One Step at a Time
People reviewed the last chapter so I'm super-duper happy it's going well, in fact, so well that I've decided to post the next chappie! Hope you guys like it!
Disclaimer: see profile
Chapter 1
The world is round with a place which may seem like the end but is only the beginning.
Leaf sat in the tastefully decorated office alone. The man who called himself the principal of the school had left her alone to deal with 'a more pressing matter' but he promised he would be back in less than ten minutes. Not that Leaf cared though. She was glad that the principal had left her, giving her time to adjust to her new environment. Her palms felt less sweaty while she was alone and she became less anxious too, though all that returned the moment the principal did.
The door opened enough to allow the professor to get in, but not enough for whoever was on the other side to see into the room. He didn't sound impressed with whoever he was speaking to.
"No Gary that is an unacceptable answer. We will talk about this later. Now get to class." The principal said then proceeded to return to his duties, the first being to escort Leaf to her class. He wasn't too keen on the thought of walking her to her new class. It was far and she barely spoke a word to him since they met.
Leaf turned round and watched as the principal, whose name she couldn't recall, shut the door behind him and take his seat. Now, where were we?" he asked Leaf, though even he thought it was pointless to ask. He was unlikely to get an answer out of her. "Ah, yes, I shall personally escort… You know what? I have a really busy um, schedule today. My assistant will walk you to your class." He said then ordered in a smartly dressed woman.
"Yes, Mr Oak?" the lady said as she came into the room.
"Please escort Leaf to her new class with Erica?" Principal Oak ordered then dismissed them.
"Of course." Rhonda said as she signalled for Leaf to follow her.
The walk to class was silent, as the principal had predicted. Rhonda had attempted to start a conversation with Leaf several times but the teen had shot down each attempt, leaving the conversation to sink faster than the Titanic.
"This is your class." Rhonda announced as she knocked on the open door to grab the attention of a petite woman standing in front of the class of twenty odd students. "Erica, this is the new student Leaf Green."
Erica smiled sweetly and proceeded to say a few welcoming words that Leaf blanked. Not intentionally though. She found it hard to concentrate on what the teacher was saying when there were so many pairs of eyes staring at her and so many lips talking about her.
Through the murmurs she could hear people judge her. "Escorted to class on her first day by a receptionist, not even good enough for the principal. She must be poor", "Look at her face, she looks worn out like she's been working!"
Erica frowned. She too heard the comments and silenced the class quickly, "Leaf, why don't you take a seat anywhere you like, I'll be back to inform you of a few things in a few minutes." She said and darted back to where Rhonda stood.
Leaf timidly slid into the seat at the front of the class and set her bag on the desk.
The students stared at her intently, like she was some rabid animal at the zoo. An unfamiliar face is always something that caught the attention of the student body. A few of the boys at the back snickered at each other.
Within seconds of sitting down, Leaf saw a shadow approach her, at least she thought it was. They surrounded her; two guys standing behind her, one on either side of her and, who Leaf assumed to be the ring leader of the gang, in front of her, putting his hands on her desk in a cool yet demanding manner. All eyes were on them, all chatter had ceased.
The spiky haired brunet eyed Leaf up and down slowly with his cyan eyes, making her heart beat faster from a mixture of nerves, fear and anxiety. Her throat was dry too, but that dust matter, she didn't intend on saying anything to this stranger.
He picked up a small, stray bundle of her long locks and twirled it round his index finger and smirked as he let it drop. He then moved his hand down towards her chin and tilted it upwards, giving him a better view of her sinking face.
"Pretty." he commented with a snort. "Pretty poor looking, that is."
His group laughed at his comment. The class watched intently. Leaf didn't look at him, her cold gaze was directed towards the shiny mahogany desk in front of her. She tore her chin from his hand.
"What's the matter? Cat got your tongue?" he asked tauntingly.
Leaf continued to avoid his eyes and tucked her chin into her chest even more. She knew something bad was going to happen to her next.
If Erica didn't suddenly come back into the classroom it would've, that is. She gasped when she came back into the class, knowing what had happen just by looking at Leaf's situation. "Gary, the principal wants to see you in his office." Erica says quickly, the words almost tooling over the one before as they spilled from her mouth.
Gary reluctantly removed his hands from her desk and stepped away from her. His gang then stepped back too, giving Leaf her personal space back. She watched the scene before her.
Gary took a few slow steps towards the teacher, who stumbled back a step. "Does he really want to see me now, or are just saying that?" he asked scarily, his face was close to Erica's and his glare was haunting. The height he had over her made him extra intimidating.
"Y-Yes. Right now." she said with a stutter that she tried to hide.
Gary then stepped away from her and left the room and his gang returned to their original space.
Leaf let out a sigh of relief. Now that that Gary wasn't here, the remaining four guys won't do anything scary to her, right?
Her morning classes passed with a blur. She remembered nothing that had happened except for the incident with Gary earlier. Erica had arranged the class so that no one had time to talk to Leaf, to her relief. The last thing she'd want was for another person to heckle her.
Lunch time was hard for Leaf. She didn't know where to sit. All the tables had at least three people sitting at them; most of the tables had a loud volume of chatter and a few of them had people glaring at her. She lowered her head and tried to walk the opposite way from the canteen area but stopped when she noticed the ring of shoes that had formed around her, blocking her path.
She raised her head slightly and then attempted to brush past the group of flawlessly dressed girls that had surrounded her but came to an abrupt stop when they got a hold of her bag. Leaf tried to lunge forward in a desperate bid to regain possession of her bag but two girls grabbed onto her arms, stopping her from moving forward.
The girl who looked to be the leader of the pack held up the brown bag. "Let's get to know our new friend here." She said with an evil glint in her half hidden eyes. She used her other hand to slowly unzip the bag and emptied everything onto the floor beneath. She used the toes of her scratch-free stiletto to rummage through the contents in Leaf's bag. "Let's have a little look at this, shall we?" she picked up Leaf's green purse and opened it. The purse was relatively empty except for the few notes, coins, cards and the one photo that Leaf treasured.
"Well, who's this?" the girl asked in tone that sounds as if she was talking to a child. She held the purse up to let her group of friends see the photo of Leaf and her fiancé, or rather, the guy who was her fiancé.
"That's none of your business!" Leaf yelled as she tried to lunge forward for her purse but to no avail.
"Hmmm…" The girl poked around the scattered belongings on the floor again. "What's this?"
She picked up a small, pale green book that looked like a diary that had lots of little drawings scribbled on the front cover. Flicking through the book, the girl managed to catch glimpses of Leaf's neat handwriting and photos of various people, places and objects.
"Give it back!" Leaf yelled.
"This sounds rather important to you. Maybe I'll keep this and have a wee read." The girl was ready to pocket the diary when it was intercepted.
"I'll take this." The girl whipped round to see the principal with the diary now in his hands. "And this." He added, taking Leaf's purse out of the girl's hand too.
Leaf felt relieved that her diary was no longer in the possession of someone she could only describe as a bitch. She rubbed the parts of her arms that were previously gripped tightly by the blonde haired girls and picked up her bag and started to shove all her possessions – minus the diary and purse – back in.
The girls started to walk away while Leaf was packing her things. The last thing they wanted to do was to apologise for intruding Leaf's privacy, though, even if they did stick around, it was unlikely that Principal Oak would make them say sorry. With most of the students' parents donating so much money to keep the school in tip-top condition, making the students do things by force would be like committing reputation suicide.
Instead, the principal just said a stern, "We'll talk about this later, Olivia." and let the girl leave, to Leaf's annoyance.
But nonetheless, he did save her things. The least she could do was say 'thanks'. She picked up her bag and slung it over her shoulder. "Thanks." She said quietly and waited for the principal to hand her diary and purse back. She looked at him with a confused expression when he didn't.
"You can have this back when I see you and Olivia later." He clarified just before the bell went. "Now off to class."
First day and Leaf was going to be ordered down to the principal's office. Not exactly the best thing when trying to start fresh…
The professor flicked through the diary, trying to understand what all the fuss was when he stopped the situation from ascending any further. He had missed what had happened; only hearing Leaf demanding for her diary back.
He read through the first few entries and gathered that this was more of a journal than a diary that dated back to a few years ago. There were several pictures of a younger Leaf and people who the principal assumed to be her boyfriend, family and friends. When he flicked to the back, he saw something that raised concerns. Leaf wrote about everything in this notebook; her thoughts, her secrets – everything.
Even the death of her fiancé and his funeral in excruciating detail. Principal Oak felt his cheeks warm up from embarrassment from snooping so much in a teenage girl's journal. Maybe he needed to be made aware of a few things about this new girl.
He pressed a button on his phone on the desk. "Rhonda, call Leaf Green's parents for me please."
"Yes, Mr Oak. And Gary Oak is here to see you now." Rhonda said.
"Send him in."
The door opened without a knock and the almost six feet tall teen stepped into the room and took a seat across from the principal.
"Gramps." The teen said once he had made himself comfortable on the seat. His grandpa sighed at the sight of him. He had unbuttoned the top few buttons of his shirt and loosened his tie and had lost his blazer again. He looked nothing like the perfect students that the school produces, or at least rumours to.
"Gary, we need to deal with this issue one of your teachers has mentioned." He started.
"Will this teacher be Erica, by any chance?" he asked confidently. It wasn't the first time she had anonymously reported him to his gramps in the short period of time she had worked here.
"It doesn't matter which teacher but the point is you cannot disobey and belittle your teachers like that. You need to stop being so disrespectful and –"
"Mr Oak, Leaf Green's mother is here." Rhonda interrupted.
"Oh, good, send her in please." Principal Oak said into the phone. "Wait outside, Gary, I have a small matter to deal with but we will talk about your punishment later." He finished and picked up the journal, preparing himself for his talk with Mrs Green.
"Whatever." Gary said and stepped outside just as Rhonda led the guest in.
The principal stood up and extended his hand towards Mrs Green and shook hands with her. He waited until Rhonda was out of the room before he started to speak. It was a matter that needed to be spoken about in the utmost confidence.
Gary watched as Rhonda came out of the office and shoved his shoe in front of the path of the closing door to create a gap. If he was going to have to wait here then he may as well listen in. Sometime principal-parent talks were entertaining.
"Hello Principal Oak, I wonder why your assistant called me so urgently?" she said, unsure about why she was here.
"Yes, well, you see, Mrs Green, your daughter Leaf was involved in a little incident today with one of our students over this." He held up the green journal.
"That's Leaf's journal." She said, surprised that Leaf would part with something so precious to her. "She never goes anywhere without it."
"Well, I can see why. You see I had a wee look, to try to understand the situation Leaf was in with one of our other students and I was wondering after I read the last entry, is there something that the school should be made aware of?"
The brunette haired woman remained silent for a moment. "Well ever since that… That incident, Leaf has been a lot… Different, but don't worry, we've been seeing a specialist about it and she has it under control." She tried to reassure the older man.
"Okay." Principal Oak said, though he didn't sound completely convinced. "Anything else I should be made aware of?"
The woman shook he head right away. "Well, maybe a few minor things."
Gary listened carefully to the list that the woman was saying. It was at times like these that he enjoyed listening in on conversations.
That's this chapter done! Nothing too bad happened to Leaf but now that Gary's learnt a few things about Leaf that we are unaware of, what is he going to do? Use them of course!
Review please and I'll post the next chapter soon but here's a small snip just because I felt like I should give more away about the story.
Leaf sat at her desk. Her mood was worse than yesterday's and when a certain brunette haired boy strolled into class, she became even more wary and nervous. Even though she had only had one encounter with him, she could tell already that he was not someone to be messed with.
Her heart rate rocketed when she saw a pair of hands slam onto her desk. She swallowed hard and looked up at the same pair of cyan eyes that she saw yesterday.
He leaned in. "You have a secret that I want to know." He purred in her ear.