Greeting Committee

The sight in front of me made me shudder. It paralyzed and froze me in my place. I was completely overcome by an unshakeable dread. A sense of foreboding was in the air, warning me. As usual, I ignored my intuition and continued to gape. My mother always said that I am a victim of a condition that she calls "deer in headlights," syndrome. That means that when confronted by something life-threatening or dangerous, I freeze-up at the worst possible moment. It's not only a stupid and dangerous condition; it's also inconvenient and, at times, extremely embarrassing.

For example, in grade three there was a retirement party for one of the teachers. You know what that means? That's right, cake. The teachers bought ten giant sheet cakes to feed everyone and thought that having such a surplus of dessert would lessen the chaos; unfortunately, it only made it worse. Kids were running, pushing, and trampling each other to get in line. The chaos stunned me and I just stood in the middle of the gym, totally lost. As a result, I wound up in the middle of a mini riot and I was tossed around the gym like a rag doll. To break kids up, teachers had to take extreme action and fling the kids around by their collars. When one of the teachers grabbed me, he/she obviously didn't realize how close we were to a cake and shoved me right into it. From head-to-toe I was completely covered in frosting. For years afterward, kids called me cake-zilla. Not really a mean comment but it gets old pretty quick.

As for the "deer in headlights" thing, I still have it and right now it wasn't helping any. My brain was demanding my limbs to move, to break into a sprint and run, but they couldn't. My heart was beating in a strange, irregular beat and my blood switched between rushing and stopping cold. Sharp pains stabbed at my abdomen and knots tangled my butterfly filled stomach. Air didn't reach my lungs but they seemed to be functioning fine without it. My muscles were another story, without oxygen they were as heavy as lead and exhaustion swept over me. My eyes kept closing and I found myself swaying. I was going to faint! I wanted to scream out for help but I knew the attempt would be futile. I stared up at the monstrosity before me and knew that there was no help for me now.

"Gabriella Montez?" the voice questioned.

"Yep," I gulped. This was it. It was all over now...

"Welcome to East High Miss Montez!" she said grandly. "Oh my goodness you are just the cutest little thing!" she strange little woman gushed excited. "Perry wasn't kidding when he said you were pretty. But goodness you are just aDORable!"

I tried to keep my eyes from rolling as the little secretary went on and on about Perry and Mom, the wedding, the town, how "super excited" she was to see me and such. After fifteen minutes I had to cut her off and said, "He already registered me right? So can I get my class schedule?" My question seemed to throw her and she bumbled about nervously, obviously frazzled by the fact that she hadn't been the one to come up with the idea. I smiled warmly as she ran about her office and stacking papers in front of me as she found them.

"Hey Mom?" a girl shouted as she walked into the room. "Jase and I were..." her eyes fell on me and she smiled. "Oh my goodness, are you the new student?"

I was at loss for words. Did everyone know I was coming today? My "condition" set in as the panic took over. I can't have people staring at me I really can't. I usually end up falling or running into stuff when people stare. It became a game in a class my eighth grade year. People would stare at me and count how long it took me to hurt myself and whoever bet on the closet time won. Needless to say, it was a very painful year. The thought of people discovering my weakness here was unimaginable. I didn't have the luxury of being able to move away in a few months. I was stuck until graduation. I suddenly remembered to question and nodded once.

"Oh, that's so great. I'm Martha Cox and this is Jason Cross."

"Our last names both start with c!" Jason pointed out factually.

Martha and the lady behind the counter both groaned and rubbed their temples. That's when I recognized the resemblance between the two. I glanced at the woman's name plate and read, "Mrs. Patricia Cox." They were related, which would explain why Martha came in yelling "mom." I was so proud of my deductive reasoning skills.

Before I knew it, Martha was showing me around the school while Jason tagged along occasionally throwing in strange details like, "That's where Kevin Rhodes threw up after mystery meat Wednesday" and "That's where the robots club retaliated and had their robots shove football players into the trash cans."

The tour ended at my locker and as I fiddled with the combination, Martha and Jason's bickering in the background, I realized that I felt... happy. I was stuck in this purgatory seven hours a day, five days a week, for another year and a half, and I was happy. Was it because of them? I'd never really made friends at my other schools. EVER!! I was always the freak or genius girl; never just Gabriella. It was nice to be... whatever I wanted to be. I vowed to not let anything mess that up.

Then bell rang and we ran to homeroom. Turns out we all had the same teacher, Ms. Darbus. Martha and Jason groaned as they pronounced her name. Their nicknames for her ranged from Dragon Lady to Crazy Theatre Lady, the other names usually ended in "lady" as well. Some of the names were kind of mean, and others seemed a little exaggerated, but as soon as I stepped into the room I understood them all.

Ms. Darbus was definitely a Crazy Theatre Lady. She was dressed in some strange theatre garb complete with matching scarf and costume jewelry. She looked like a Broadway star just out of wardrobe. She would have been laughable if she wasn't so intimidating.

"This is not a mosh pit at some trashy concert arena you hooligans. Everyone, plant yourselves in your seats this instant before I... and who may I ask are you and what are you doing in my class?" I didn't quite catch the sudden directional change in her rant and didn't respond. "I repeat, you- the person standing in my doorway, what do want?"

I looked up and quickly approached while stammering that I was the new student. I felt every pair of eyes on the back of my head and tried to fight back the sick feeling in my stomach. Puking on the first day certainly wouldn't help with the image makeover. And I'd promised myself a new beginning a few moments ago; I wasn't going to break it so soon.

Murmurs filled the room as Ms. Darbus glanced at my papers and motioned to a seat in the back of the room, even though there were five other seats open throughout the room. Martha noticed my distress and scolded the gossipers as Jason waved me back, my seat was by him. I kept my eyes on him and stumbled back to the back of the row.

He caught me staring at the empty seats and quickly corrected me. "It's not what you think. Those seats belong to other people," he assured me. "They just don't come around very often. They kind of keep to themselves."

"What do you mean? How can they just not come?" I asked puzzledly. Were you allowed to just skip classes here? And who where they?

One of the boys a few seats up heard my question and laughed, "They're Jack Bolton's kids, they can do whatever they want! And I'm Zeke Baylor. You eating lunch with us? I'm making crème brûlée in Home Ec. today!"

"In that case you have to," another girl answered. "I'm Taylor McKessie, President of..."

"Just about everything," two twins to me right giggled.

A string of unanswered questions began to build on my tongue but the bell rand before I could ask them. Martha tapped my shoulder and whispered, "We'll talk at lunch." With that I waved goodbye to my new friends and wandered through the throng of students towards what I hoped was the direction of my next class.

I heard shouting up ahead but ignored it as I peered at the crinkled map in front of me. For a small town, this school was huge, and extremely confusing. I turned to ask for help and was pulled back along the walls as the throng parted like the red sea. The reason appeared to be a tall blonde, and at her side was a boy with a huge afro and a few paces behind was a blonde boy in a hat. Both boys seemed to have a weird adoration for the gorgeous girl and she didn't even notice.

Not that it was much of a shock. With their outrageous outfits, which probably cost more than my car, and perfect faces and figures, these three were definitely something to stare at. But it wasn't their flaunting of obvious wealth which caught my attention, it was something else. There was something unworldly about this group. It wasn't just their clothes that seemed to coordinate, their skin and very beings seemed intertwined somehow. They all had pale, perfect complexions which seemed to sparkle under the florescent lights. Even the darker skinned boy seemed to have a layer of pearl in his skin. They looked like air brushed models right out of Abercrombie or American Eagle advertisement. But unlike the models, they seemed untouchable and dangerous. As I stared at their fading figures, I couldn't decide which I wanted more: to run away or towards them.

However, I was relieved to find that I wasn't the only one under their spell. No one dared to move until they'd turned the corner and were well out of sight. I figured this was a daily occurrence but the scene haunted me until lunch. Something about it was familiar and kept tugging at my memory.

When I finally caught up with Jason and Martha I was dying to ask the questions that had been eating at me all day. But the opportunity never presented itself because the three of them never showed up. Instead I was stuck listening to them drone on about the different cliques: the jocks, the cheerleaders, the band geeks, the rockers, the glee club, the drama club, the science club, the substance abusers, the just out of juvie kids, and the good kids. Then there were sub groups which were mixtures of the groups. Mine was one of these sub groups and was a mix of the geeks, musicians, jocks, anti-jocks, and drama clubbers.

Martha was a brainiac and a dancer in all school productions. I found that hard to believe until the musicians of the group, Brandon and Matt, started to beat out a tune on their lunch trays and she showed off a few moves. She was definitely a dancer. Then I was introduced to Zeke, Taylor, Tara, Michelle, and Christy. I remembered Zeke from homeroom and, no surprise here, he's the baker of the group. I found out that he also plays basketball, and was dating volleyballer Michelle. I'd already been introduced to Taylor by the twins in homeroom so she introduced me to them. Their names were Tara and Christy and they were drama club dancers with Martha and anti-cheerleaders. Matt insisted that they were also his and Brandon's groupies which Tara and Christy immediately corrected. They were "roadies" not "groupies." The boys insisted there was no mistake and received several feigned angry shouts and good natured punches. Jason then secured the title as the group's airhead and said that he'd always thought that the girls' last name was Bartholomew.

The rest of lunch went by well and I found out that I had sixth period Biology with Brandon and Martha. They excitedly told be that Mr. Banter, yes that's his actual name, was one of the more normal teachers here at East High. They pointed me to his desk as we walked through the door and I handed him my papers. As he flipped through them and signed on the appropriate lines, I scouted out my lab partner. There was only one empty seat in the room and I watched as the sole occupant pulled his books to his side without glancing in my direction. I felt a chill ran up my spine as the person's head snapped up and glared in my direction. It wasn't until it happened again that I realized the chills were coming from the air blowing from a rotating fan and not the ice cold glare my new partner was now giving me from under a black hood.

"You'll be working with..." Mr. Banter paused and glanced over at the blob of black fabric now huddled at the far right corner of the table. "Mr. Bolton please act like pay attention in my classroom, no sleeping!" he gave me an apologetic look and motioned for me to take a seat. "And pull off your hood, you look like you're about to knock over a liquor store," he muttered.

The figure sat up slowly but stayed hunched over with his hood covered his face. Mr. Banter noticed but ignored it and began the lesson. My class back in San Diego had already gone over this material but I listened intently, trying to focus on something other than the glares that Bolton kept sending in my direction.

Bolton... that name. He was one the kids that Zeke had mentioned in homeroom! The discovery certainly explained why he'd gotten off so easily with the teacher. It didn't explain why he seemed to hate me so much. For the entire period, I kept feeling his cold eyes shift to me. He was radiating negativity and tension. His very being seemed to be teeming with red hot energy and anger. After twenty minutes in, I made the mistake of trying to smooth things over with him and took the brunt of his glare. That was the first time a single pair of eyes caused me to become paralyzed with fear. I couldn't tear myself away and could only watch helplessly as a strange darkness rushed into his cerulean eyes.

I felt like I could see into his soul. They pulled me in and sent my head spinning. I wasn't aware of anything anymore. I was a shell. In my mind, I was floating on a cloud far away. Nothing could hurt me and I didn't have a care. An angel entered my dreamlike state, he was beautiful, except for his eyes; so haunted and filled with pain. The emotion in them grew stronger each passing moment. When it got to be too much, he stood and rushed out the door without another word.

When he broke his gaze, the spell was broken and a ringing in my ears brought me back to reality. I was still at school, not on a cloud, and the ringing had been the bell. Brandon and Martha waited for me to join them but I didn't move. I heard them say my name a few times but it seemed too far away. Mr. Banter tapped me on the shoulder and I somehow remembered how to stand and found my way out the door.

The rest of my classes had my friends in them, but I didn't really pay too much attention to them. They all knew that my state had something to do with Biology, but couldn't decide what had happened. They tried to snap me out of it and kept asking me questions, but I couldn't seem to focus. Only I knew why. The reason? I'd been lying to myself since that night at the ski lodge. Today hadn't been the first time I'd seen those eyes, and, like then, I knew now that today wouldn't be the last time I saw them.

A/N- Hey! First of all I just want to say thanks to those who reviewed. You're awesome.

Oh and random side note. I'm totally a twilight fan and if you haven't seen Twilight the movie, or you have and want to see it again, link is on my page. I thought it thought it was pretty funny (whether they did that intentionally or not I don't care). Totally wasn't as good as the books but the movies never are. I was totally bummed at first, but I guess that with what they were working with, they didn't do so bad. And that concludes my Twilight rant because otherwise I'll never stop! LOL

Feel free to message me about anything or just send it in a review. I'm going to work on responding to my reviews. I've gotten really bad about that so if you have a question, ask and I'll get back to you. I'll UD when I get 10 reviews. Thanks again!