Chapter Eight
A/N: Just as a side note, I was thinking about it, and I got a review suggesting I put up my story for "Adoption". I had a minor epiphany at that moment, I care about this story enough to want to hold on to it, and I'm going try to finish it myself. Just thought you should know, to ease any worries.
Jane
Smacking face first into a brick wall would be an understatement. Do brick walls normally meet you head on? The kid is broad-shouldered and his massive muscles have me stumbling backwards. He grunts and keeps plowing through kids without a word, most people have learned to get out of his way by now, but it wasn't in the welcome packet the stuffy vice principal gave me. I shoot a scathing glare at his back and clumsily gather the books he smashed out of my hands, hoping I can grab them before they get even more dispersed across the hallway. Long silver nails dart out and hand me my Physics textbook.
"You okay?" She asks, and I finally look up and take in the girl crouched beside me. Perfect golden brown curls land a few inches past her shoulders. Her face is bare of makeup, and she's dressed in a simple cream-colored sweater. I blink once or twice, before scrambling to pick up my books. SH hands me the last obscenely large textbook with a smile. "Ignore Bart; he's one step behind the rest of us in the evolutionary track." She assures me, rolling her eyes at the Neanderthal who has stopped to talk to some other moron. I tuck a lock of hair behind my ear and smile uncertainly.
"I wasn't planning on it." I assure her, as we both stand up. I glance down at her shoes, and notice she's not in sandals, or heels, like the ones I'm stuck in. Instead, she's rocking Nike's and I almost want to shout with joy, finally someone normal(ish)!
"You're the new girl, right?" She asks, and unlike some of the other people who have referred to me as that, the inflection made it clear she didn't mean it as a derogatory term, like I'm an alien or something. Seriously, I'm from Arizona, people: no need to act like I have eight heads.
I've never lived in a small town, and the charming side everyone tells you about hasn't really made its appearance just yet. At the moment, it's a little like living in a fishbowl, and everyone flips out when some new fish is dropped into the bowl. How the hell does anyone deal with this?
It doesn't make any sense, typically, demigods, especially powerful ones, have to move around a lot to avoid monster attacks; which is definitely a consideration when monsters get you expelled when stupid fire-breathing lizards melt the girls' locker room and get you expelled, and everyone thinks you're nuts, when you try to explain to your kindergarten teacher that it wasn't your fault and a mean snake did it and then he ran away. If I had to go through that crap growing up then, there is no way some ridiculously powerful demigod can just swim around the fish bowl entirely unnoticed.
"I'm sorry, I'm totally spacing on your name, Jasmine?" She guesses, as we walk, grimacing a bit when I shake my head. I smile forgivingly; I'm just as retched with names as she is. Most of them just go in one ear and out the other. Zach always used to tease me about it when I butchered a teacher's name a month into school. Biting my lip, I force myself to focus on the girl speaking to me, instead of letting it wander to that moron.
"Jane." I correct her, and she sighs with disappointment.
"I'll never get it; I'm Anna, by the way." She tells me, before slipping into an art class. Unless I'm nuts, and make no mistake, I'm not discarding the possibly that I'm a wing nut, I think I may have just made a new friend.
Marcus
Anna Hayward may be certifiably crazy. Not Jane crazy: or even Kristen crazy. Anna is her own brand of nuts. We've known each other since we were six years old, and her family is about as rich as god. Yet, I have yet to see her in anything that's considered rich or posh. Her jeans are practical and without holes. Her brown, untouched hair is kept either naturally down or in a pony-tail, and her shirts are sans brand logos and sequins. Not that she's a slob or, doesn't care about her appearances he's just not obsessed with it, like most of the girls I know.
That's not the only reason, either, in ten years of knowing her; I have yet to see her be even the slightest bit judgmental or mean. I don't get it. Is it even possible that she could like and respect everyone? I just can't see it; everyone has a dark side, except for Anna. I saw something once that serial killer sometimes are mistaken for entirely normally, perpetually happy people. I shook my head at the thought, I've known her forever, and there is no way she's a serially killer, hopefully.
She perches on the stool next to me, attracting some odd glances from people who don't know either of us very well. It's easy to see that our reputations clash a bit. She drums her pencil on the edge of the art table and I can hear her foot tapping on her stool. I roll my eyes at her, but smile anyways.
"Could you be any more fidgety?" I tease her and she just sticks her tongue out at me. The teacher wanders in and starts rambling about self-expression and all that crap art teachers throw at us. After a couple of minutes, she leaves again and tells us "to let the color pencil do what it needs to do".
Anna who actually takes this stuff seriously, purses her lips before beginning her drawing. I roll my eyes again, the rest of the room is slacking off, like normal people, but Anna is seriously studying the paper, like her life depends on it.
"You do realize this is art, not something that actually is going to matter in two years, right?" I remind her, it's not even as if she wants to be an artist, she's pitiful at it, seriously I can never figure out what her drawing was supposed to be. Sometimes I'll compliment her on her drawing of a dolphin and she'll tell me it's a horse.
"Everything counts in the long run." I raise an eyebrow at her philosophic answer. Just another reason she'll surprise me on a daily basis, the girl comes u with conundrums all the time. "Anyways, have you met the new girl yet?"She asks, leaving me speechless.