl, and milk) I walked out of the door in a much calmer state. I waited around for a couple of minutes and the bus pulled up right on time.

See, I knew that because of the digital clock on my phone, hm?

Oh man, I missed the school bus. The oily stench on the outside, the moldy air inside. The complaining and groaning bus driver. And, of course, it wouldn’t be complete without the falling apart seats and dirty windows you couldn’t even see out of. The Good Old Days is what I liked to call it, because it really has seen its fair share of good days.

And old days.

About a hundred years ago old days. But… we won’t talk about that.

Sitting in my usual seat, I couldn’t help but start imagining what the first day of grade nine would be like. All those kids with acne and braces, not to mention the smelly armpits. Well, that was last year, now that I think about it. Maybe this year will be better!

Looking around the bus at all my old classmates, however, I sighed. If anything, it was going to be worse.

One long and stinky bus ride later, I pushed my way out and into the beautiful outdoors. Oh, sweet fresh air! How I’ve missed you so!

I did the closest thing I could to hugging the air, not even noticing that a couple people were staring oddly at me. Taking my last deep breath, I regretfully walked into the musty school with the stream of students. Walking past a bored looking teacher, I almost asked him if it would be possible to move the school to the great outdoors.

Before I had the chance to, the bell rang. All the students quickly finished organizing their lockers and scattered to their class, leaving me standing there alone before I knew it.

Shoving my entire backpack into my locker, I ran for my class and slipped into the back seat just as the teacher walked in. Her dark hair was pulled into an impressive bun, but unlike most teachers with buns in their hair, this teacher looked nice. Soft facial features, kind blue eyes. I breathed a sigh of relief.

The relief didn’t last long.

The teacher started talking, telling us about everything we needed for the course.

She held up a blue science textbook that… wasn’t my textbook. Squinting, I gulped when I read the words.

GRADE 8 SCIENCE

Alarm bells blared through my head. I was in the wrong class! Since when was science class here now?

Oh…I get it. Since I moved onto grade nine, not eight.

I was officially the first idiot of the school year.

I subtly stood up, barely making a sound as I headed for the door. My hand landed on the doorknob just as the teacher called me out.

“Are you going somewhere?” She asked.

“Uhm, well, you see, Miss… uhm.” I stammered. I didn’t even know her name.

“Ms. Hugh. It’s on the blackboard. And I don’t recall a…” She paused, looking at the name stitched onto my shirt, “…Ms. Sloanne Patrick in my class.”

A couple students giggled. I laughed nervously.

“My mistake, Miss. I, well, went to the wrong class,” I blurted out quietly. The kids still heard, causing even more giggling.

“That’s enough, class,” Mrs. Hugh announced, “Go on then, you shouldn’t be too late to your other class. Which one is it, by the way?”

“Math nine.”

“Down the hall, first door to the right. Thank you.” Mrs. Hugh walked away, diverting the class’s attention.

My face beet red; I squeaked the door open and slipped out. Trying to act as casual as possible, I strode down the hall to my actual class. Grimacing, I pulled open the door and slipped into an un-occupied seat right by it. Everybody glanced over, confusion written over all their faces. Though, the only face I could see was his.

Curly brown hair, ocean blue eyes, old T-shirt and jeans. Adrian. He was just like I remembered from last year.

Yet…something was different this time around. I don’t know if it was the fluttery feeling in my stomach, my dry mouth, or the wanting to throw up in a sink (I really hoped it wasn’t the latter), but I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

Adrian smiled nervously, and I suddenly realized I was staring like a total creep-o.

My bad.

“Decide to join us, Ms. Sloanne?” The math teacher shook his head disapprovingly, “I’m assuming you have a stellar reason for being late?”

“Yeah. I’m sorry. I---” Biting my lip, I ignored everybody’s stares as I announced,

“Went to the wrong classroom and got lost.”

The teacher sighed and continued what he was droning about. I refused to look at anybody else for the rest of the class, though I knew they were constantly stealing glances at me like I was some stupid kid who couldn’t keep anything straight.

Well, maybe it was true.

The end of class came way too slow for my liking, and the teacher assigned us homework for the first day! What a let-down. Packing up my books, I left for my locker.

The good thing was that nobody came up to me about being late to class. What a relief.

But, of course, there was always a bad thing. And in this case? The thing was that I saw Adrian in the hallway a couple seconds later. Thinking this would be a great time to say hello, I waved at him.

Thud.

I whipped around, my face twisted in horror as I realized that Luna, a girl from my class I barely knew, had been whacked in the face by a notebook. Which notebook, you may ask?

Mine.

“I’m so sorry!” I exclaimed, trying to do something, anything, to stop her bleeding nose.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said through a plugged nose, not really meaning what she said. She hurried to the bathroom, blood streaking down her face. By the time I turned around, Adrian was gone.

I stood in the hallway, holding in my hands the criminal math notebook, covered in someone else’s blood. Part of me felt like a walking health hazard.

Someone walked by and whispered to her friend just loud enough for me to hear, “Did she actually throw that at Luna?”

Oh great. The rumors have already started, faster than my panic attacks.

I shoved the notebook into my locker as if it was evidence from a crime scene.

Taking a deep breath, I hurry to my next class early.

I knew one thing. There were way too many classes left in a day.

***

Hours later, it was finally lunch time. Pure bliss! There was no possible way I could embarrass myself in this period.

Actually, there were a lot of ways. I tried not to think about it.

So far, I had managed to go into the wrong class, stare way too much at Adrian, cause someone to have an intense nosebleed, slipped in my Language Arts class, therefore causing five of the tables to knock into each other and fall.

I couldn’t help but notice that the table I was sitting at was completely empty except for me, of course. Everybody seemed to want to avoid me for some reason. I have no. Idea. Why.

Picking up a slice of pizza, I was about to take a big bite when I heard his voice.

“Sloanne,” Adrian said nervously, walking up next to me. I did the only rational thing and dropped my piece of pizza on my lap. Now that was a stain that would never come out.

“Uh, uhm…” I mumbled, too embarrassed and shocked to stammer out legitimate words.

Adrian bit his lip awkwardly, trying to avoid staring at the pizza in my lap,

“Yeah…hi…”

Casually picking the pizza off my lap and putting it on my plate (don’t worry, I wasn’t going to eat it), I said, “Hi.”

“So…saw what happened in the hall earlier. Luna alright?”

“Oh,” I sighed. That again. “Yeah. She’s OK.”

“Good. That’s…good.” He tapped his fingers on the table. “Uh, well, actually, there’s this rumor going around.”

“Mm,” I groaned, “What is it?”

“They…” He drew out the word before going on, “Think your notebook is haunted.”

“WHAT!?” I exclaimed so loudly, it turned some heads.

“They say it levitated.”

I groaned again, mumbling, “Oh my gosh.”

“Don’t blame me. I’m just the messenger,” He grimaced.

It wasn’t long before he suddenly burst out laughing. I could obviously tell he was trying to stop, but it was no use. Before I could stop myself, I started laughing too. So utterly stupid.

“Hey, want to go get some fresh air?” He finally choked out when he could. I shrugged.

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

Adrian smiled at me. I smiled back as we walked down the hallway side by side.

Not awkward, not romantic, just two friends trying to navigate through the steep slopes of high school.

Adrian cleared his throat, “You should probably know something else.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“People also think you hit Luna because you were jealous. Like, she smiled at me once last year and…well, someone said it was a rage throw. Crazy, right?”

I blinked. “Yeah. Crazy.”

Suddenly it was awkward again. But at least this time it wasn’t an awful awkward.

Just…regular awkward.

I sighed.

First day of school: Dramatic entrance, public humiliation, and accidental assault via textbook.

Yep.

Totally normal start to grade nine.

(Note to self: Burn the notebook)