1My life sucks.
I'm scrawny, ugly, unpopular and nerdy with creepy yellow eyes that are nearly impossible to cover up. And to top it all off, my mother is a ditzy government worker who's never home when I need her and always bugging me when I don't.
And my dad, well, he doesn't exist anymore.
Anywho, my life was about to get a lot worse, starting with the first bad omen of the day; attendence.
"Fred?"
"Here!"
"Leigh-ann?"
"What?"
"I'll take that to mean that you're here." The teacher, a severe looking women in her forties, shot a glare at the girl.
"Esperanza?"
"Estoy aqui!"
"Ingles por favor..." The teacher sighed wearily.
"Ariana?"
The shaggy-haired girl, absorbed in her book, didn't hear her name being called.
"Ariana?" The teacher asked again, icing her a glare as well.
"Uh...what?" Ariana looked up, her glasses slipping down her nose. The teacher winced internally as those bright golden eyes focused on her, disgusted at the unnaturalness of their color.
"Are you here?"
Ariana shook her hand out of her long shirt sleeve and pushed her glasses back up on her face.
"Yep."
"Your mind should be here as well, Ariana, not in some fantasy world. Close the book."
Blushing violently amid the snickers erupting around the room, she slowly closed the thick hard-bound book.
"Hey look, the nerd actually shut her book for once." Leigh-Ann taunted, smacking loudly on her gum.
"I think she's going through withdrawal..." The go-go girl beside her chimed in, smiling predatorily.
Ariana lowered her head, wishing that she could simply sink through the floor and out of sight.
"That's enough!" The teacher called out, rapping a boy who was sleeping the front row over the head with her pointer.
"Maybe she's an alien, that's why her eyes are yellow..." Leigh-Ann whispered quietly.
"Or maybe she just has to pee..." They broke off, smothering their laughter. Neither saw the small tear run down her cheek.
It was only 6:25 too.
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The bus dropped her off at the end of her street, and when the doors squealed open, Ariana tumbled down the steps into the mud after being tripped by the Jock in the front row.
"Hey, see ya' tomorrow, loser!" He yelled gayly after her as the bus roared away. After a long while, she pulled herself up by the wooden post of the stop sign and clung to it like a drowning man would a life preserver, not trusting herself to breath without breaking out in tears.
She lifted her head and looked down the street, seeing that- once again- her mother's blue sedan was not in the driveway. Not that she had expected it to be. She was NEVER home when Ariana needed her.
She drew in a rattling breath, choking on it. I'll just be emotionless, she thought. No one can hurt my feelings if I don't have any...
Her throat constricted painfully.
Slowly, so slowly, she hoisted her muddy backpack and slung it over her shoulder, trudging down the street towards her 'home'.
A squat, non-descript little building, the house seemed sickening perky and cheerful to her, the yellow trimmed windows winking happily at her. But it wasn't home, and that made it seem all the more depressing.
Ariana slouched up the clean, concrete walkway towards the door, stepping over a small sheet of paper. She ignored it. It was another of those looney door-to-door cult members preaching about how the Autobot 'invasion' as they called it was the death to all humanity and shoving an avalanche of leaf-lets in every-ones faces. Nuerotic? Yes. Dangerous? Hell yes.
Though they put on a good front, the S.E.F or Society for Earth First was not apposed to using bribery, threats, and violence to gain support. They hated the Transformers and opposed their presence on Earth. Quite often they had come to their house, all cheery and smiling, offering a free gift for signing up. Her mom though had always politely turned them down, or had pretended to look at their brochures with interest, if only to keep their wrath off of them. The one smart thing her mom had done in Ariana's opinion.
Ariana pulled her house key out of her pocket and unlocked the door, stepping into the cool dark hallway. She liked it that way; free of other people and things to mock her.
Letting her backpack drop to the ground with a thud, she popped off her muddy shoes and went into the kitchen. There was a note on the table in her mom's handwriting. She snatched it up, catching sight of a few lines of 'something important came up...' 'Had to run' 'be back late' yada yada yada. She dumped into the garbage can unceremoniously. She's heard it all many times before.
Her stomach growled, and she went to the fridge like a moth drawn to the flame, intent on getting something junky and unhealthy to snack on. Yanking the door open, she noticed- to her supreme annoyance- and it was nearly empty save for a meat loaf and a half-empty jug of milk.
Great.
Ariana tried to slam the door, but it's rubber cushioned liner kept it from making the satisfying slamming sound that she wanted.
Something in her tortured heart snapped, and she jerked it back open and slammed it again and again, sobbing openly. Nothing went the way she wanted it to. Damnit, she couldn't even get a door to slam right, much less make any friends or actually mean something to her mom.
Tears, hot and angry, poured down her cheeks and she slumped to the floor with her face against the cool metal of the fridge door, wanting to just disappear. But even if she could, she doubted it anyone would even noticed or care.
Ariana sobbed harder.
And those God-awful yellow eyes of hers. She just wanted to get rid of them. They were ugly and made her face shine with an unearthly bright glow.
Suddenly, there was a knock at the door, shattering her wall of sorrow, making her draw a rattling breath as her tears immediately stemmed. She might be called a geek and a weirdo, but at least they hadn't tagged her as a cry baby yet, and she had no intention of letting them.
Ariana hurriedly dried her eyes on her sleeve and practically sprinted to the door as the person knocked insistently again.
She jerked the door open, and there stood the brown-clad UPS man with a bad case of acne. A large package was propped against the door jab at his side.
"Miss Ariana MacCannon?" He asked, his voice squeaking. She nodded deafly, and he held out a pad for her to sign, which she did somewhat hesitantly, eyeing the large package. She didn't have any relatives- no one who would send her a package. And it also wasn't her birthday.
"Who's it from?" She asked. The guy shrugged.
"No clue. It was ordered online, but the bill went to someone in Fort Max."
Her heart quickened. She definitely didn't know anyone in the fortress city. She had never even been there. Ariana muttered some sort of thank-you, and dragged the heavy package into the hallway, the door falling shut on the man's retreating back.
Curiosity consuming her, she attempted to tear into the brown, cardboard package, but found that the tape resisted her efforts. Sprinting off for a pair of siccors, she returned to it with gusto, ripping open the package and combing through the bubble wrap and peanuts-
-and a shiny silver hoover board was revealed. Her heart beat quickly as she pulled it from the box. It was a hoover board, one of the amazing gifts the Autobots had brought to humanity, a good one too. She ran herhands over its smooth sides that were shaped to give the impression of wings, turning it to rest on her lap. Then, she noticed something odd. Something that made her heart stop.
On the flat part of the board, near the back, was an engraving.
A name.
Her name.
Ariana