As I straightened up, I gasped. The girl before me was beautiful, unimaginably beautiful. She looked like an angel. No, she was millions of times more beautiful than an angel. Her shiny curls were the silkiest shade of molten copper that I could imagine. They had lighter, almost blond roots that made her hair look almost like a dark shade of strawberry blond. Her angelic locks reached halfway down her back in a gorgeous bronze waterfall of color.
Her eyes were the shade of melted milk chocolate. They were startlingly large and bright. Her full lips were a gentle shade of shell pink, curving over her pearl-white teeth, which were just visible through the slight smile that graced her lips like a ray of sunshine. Her skin was alabaster, pale except for the rosy blush, which crept slowly up her cheeks as I watched like an idiot. She was perfectly formed in every way, all the way to the manicured hand that gripped my own.
I suddenly became aware of her contact. I took a sharp intake of breath as it hit me that her hand was warm, unnaturally warm. In fact, it was almost hot. And it definitely wasn't because she was sweaty, because she wasn't sweaty. She wasn't sweaty at all. And I wasn't sweaty either—no, no—wait!
Suddenly, almost as if the girl's face was a mirror, I saw my own face reflected in my mind, from her eyes. I could see myself, so stunned, so ordinary… no, it wasn't a reflection, it was the way other people saw me. I was seeing myself, from her point of view.
Suddenly her hand was gone, ripped from my grasp effortlessly. I was back, watching the world from my own eyes. But before I had the chance to do anything, she was gone, running—no, dancing—away to rejoin the rest of my class. I was left alone, standing stupidly in the middle of the gym while everybody else was running around wildly.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Coach Stephens give me a weird look. Hastily, I ran to the other end of the gym and tried to look as if I wasn't preoccupied with impossibly tangled thoughts.
Who was she? How could she possibly be so beautiful? Where did she come from? Why had I never seen her before? Was she new? Being late to school, I hadn't been in homeroom to hear my teacher introduce her. And the most important question of all… how had she done the mind-switch thing? Even though I tried to convince myself that it was just my imagination, I couldn't shake the feeling that the girl had actually caused it. It was stupid… it had probably just been me, making things up.
I watched her out of the corner of my eye. Her bronze hair bounced as she chased after the ball. She was in the thick of the game, obviously a dab hand at soccer. She didn't pay me any attention. She didn't come near me, didn't look at me, nothing.
Somehow, I made it through the rest of Gym without any disasters happening. It was definitely a surprise that, although I was more preoccupied and accident-ready than ever, I still didn't take any falls. A miracle, perhaps? That was a first.
Finally, Coach Stephens decided that class was over. Since we didn't have an intercom system in the gym, it was up to the teachers to remember when class time was up. Of course, Coach Stephens forgot to check his watch and ended up sending us back five minutes late.
As I sprinted back across the parking lot back to the main school building, I looked for the strange girl in the crowd of students. She wasn't there, or at least I couldn't find her. Strange.
I made my way through the crowded halls. The end of the day always was rush hour in the halls. Since the temporary building had been an office one before, the hallways weren't build for hundreds of students to push through.
I scanned the heads of the milling students, searching for a copper-colored one. There! I saw a head of bright, bronze hair walking away from me. No, that wasn't her. It was a tall boy, probably a junior. He walked with a dark-haired girl next to him, their arms linked. Besides, his hair was straight, not curly. Even though I could only see his back, I couldn't remember seeing him before. I didn't remember seeing anyone with that exact shade of hair before, except her. Weird.
I made way as a huge, buff, blond-haired boy pushed his way through a couple of skinny, gothic-looking sophomores that I didn't know. He passed me, and I noticed that people were giving him a wide berth. That wasn't surprising, looking at those bulging muscles of his.
I slowly made my way to my locker. I entered the combination into the lock. 7-2-0-3-8, the same number that was the last part of my computer password. I gathered my math book, science fair folder, and grammer book. I unzipped my black backpack, with it's purple pockets, and dumped them in, along with my pencil case. Straightening up, I closed the locker door and reset the combination lock. Pushing my way through a group of freshmen, I entered my homeroom class. I put my backpack on top of my desk. Hopefully nobody would steal it. As everybody was chatting by their friends' desks, I made my way over to Sarah's desk. She was bent over, digging in her overstuffed backpack.
"Hey, Sarah." I said as casually as I could. I couldn't wait to tell her about that strange girl. I'd checked when I came in; she wasn't here.
"Amelia!" Sarah exclaimed, turning around and stuffing a few papers back into her backpack. Standing up, she suddenly gave me a few sharp taps—no, not taps, blows—on top of my head.
"Ouch!" I squealed, clutching my head as soon as her hands left it. "I didn't do anything! Why do I get a sanity check?" Unlike most people, I didn't get mad because my best friend just hit me over the head. I'm used to Sarah and her sometimes odd ways. For instance, whenever she got a certain song, phrase, or action stuck in her head, she'd sing, say, or carry it out all day long, or all week long, or all year long. I call them her 'catch phrases'. When Sarah is your friend, you get used to it.
"Because you looked like you needed one." Sarah replied, her green-gold eyes twinkling. "What's on your mind?"
Before I could launch into my story, my homeroom teacher, Mr. Pickford, walked into the room. Apparantly horrified by the disorganized scene before him, he yelled at us to get back to our seats.
"I'll tell you later," I promised Sarah, before I scurried back to my own seat.
While Mr. Pickford stood at the front of the class, red with anger and talking about misconduct, I kept an eye on the classroom door.
And then she came in. That girl. She looked almost normal. Before I knew it, her graceful walk had carried her past. Same as before, she neither looked at me nor acknowledged my existence. She soon reached an empty desk two rows in front of mine and sat down. Her bronze hair was all I could see of her.
Before I knew it, people were leaving. School was over. Mr. Pickford still looked furious, so I didn't have a chance to talk or say goodbye to Sarah as she left. Sarah's mother always took her home, since she lived further away than I did from the school. I always walked home. My mom had work, and she was to busy to pick me up. Anyway, Castle Rock was a small town, and I knew my way.
I purposely stayed longer than I had to, watching the bronze-haired girl. I wanted to see if she walked home, or took a car. No, she just sat there, watching everyone else leave, taking no notice of me. Her chocolate eyes swept over me as if I wasn't even there. It was starting to get a little annoying.
Suddenly, with no visible prompt that I could see, the girl jumped up from her chair, tucking it in smoothly in the same movement. She swung her light blue backpack off the desk and onto her shoulders. She walked sinuously to the classroom door and turned right when she left it.
Without thinking, without even fully realizing what I was doing, I swung my own backpack off the desk. Still struggling to get my arms through the holes, I raced out of the classroom and down the hallway she'd taken. There were several people still there. I pushed past them, determined to follow that girl. Even though I knew that stalking people was weird and wrong, I just couldn't resist.
I reached the end of the hallway just in time to see a door close behind her. Before it could close with a clang, I squeezed my way through it, into the windy parking lot. My hair swirled about my face wildly. The girl was walking across the parking lot to a silver car. I didn't know much about cars, but I knew that that one in particular was pretty expensive. It's silver paint gleamed in the meager sunlight, and it's tinted windows showed that there were a lot of people inside.
The copper-haired girl opened the front passenger door and slid in. I squinted my eyes as I tried to see past the dark windows. How many people were there in there? I didn't have a chance to count because the car purred smoothly to life in that instant. It pulled out of the parking space and, jet black tires spinning, drove off. I was left alone, looking kind of dumb. At that moment, I randomly remembered that I'd forgotten my red sweatshirt in Gym. I'd have to search the lost-and-found tomorrow.
I sighed as started to head home. I didn't have a chance at following that car. And not just the car. The girl. She was so elusive! She didn't even seem human. I wanted to talk to her, to find out more about her, but she didn't seem to want to talk to me. Was she sorry that she'd helped me up in Gym? Probably.
There was no doubt about it.
Something was up.