First Day
Maureen flopped into a bus seat with a sigh. Her first day at Nowheresville High. As if moving in the middle of her senior year wasn't bad enough, they had to move from Las Vegas to northern New Jersey where it was apparently not only dull but cold. When they had left Vegas just after New Year's it had been 80 degrees and sunny; here it was 33 degrees and raining. She glared out the window wishing it would at least snow instead of rain, but it was hopeless. At home, the junior and senior high schools had been separate forcing her to catch the bus around 6:30. Here the combined schools started at 8:15 and the bus came around 7:45. The extra time was a plus, but she wasn't used to the chatter of the junior-schoolers first thing in the morning.
The bus was getting crowded, but no one had sat down next to her yet. Someone would eventually and she wondered whether it would be better to pretend she did notice or introduce herself. She supposed it really depended on who it was. As the bus came to the next stop she stared out the window trying to make out the people getting on the bus, but it was just too damn rainy. A loud thud startled her from her examination of the blurry exterior. Something heavy had just hit the seat next to her.
Curiosity got the better of her and she turned to see what large person had just sat down beside her. Surprisingly her eyes met a pale skinny boy, who had just dropped what appeared to be a camera bag into the seat. The boy froze for a second, his ice blue eyes locked in hers. He whispered an apology and slid into the seat. After carefully positioning both his backpack and camera bag into his lap and making sure no part of him or his belongs might accidentally be crowding her space he stared determinately forward.
Maureen tried not to laugh, and looked him over. She would have guessed he was a freshman or sophomore but he had class ring on, so he must have at least been a junior. He was bit awkward looking, but something about him amused her, so she supposed it was okay that he seemed to have a bit of a crush on her. Slowly he tried to steal a glance at her, but he hadn't been expecting her to still be looking at him. Embarrassed he froze again, turning a brilliant shade of red.
"I'm Mark," he said, turning redder if that was even possible.
"Maureen," she replied, "I just moved here from Vegas."
"Welcome to Scarsdale, I'm sure you'll be just as bored as the rest of us."
A bemused smile cracked her face, "Not for too long, I'm off to NYC as soon as I'm done."
'That's an interesting thought," he said "an interesting thought indeed"