Hey hey...-blinks rapidly- WOOT! Finally, an update. And here I thought this would just be a quick little story...eh heh heh...
Anyway, finally I have a decent-sized chapter! WOOT! Oh I'm so proud of myself XD Ah well, enough of that. Onto...
Chapter Four
I woke up fairly early the next morning to give myself a chance to somewhat memorize the school's layout so I wouldn't look like some lame new kid. I threw on my usual attire: black tank top, black and green plaid skirt, purple tights, and my trusty combat boots. I quickly stuck my hair in a high ponytail before clumping down the stairs for breakfast.
Mom was busy rummaging through the boxes in the kitchen, trying to find the toaster. "Oh Sammykins, I was going to make you a special breakfast for your first day, but that toaster seems to be missing...that's the last time I buy anything from Denmark!"
"Don't worry Mom," I reassured her. "I'll just have some cereal or something...that is, if the fridge is hooked up and running..."
"Of course it is, sweetie! I had your dad install it last night."
At these words, I inwardly groaned. My dad is anything but a handyman. He once tried to hook up a new DVD player into the living room and ended up causing a small explosion. He wouldn't know cored A from cord B if his life depended on it.
"On second thought, I'll just be going. Maybe there's a store on the way where I can pick something up," I said, grabbing my purple spider bag.
Mom frowned. "Well...alright. Have a good first day, sweetie."
I let out a huge sigh. "Yeah. Sure. Later, Mom." I couldn't decide which was worse: hanging around home all day, or going to a brand new school. I just hoped that there would be someone I could talk to, although no one would ever be able to replace Tucker.
Casper High was just a few blocks from my house, so I made it there without any trouble. Of course there was no place for me to pick up a granola bar or something, but luckily I had plenty of lunch money in my bag. Hopefully the school had a good recyclo-vegetarian menu.
When I reached the campus, it was surprisingly littered with a whole bunch of students, considering it was pretty early on the first day. I made my way through a group, a small knot growing in my stomach as I realized that most of them were of the letter-jacket and pom-pom variety.
I took a deep breath and kept walking. I mean, they couldn't all be bad—you can't judge a book by its cover, right?
Just then, I stumbled over a step I didn't see and bumped into a tall Latino girl wearing a pink baby tee and skintight blue jeans. She spun around, looking like venom was about to shoot from her eyes.
"Uh, sorry," I apologized. "Lost my footing. No harm done though, right?"
"You better watch where you're going—" She eyed me up and down. "—FREAK." With that, she turned back to her posse, laughing unnaturally loud about something, which I could only assume was me.
I made my way towards the front of the school, my hands growing into fists. Although I never had any reason to before, finding a ghost to do some evil things for me sounded really appealing right now...
'Whoa there Sam," I said to myself, unclenching my fists. "Take it easy. Maybe it's just first-day nerves. Maybe she's really a nice person inside. Maybe I need to get a reality check. Maybe...I need to stop talking to myself."
When I looked around, I realized people had been staring at me really funny. Great—five minutes into the first day and I was already seen talking to myself—and there wasn't even a ghost around!
Grumbling to myself, I walked up to a list that apparently had every student's name on it, and where they were to report for homeroom. Before I could look up my name, I noticed a huge sign plastered above the list: ALL NEW INCOMING STUDENTS ARE TO REPORT TO GUIDANCE.
I heaved a sigh, looking around. Guidance, guidance…and that was where again? All of the people here hadn't given me a chance to wander around the school and get used to it. I was so going to get lost.
Just then, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and I felt a chill in the air, like what usually happened when I was about to encounter a ghost. I spun around, looking for anything other-worldly, but only found a giant sign that I had somehow missed labeled 'GUIDANCE' with an equally huge arrow pointing to the direction of the office.
"Man, now I really am getting paranoid about the ghosts," I muttered, following the direction of the Mighty Giant Arrow, ignoring the increasing amounts of A-list people I was seeing.
Just my darn luck.
--
I had already missed homeroom and first period, and was halfway through missing second as I sat there in the guidance office, counting ceiling tiles for the billionth time. Apparently Casper High was having difficulty admitting me as a student—there was no proof I had been registered there.
So while the secretary argued over the phone to my mother that no, I didn't in fact have any paperwork done, I was sitting next the actual office where already registered kids came in and out, mostly complaining about their schedules. Who knew so many "popular" people were signed up for Band?
And I was learning names, too. The shallow little witch I had bumped into that morning was named Paulina, and judging from the amount of boys drooling after her, she was one of the more popular girls in school. A muscular, dumb-looking football player named Dash was apparently trying to ask her out, while and equally muscular (though not so dumb looking) guy named Kwan cheered him on.
It's amazing what people will talk about when they don't notice you.
I leaned my head against the wall, and proceeded to bang it in a slow, rhythmic motion, although I didn't think anything would help me get out of here faster. A tall, serious-looking girl walked past me just then, and I did a double take when I realized it was the one who had been chasing those crazy people down the street yesterday.
She walked right past everyone and straight into the guidance office. I stopped abusing the wall and leaned in a little bit—hey, it's not my fault they didn't close the door all the way.
"Oh, hello Jazz. How are you doing on your first day back so far?" someone asked, which I could only assume was the counselor.
The girl—or I guess, Jazz—heaved a deep sigh. "Okay, I guess. It's just kind of hard ever since the accident, you know? Everybody here knows about it, so I keep getting weird looks in the hallways, even though it's been a month. I suppose they just don't know what to say to me."
I raised my eyebrows. I had no idea what happened to Jazz, but whatever it was, she seemed pretty stand-offish about it. Although she did mention something about an 'accident'—maybe she got into a car crash or something.
If that was the case, I was just glad she was alive. One less ghost for me to deal with.
"That's more than likely the case, dear." The counselor had a sickly-sweet voice, and I could just imagine her patting Jazz's hand in comfort. "It's tough when you're dealing with a situation like this. Just keep your real friends close by."
"Yeah." Jazz heaved another sigh. "It's just weird because this year would've been—"
"Samantha Manson?" the secretary boomed, blocking out the rest of Jazz's sentence. I jumped about ten feet in the air, ignoring questioning looks from the rest of the people in the room, and ran to the desk.
"Yes?"
"Congratulations, you're finally registered. Here's your registration card, schedule—" She thrust a wad of papers at me. "—and some forms we'd like you to fill out. If you hurry, you'll just make it to third period." She had barely looked at me during the whole transition, so she didn't even notice that I was making faces at her during the whole thing. "Now go on, scoot."
"Scooting," I muttered, looking through the massive amount of papers I had been handed. I was so busy looking that I didn't realize someone was walking right in front of me and looked up a second too late.
The paperwork literally flew out of my hands and landed in a huge heap, like a pile of leaves. I was half expecting someone to walk by and jump in it.
"Sorry!" I gasped, barely looking at the person I attacked, in case it was another A-list girl who felt like harassing me, and I was seriously in no mood for that. "My fault!"
"No harm done," the other person answered, and I looked up only to see that it was Jazz.
"Oh, hey," I said, like I knew her. Upon closer examination, I could see that her eyes were red and puffy, and there was some mascara smudged under them. I bit my lip. "Heh, I didn't smack into you that hard, did I?"
"Oh no," she answered, giving a small smile. "It's just...been tough, is all." She started helping me pick up all my papers, which surprised me—I guess the people I had associated with at this school so far had settled my first impression, and Jazz was the exact opposite of it.
"Thanks." I gave a hint of a smile. "I appreciate that. There's a whole mess of papers here, and no one's really been nice to me so far."
"Are you new?" She picked up my registration card. "Guess so," she answered herself. She smiled and added the card to my pile I was carrying, and stuck out her hand. "Hi, I'm Jasmine Fenton. Friends call me Jazz."
Still a bit shocked at how freakishly polite she was, I stuck out my own hand and shook hers. "The name's Sam Manson. I just moved here yesterday." I frowned the slightest bit, something about her name sounding familiar. 'Where have I heard 'Fenton' before?'
"Short for Samantha?"
"Unless you have a death wish."
Jazz looked stunned for a moment, and then giggled politely. "So Sam, are you having any trouble finding your way around?"
"Not really, considering I haven't been to a class yet," I groaned. "My butt's been in that chair since before homeroom. My spaz of a mother forgot to register me here."
"I know how you feel," she smiled. "My parents are loons themselves, although they're excellent for proving and disproving a thesis here and there." She laughed when I blinked in confusion. "I'm a future psychologist."
"Ah, that would explain it." I fished my schedule out of the killer paper pile and sighed. "I'm really going to get lost around here—I'm just lucky I found the darn school in the first place!"
"Hey, if you don't have any plans after school, why don't I give you a tour of the town? There's not much to see, but you could stay for dinner, too, if you wanted. I imagine you don't have much food in your house considering you just moved in."
I gave a grim smile, reeeally not wanting Jazz to know that I could afford a seven-course meal every day for the rest of my life without breaking a sweat. "Yeah, you got that right." I managed a slightly brighter smile. "Okay. I'll take you up on that offer."
"Great," Jazz smiled back, although as I looked harder, there seemed to be just the slightest hint of sadness behind it. "I'll warn my mom to make some normal food tonight."
"'Normal'?"
She bit her lip. "Don't ask. Anyway, I'll meet you at the front of the school after last period, okay?"
"Sure. See you later," I waved as the bell rang and I hurried to find my next class.
"That way!" Jazz pointed in the opposite of the direction I was going—of course.
"Thanks," I sighed, and gave a smile. "Later!"
--
Hmm...looks like things are slightly looking up for Sam. Ah, well I'll have to change that, now won't I? ;D Many cookies and thank you's to the awesomely awesome people that reviewed last chapter: Phantom2B, Galateagirl, PhantomPrincess, divinedragon7, animeobsessed3191, katiesparks, Ohka Breynekai, Stone-Man85, lostmoonchild, cutereviewgirl, conan98002, Terrasina Dragonwagon, Kagome M.K, dArkliTe-sPirit, Nobody-Important91, strange organized chaos, Amber, ravenrogue19, and Psycho but fun. You guys rock my non-existent socks, and I hope you'll all review again!