Tess Anderson's POV- (it's mostly hers, but I just wanted for you to know her name)
I sat in the office. As seventh grade representative for the school's government, I had to lead all the new seventh graders around our tiny school. Don't get me wrong; usually, I love being seventh grade rep. I'm also a little shy around new people, though. Only new people. That's why I hate leading people around school.
The two new seventh graders rushed in around 8:30. They finished signing in and turned to me.
I was a little upset, because unlike normal people, I actually care about my learning, so doing the whole leading around deal was instead of getting me out of class, it was cutting away from my learning time.
"You're late," I said. Usually, I don't judge people by the way they look, but these kids—Aang and Toph—were weird. They were wearing robes instead of normal people clothes; Aang was bald; and Toph was blind.
"Brrr. I'm gonna call you Freezer Burn for that," Toph said.
"You can call me Tess, for that's my name," I retorted.
"Your name is Test? That's a strange name," Aang said.
"It's T-E-S-S. No t on the end."
"Oh, sorry, Tess. So, when does this tour start?" Aang asked.
"All day. You guys follow me in all my classes for the day, and tomorrow you get your schedules. By then, I'll know you, and we'll be cool, unless my initial coldness made you hate me!" I said cheerfully.
I showed them the multipurpose room. It served as the gym, cafeteria, assembly hall, and where we have pep rallies when it was too cold outside where our stage was. Leading off to one side was the girl's locker room, and on the opposite side of the room was the boy's locker room.
I showed them where the boy's bathroom was, the girl's bathroom, and the library. Finally, I made them pull out their schedules. I looked to see which lockers they had.
"What?! Gwen gets home schooled for three months while she recovers from her tonsillectomy, and they give her locker away?" I complained.
"Your friend had a tonsillectomy? Is she all right?" Aang asked.
I opened his locker, which was Gwen's old one, for him. "What? Yeah, she's fine."
"You said she was recovering. Was she hurt?" Toph asked.
"Yeah, she just kept getting Strep Throat for no reason so they decided to pull out her tonsils. No big deal," I said.
Aang closed his lock. "How did you open this?" he asked.
I pulled it from his hands and showed him very carefully how to open his lock. Thankfully, Toph's was right next to his, so the tour went quicker.
I stumbled into math class two minutes before the bell rang. The tour had taken all of home room and first period. Good thing Mrs. White was a nice teacher and she didn't mind. She told me I hadn't missed much, just that we were just going over last night's homework, which was actually pretty hard.
I raced off to P.E., which was second period. I speedily dressed and walked calmly out of the locker room before Aang and Toph were even at the door.
"Why did you ditch us like that?" Toph complained.
"And why did you change clothes?" Aang asked.
I looked down at my grey-and-blue PE uniform. Since today was Friday, it was pretty smelly. "It's time for PE, and you change for PE," I explained. I pulled my dark brown hair into a ponytail and sat down in my spot. Toph and Aang sat down behind me confused.
"PE? What does that stand for?" Aang asked.
A kid laughed. Grrr. It was Mark Roth, the school bully. "What kind of idiot doesn't know what PE stands for?" he asked.
"Do you?" Mark's brother, Oliver, asked. Oliver was Mark's younger brother. At this school, PE was mixed between eighth and seventh grade. Oliver is nice, contradictory to Mark, and I would die if anyone found out I had a crush on him!
"Yes! Shut up, pipsqueak!" Mark retorted. Oliver grinned.
"Please. The only reason you've made it this far is because the teacher's aren't allowed to hold you back," Oliver said. "Didn't they hold you back in kindergarten because you couldn't read yet? Oh, wait, they did!"
"Shut up! PE stands for Physical Education. There," Mark said.
"Hey, you two, stop fighting. We should all be nice to each other," Aang cut in, just as Oliver was going to say something to his brother. Wow, this kid has guts. Too bad he was about to pay for it.
Mark mocked Aang. "Hah, who do you think you are, Snow White?" Mark asked. Aang shrugged it off, probably because he didn't know who Snow White was.
"Okay, that's enough. Mark, this is Aang, and she's Toph. They're new. Leave them alone," I said.
"Nice to meet you two," Oliver offered, "I'm Oliver Roth. Sadly, that jock lumbering away is my brother, Mark Roth."
I hid a smile. My mom and Oliver's mom were both in the Parent's club, and Derek, my older brother, who was a freshman, and Mark were close friends. When we were younger, I would have to spend time at Oliver's house when our parents would be hanging out. Now, Oliver and I were pretty close friends. We would always joke around, wondering if Mark and Oliver were even related.
"Your brother's a jerk," Toph said. We would have continued our conversation there, but the teacher, Mr. Garrison, finally came out of his office.
PE is split at my school, so once Mr. Garrison finished taking roll, Mrs. Berry's class was filing out the door to head over to the high school's gym. The high school's gym was right next door.
"Where are they going?" Aang asked.
"High school gym," I answered.
"Why?" Toph asked.
"PE is split, and since we don't have two gyms, the other class goes to the high school," I whispered.
"Anderson! Are you gossiping?" Mr. Garrison asked.
"No, sir. I'm answering the questions of the new seventh graders that I'm leading around school," I answered.
Mr. Garrison shook his head and looked down at his clip board. He muttered as he read. "Okay. Because you guys beat Holly's class by twenty points on Wednesday, you don't have to run the mile. Instead, you have free time. Make sure you play something, or you won't get any points." Yes. The other teacher's name was Holly Berry. It is not weird.
The class rushed out of the doors to the soccer/ football field, which was right next to the basketball courts.
Oliver came up to me with a basketball. "C'mon, Test, we're gonna play three on three. Paul, Terry, and Fred versus you, me, and…oh, wait."
"Gwen's not here," I reminded him. I turned to Aang and Toph. "Aang, you wanna be on the team with Ollie, here, and me? Toph, you can be the ref," I suggested.
Oliver punched me lightly. Aang agreed, but Toph said she would find something else to do.
Fred and Paul went quickly over the rules with Aang. Meanwhile, Terry, Oliver, and I went over who was going to jump.
Aang ran over to us. "Can I jump?" he requested.
"Aang, you aren't that tall. Oliver, at 5'5", would be a better choice," I said.
"Yeah, but I can jump really high!" he complained, and jumped about four feet in the air to demonstrate.
"Well, I'm convinced," Oliver said.
I held the ball for Aang and Terry to jump. They both touched it and I threw it high in the air. Aang smacked the ball down hard, (duh) but he hit it on the wrong side. I patted him on the arm, and then squeezed past Paul to steal the ball from Fred. I threw the ball high in the air to Oliver, who swished a three.
The game continued. Turns out, Aang is really good. Fred, who is a bit of a cheater, started to trip us when we got five points ahead. My face is covered in scratches, but somehow, Aang managed not to get tripped, even when he didn't notice Fred's perfectly placed foot.
We were ahead by one point when Mr. Garrison blew his whistle for us all to go back in and get changed. I was stuffing my P.E. clothes back in my backpack when the bell rang.
"See you in Art!" called Oliver. I wished he wouldn't do that. Kids would ask if we made out in the back of classroom when he did that. We don't. End of story.
I walked into the English classroom listening to Toph describe how terribly boring hula-hooping is. She's never had a hula-hoop war.
I turned my head to look at the board to read the objective for today. "What. The. Hell." The board was covered in colons. That must have taken forever to write. I could see smudge marks where kids had presumably rubbed out colons. I sat down at my desk and bonked my head on it.
Mrs. Kutchel has the weirdest last name on campus, possibly, and she has a personality to match. Not as much as strange, but more like charismatic. Still, I never expected she would cover the board in punctuation marks.
"What are you doing?" Toph asked, sitting in Gwen's empty seat. I happened to be sitting on the edge of the classroom, so Aang had pulled up a chair to sit next to me.
"Good morning class!" Mrs. Kutchel said.
The entire class replied, "Good morning!" What can I say; Mrs. Kutchel has a contagious, charismatic personality. There is never bland day in her room. There's also no misbehaving. Her happiness will melt away, and that's really scary.
"I can see we have two new students. Tess, you must be leading them around?" Mrs. Kutchel asked. I smiled and nodded back.
"Oh, well, come, come, you two, come here up to the front of the class!" Toph and Aang awkwardly inched toward the class room. "What are your names?" Mrs. Kutchel asked.
"I'm Aang." Guess Who.
"Toph," Toph said.
"Where do you two come from?" Mrs. Kutchel asked.
"Um, we were home schooled…in a different country," Toph answered.
"Which one?"
Aang had been examining the map in the back of the classroom. "Canada," he blurted.
"Cool! You don't have an accent though."
I could tell they were lying. "Our adopted dad didn't have the accent either," Aang replied. Toph nodded.
"Okay. That's enough. I like your tattoos," Mrs. Kutchel said as Aang and Toph sat down.
We got into an interesting, intense lesson on colons. I was definitely going to be using them in my writing more often: example?
At the end of class, Mrs. Kutchel reminded us that our book reports were due in two weeks.
Finally, time for an elective! I ran down to the art classroom. Miss Princeton was really dragging out her history class.
"Did you see the board in English?" Oliver asked. I nodded. "I wanted to rub out 'Oliver was here,' but Mrs. Kutchel stopped me before I got the chance to finish the O."
Just before the bell rang, eighth graders flooded out of Miss Princeton's classroom. Mark stopped in front of Oliver and me to say, "I pushed two desks together for you two." He ran off snickering.
Idiot. He doesn't even know that we sit in the front of the class. Sure enough, two desks were pushed into a corner. I helped Miss Princeton push the desks back into place.
Art is a non-seating chart class, which means we get to sit where ever is convenient for us.
A nice eighth grader named Karen passed out the paintings everyone had been working on. We had been working on these paintings for pretty much the past two weeks, and it was finally time to present.
I volunteered first to show off my painting: Where I am when I Close My Eyes. I had started it before Gwen told me she was going to have a tonsillectomy, so it was the setting of my book report book instead of Gwen's bedroom, making sure she's alright in every way. I seriously care about my best friend.
My painting was a dark forest. Light was streaming in between the trees. A rusty-red cat was sleeping in a moss nest next to the base of a large tree. My book was the first Warrior Cat's book, if you haven't guessed.
"Wow, Tess, you are really good," Aang said, staring at my painting.
I looked at someone else's painting of a dark bedroom. In glowing green letters, the clock read "12:34." Fair enough, that kid loved to sleep and was constantly dozing off in class.
Oliver insisted on going last. His was a boy swinging into a lake from a rope while two girls waited for their turns. I recognized this scene. Oliver had changed the looks of the kids, but I still new who it was. It was supposed to be him, me, and Gwen at Lake Sinestra. Gwen's family owned a cabin on the lake, and we would visit every summer.
"That was so boring," Toph complained as we walked to the lunchroom
"You have some really good artists in your class," Aang said.
"Thank you," Oliver and I replied at exactly the same time.
"Jinx!" I called, just before Oliver.
"What's for lunch?" Toph asked.
"What did you bring?" I asked.
"Uhh, oh that's right, Katara and Sokka's dad was going to bring us lunch, remember Aang?" Toph said. Aang smacked his forehead. They assured us they would be back and ran off to the front of the school.
Oliver and I got our lunches. We sat down next to one of Oliver's friends.
"Hey, Pedro, do we need our science books?" I asked.
"Yeah, you always need your science book!" Pedro replied. "Do we need our P.E. books?" he asked.
The entire table burst out laughing. Pedro put on his groucho glasses. Aang and Toph came back with thermoses. I made room for them as they sat eating soup. Pedro cracked jokes all throughout lunch, as he usually does. Luckily, they weren't about Aang or Toph.
Science class was next. Aang and Toph sat in the lab. Pedro lied. We did not need our science books. We were watching a video called, "The Wonders of Osmosis."
I was really bored, because the video was really boring. During class, I ripped two long strips of paper out of my notebook, and started folding them like an accordion.
"Toph, does your hair transpire?" Aang teased, "Because your feet are coated with dirt and your body is the stalk, and—"
Toph knocked Aang over, and it wasn't playful. Aang got up and we walked to History class.
Today, we had to do partner notes. Mr. Sandler made Aang read to Toph and they both had to do the notes. Poor kids.
We were learning about Ancient Rome, and the reasons it fell. Honestly, I feel that because Rome spread itself out too far, and the money was changing too much.
I turned in the notes. Oliver and I were the first ones done. I spent the next twenty minutes finishing my Warrior Cats book. It was pretty good, and I could do the report over the weekend! Well, maybe not.
Finally, it was time for band. In reality, it was Beginner's band, but still band. Aang and Toph got to listen to us as we rehearsed. Mr. Pearson handed out a new piece, called Crystal City Overture. It looked hard.
I played the Bb, or B flat, scale to warm up.
"Tess, could you play the tuning note? I need to tune," Oliver said.
I smiled. "So do I," I replied. I played the C, and adjusted my tuning slide, until my trumpet sounded perfectly tuned. I played the C for Oliver. He played a note, and I swear, if this was a cartoon, a crooked eighth note would have come flying out of the bell of his clarinet.
"You are sharp," Mr. Pearson said. Oliver adjusted his reed and played again.
"Now you're flat," I said. Oliver pushed it in a little bit and played. I held a thumb up.
We spent the period going over Crystal City Overture. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. Kids kept staring at Aang and Toph. Geez, they've been following me around all day; why do you keep staring at them.
"Alright class. Time to go. Don't forget to take your instruments home. Tess, can you take the flute part to Gwen?" Mr. Pearson requested.
"She's home schooled. When are we performing this piece?" I asked.
"In May. She will be back by then. You will be going to her house, right?" Mr. Pearson asked.
I took the flute part. "Yeah, duh," I muttered. I stuffed the part into my binder, then took Gwen's binder from her cubby, stuffed that and my binder into my backpack. Then I took her flute out and started walking home.
"Tess, you play the flute as well?" Aang asked as I approached to the curb of school where he and Toph were sitting.
"No, this is Gwen's. What are you two doing?" I asked.
"Waiting for Katara and Sokka. Sokka just got his license, and he insists on driving us to and from school," Aang answered.
"Oh. Well, have fun. High school doesn't get out until three-thirty." The look on Toph's face was priceless. I chuckled all the way to Gwen's house.
A/N: Twenty dollars goes to the first one to guess why I called the band teacher Mr. Pearson. I need reviews to post the next chapter, so REVIEW! PLEASE!
