I have a really bad habit of making my chapters really short, so I've tried to fix it in this one. Hope you enjoy ^.^
*Max's POV*
I walk to my house, still with Fangs board in my hand. I'm getting a lift from him tomorrow so I'll give it back to him in the morning. I walk through the door and into the sitting room, my sister is lying back on the sofa with a bowl of cereal. Ella is about 5"5 and really skinny, her long medium brown hair is tightly clipped into a neat bun. She's wearing a mint green leotard and a skirt of the same colour made of a thin material which would usually reach just above her knees, but as she's lying down the skirt is bunched to her side by her pale thighs. Her hazel eyes meet mine.
"MAX" She yells jumping up and running to hug me, I hug her back. She's been at her dancing camp all summer, she's really talented. Don't let her slender frame fool you; ballerinas are really small but they have some serious muscle, Ella can be on her tiptoes on one foot kick the other behind her then lean back and catch it with her hands- It's hella impressive.
"How was camp" I ask smiling. I can see her reminising as her eyes gleam at me
"Oh. My. God. It was amazing" She says, then smiles to herself "four boys from the football club asked for my number"
"Did they get your number?" I asked
"No. I took their numbers so I could decide for myself" I shook my head and smiled slightly
"ah, I love you Ella" She's always popular with boys, but she doesn't seem that bothered about them, just kind of proud that she has them all wrapped around her little finger.
"Is that you Max?" Mum shouts from the kitchen. I walk in.
"Yo mum" I say, then look around "hey when is dad getting back?"
"He'll get back tomorrow evening, probably around five" mum replies. The timer on the oven goes off and she puts on her oven mitts and takes out a fresh batch of chocolate chip cookies. "Your dad should be bringing the food shopping home with him tomorrow, so for the moment we're having cookies and cereal for tea" She smiles and puts the tray down on the table. She then tucks her short, dark brown hair behind her ears and adjusts her thin framed glasses. My mum and Ella are both very thin, whilst I have a more athletic build.
I eat my tea of 5 cookies, some juice and a bowl of cornflakes then go up to my room with another cookie. I check my phone to see if there's any word of Fang. No nothing. Except a missed call from Iggy. I press the green button to ring him.
*Iggy's POV*
Max hasn't replied. It would be so much easier to text, but when the voice on the phone reads out the text it does it really slowly and loudly so everyone in the house can hear- so it's just easier to ring people. Hello I'm Jeff the blind kid that can never sext. Everyone calls me Iggy, I have no idea why; even my parents call me Iggy. I lay down on my bed.
"Ma-ax is calling" theautomated voice says. I trace my finger along the bed feeling the vibrations of the phone, I feel that it's close, so slide my whole hand until it hits the phone I pick it up and slide to unlock then press the phone to my ear.
"ello Maxy, my darlin'. 'ow are you?" I say putting on a voice, I hear her let out a quick breath which is what she does when she finds something funny. I also hear a creak in the back ground, like somebody shutting a door.
"yeah you rang?" she asks
"Oh yeah, just asking if I can have a lift with you tomorrow, parent number one is working and parent number two is taking the youngsters to their school" I say
"Is it Gaz's first day of middle school?" she asks I hear another noise, a soft kind of flump, she just lay on her bed.
"Oh no that's next year, him and Angel are still in primary school" I'm quite a bit older than my siblings. Gareth is eight, we call him Gaz, Gazzy, and The Gasman; Angel is 6, don't let her name fool you, she's in no way a Angel. They'll both be asleep by now, it's around 10pm. "But can I have a lift tomorrow?" I repeat.
"Chloe's taking us in and she had a 5 seater" She paused and I heard her take a bite of something. "Lets see Chloe, Fang, me, so... yeah there's room". All of us have been friends for years. Fang and Max have always known each other and I met them a year before we started primary school. Fang and I joke around with stuff and I basically tease Max all the time, but you know in a loving way.
"Okay thanks Max, I'll just ring him to check with him"
"No it will be fine, no need to ring"
"Oh okay, I guess I'll see your pretty little face tomorrow then"
"Yeah, whatever" She doesn't really like being complimented, I think she doesn't believe people when they do. She hangs up, I press the middle button on my phone to hang up.
I get ready for bed then click the middle button on my phone. "What's the time?" I ask
"eleven forty three pee em" okay 11:43pm, better go to sleep.
BUZZZZ
The alarm clock wakes me up. I'm a really heavy sleeper so I set it on extra loud. It still takes me a while to wake up properly. I stretch and fall asleep again. When I wake up again I frantically reach for my phone. I can't be late.
"what's the time?" I ask the phone
"seven oh eight am" oh shit I'm late.
I don't have time to use my colour detector to find matching clothes, I rummaged around my dresser to feel the thick material of jeans and quickly put them on over my boxers. Oh wait they're of shorts, oh well no time to change. I feel around for a random t-shirt and quickly pull that on. I pull on some socks and my shoes, I think my mum said they were white.
I run downstairs and grab my bag from the bottom of the stairs, I run into the kitchen and grab a waffle off Angels plate
"Hey" She yells as I run out the door.
*Max's POV*
I got over to Fangs house pretty early that morning I knocked on the door
"come in" I hear Chloe yell. I walk through the hallway and into the kitchen and see Chloe.
"Oh hello Max, Fang is in his room, tell him to hurry up won't you"
I run up all the stairs to Fangs room and knock on the door. "FANG" I yell knocking again.
"um don't come in" He said. His voice is all croaky.
"Um okay weirdo, I'll give you a minute then I'll come in" I hear him sigh from inside
"Just come in" He says, sounding defeated. I open the door and peer around the corner, he's sitting on the floor looking in the mirror.
"being vain are we?" I peer into the mirror and see his face. A black eye stands out, I'm taken aback. His eyelid is slightly shut and surrounded by blue, little whispers of yellow and green float out. He's also skinned his chin.
"What the fuck happened?" I ask, shocked. Fang shrugged. "Seriously Fang, who did this to you?"
"oh! It's from skateboarding" I narrowed my eyes, I doubt skateboarding could cause that level of injury
"Where's it from?"
"skateboarding. I just said"
"How did you get it from skateboarding?"
"My back wheels got stuck in a bench when I tried to jump over it and I fell onto the ground head first" I'm still not sure if I buy it. But Fang is generally a truthful person so I give him the benefit of the doubt, but hmm I'm not sure.
*Fangs POV*
So Max buys my story. Well kind of, she has been looking at my black eye quite a lot, god why does she have to be so annoying and not believe me. My mum bought the story straight away, but Max can read me just so easily it's going to be hard to slip by. I don't want her to know, she'll do this thing were she goes all caring and baby me; I can defend myself, but not when I'm being beaten up by four guys. I wore a long sleeve black shirt and some black jeans to cover up other bruises. I was really lucky I didn't break anything, but my legs do ache a bit. I got back home at around 11 from stumbling around, I told my mum I had a really bad fall and it took me a long time to get home. Good thing her boyfriend Ian hasn't moved in yet, because I know he wouldn't believe me; he's a paramedic and he can easily recognise bruises from a fight. Hopefully the bruising will go down a bit before he comes back. Now all I have to do is come up with a decent excuse as to why I don't have a phone.
Max and I go downstairs to meet my mum in the kitchen and oh look there's Iggy at the breakfast table eating a big bowl of cereal.
"ah hi guys" He says with a mouth full of cheerios. He puts the bowl up to his mouth and finishes it off then stands up. He's wearing some tight denim shorts and a bright yellow shirt with a smiley face on it.
"tight shorts" I say. Iggy gives me a goofy lop-sided smile.
"yeah. You been checking out ma buns?" he chuckles. We chat around for a couple of minutes and I eat some cereal, then we go to school. I keep on seeing Max looking at me from the corner if my eye.
Okay so I really got used to be one of the oldest at middle school, I'm 5"7 and was the tallest kid at school, now I get here and There are people who are over 6 foot towering over us. Max holds Iggy's hand so he can make it through the crowded hallways. Everyone stares at me as I pass and I hear whispers but can't really make out what they're saying. I hear Iggy laugh.
"What?" Max asks. Iggy chuckles. Because he can't see all his other senses are heightened, mainly his hearing and sense of touch.
"They keep on saying the stuff about the emo kid" he laughs again "hah hah Fang is the emo kid isn't he?" I grit my teeth, I don't like people talking about me I just want people to leave me alone. "hey wait a second" Iggy takes a pause "They said you have a black eye"
"Yeah" Max says "He says he got it from skateboarding". I can sense the sarcasm, but I goes over Iggys head as he goes back to listening to other peoples whispers.
"Hah, one kid just said you gave yourself a black eye to go with your outfit" Iggy laughed. Jeez can people just stop staring at me. Especially Max, she just needs to leave me alone. We see a big sign that says main hall so we walk in. Everybody stares at us, then starts whispering. Ugh.
Max tells Iggy the seats are just in front of him and he struts up to them and sits down, we all follow and sit next to him. It's an introduction assembly and a stern looking middle aged white woman comes out and tells us all the rules or something I wasn't really listening. Her eyes meet mine and narrow I can tell she spotted the black eye. Oh god. I put my head down and hope no one looks at me.
The day goes by pretty quickly. In most classes we're just told the rules then introduce ourselves. We all have to do science (made up of biology, physics and chemistry), English and Maths, but I chose to also do art, psychology, music, history and French. I'm with Max for English and History, with Iggy in psychology and science, and I'm with both of them in maths.
My schedule is maths, history, morning break, biology, art, lunch, physics. Each lesson and lunch is an hour and morning break is 15 minutes. I get to maths getting lost with about six people asking me about the eye. I get to the maths and science building and find out that though my lesson is at the same time as Max and Iggy we're not in the same class. I'm in the top set, Iggy's in set two and Max is in set four. I get put next to this guy with spiky blonde hair who tapped his pens on the desk, probably a drummer. He turns to me.
"How did you get the eye?" He asks
"Well I was born with my eye" I replied and looked away from him. I just wish people would leave me alone.
"ha ha very funny" He says sarcastically "Come on what did you do? Were you in a fight?" His eyes widen, they're some type of bluish colour.
"No" I say and look away
"You're not very talkative are you?" He nudges me "Come on tell me" I sigh and turn my head to the side
"I got it from skateboarding" I say. He gives me a confused expression
"You can't get a bruise like that from skateboarding" He say.
"I landed face first" I said, correcting him and giving him a stern look
"ah okay" he says, then goes back to drumming on the desk with his pens. "Sorry, where are my manners. I'm Red" he says dropping the pens. "What's your name?"
"Nick" I reply
"Nick the skateboarder" He says to himself "kinda goes together" he says. He drums on the desk a bit more then the teacher walks in to start the class. A man with a Scottish accent introduces himself as Mr McFadden and asks us all the introduce ourselves to the class. That's how most of the classes go. In History the teacher tells us that the boys have to sit next to the girls. Girls holding the hands of their best friends make sad faces and the boys roll their eyes. I raise an eyebrow and smirk at Max and she winks at me as we sit down next to each other. We introduce ourselves and I doodle on my notepad, Max nudges my elbow every so often so it turns into a mess so I glare at her and start again. She's kind of left me alone about the eye, but I'm sure she'll ask again.
Morning breaks and biology nothing interesting happens people keep on asking me about the eye but I just glare at them and walk away. Art was pretty good. We have a cool teacher she gives us these books and a exam paper with 6 possible topics: changes in time, culture, shades, crowds, natural environment, and movement. She says each topic is up to artistic interpretation (which basically means we can do whatever we want) but we need to do at least 3 artist copies, and 3 observation pieces before we start the development on out original art piece.
Each desk is for two people I sit alone on a desk. A girl with redy brown hair sits next to me and smiles. I look at her then look back to the sheet to pick my topic. Movement sounds quite good.
"Hello" She says "what's your name?"
"Nick" I say then look back to the paper. I hear her giggle
"You don't speak much do you?" she smiles "Hey?" I shrug. "um. What topic do you think you'll pick?"
"um" I start "probably movement"
"Oh yeah that will be cool. I'm Lissa by the way" She smiles at me again, I let a small smile slip out.
"hey Lissa" I say "what topic are you going to pick?" I ask. I don't even know why I'm talking to her, but oh well.
"Ummmmmm. Hmmmmmm" she taps her chin with her finger "I think shades would be good" she says.
She asks me lots of questions about what subjects I'm doing, but not a single one about my eye. She tells me a funny story about how she heard some squeaking from her lunch box in the introduction assembly and it turned out that her pet hamster that crawled in this morning, so she had to ring her mum to pick it up. She seems all right.
I meet Iggy and Max for lunch and finish the day with physics. It wasn't too bad, I made a kinda friend.
I walk down to the back of school where my mum is going to pick us up.
"HEY!" I hear some shouting behind me so turn around. Lissa is running down the path clutching onto a canvas bag at her side. "Oh hi Nick, you left your art book" She smiles, then keeps on running to a red car, jumps in then it drives off.
I get into the car.
"Who was that?" Max asks, not facing me with her eyes pointed in my direction. I shrug then she points her body in my direction.
"she's in my art class. Lissa something" I reply.
It was quiet the way home, Iggy told us about how good the learning support was and that they were going to buy a laptop for him that had voice control and recording features for school, but it would be his so he could use it at home as well.
We dropped Iggy and Max of to their homes.
As I went up to my room I dropped my art book and it fell open on the first page. There was some writing on the first page. 'Call me- Lissa 3' then her phone number was written underneath. My face creased into a slight smile. No. No. I'm not doing this, I'm not going to go mushy as soon as a girl gives me her number. The smile disappears.
So thank you very much for reading, please review.
Have a lovely day
-Jess x