Dear Dad and Carol,

Greetings from the East Coast! It's nice here, although nothing like California. I guess I'll always be a California girl at heart!

Today is the first day of high school, and it's great! Right now I am in homeroom and I just thought I'd right a quick hello to you! Details later.

Love and Sunshine,

Dawn

I stuffed the letter into my desk and looked back up at the teacher.

"Right." said Mr. Belcher. "Welcome to high school, folks. You're going to love SHS- as long as you stay out of fistfights," he added, glaring at me and Alan.

I ignored that. Instead, I studied him. Mr. Belcher was tall. He had sun-bleached blond hair and blue eyes and was very tan. A bit like me, actually. I wondered if he was from California too.

"Every day has seven periods that last an hour each. The schedule changes every other day. Fourth period is lunch every day. Before lunch, there will be an assembly today."

Yawn. Couldn't this Mr. Belcher talk about anything more interesting?

"As you can see on your schedules, math is always the first class. You will all be in the same math and English classes until the teachers have an idea about your skills and divide you up into groups."

I looked at Claudia. She was biting her lip. I was about to raise my hand to see if we had groups for science or geography, my two favorite subjects of all time, but then Alan Gray shouted out,

"Hey, are you married to Mrs. Belcher?"

"Alan! Sit down." I snapped.

Alan blew a raspberry.

"Very funny, Alan." Mr. Belcher said dryly. "Now, any questions?"

Alan asked if he could belch the tune to Friends (I glared at him). Emily Bernstein asked what the school newsletter was called (The SHS Enquirer- no, I'm not kidding!). Then we all went to math.

"Isn't Mr. Belcher cool?" Stacey asked dreamily, as me and my BSC friends walked together.

"I know, Stace." I replied. "I bet he's from California."

"Wasn't one of our English teachers called Mrs. Belcher?" asked Mary Anne. "The one Alan Gray got detention for throwing the spitball at?"

We all rolled our eyes.
"I don't think they were married, though." Claudia said. "She's not really that…"

"Cool?" I supplied. I didn't agree. Mrs. Belcher was pretty fresh. She is sturdily built and has very chilly thick-framed black glasses. Of course she was cool. Not to mention, she shared my love and respect for the environment. "Claudia Kishi, how could you say that?"

"Say what?"

"How could you insult one of the smartest, most environmentally-concerned teachers in SMS?"

"Dawn." said Mary Anne.

"Huh?"

"Oh, forget it. You just don't care about conservation, do you? Well, I'm going to show you just how much you should."

With that, I stormed away.