Shift

Chapter 9

First, I want to thank all of you for your kind words for my dad. He was in the hospital a little longer than we expected, but he's home now and feeling better. Second, I want to thank you for being patient with me. I am way behind on getting this chapter out. With that said there are just over 25,000 words in this story so far. My goal is 75,000. Chapter 10 should be out by this weekend, and I am a little excited about it.

Thank you all for reading, voting, and commenting.

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I spent the rest of the week confined to my bedroom. When my mother came home, she made a dramatic scene about me being sick. I was already in my bedroom when she stormed into the house, even so, I could hear her yelling at my father. He came upstairs only long enough to reinforce that I was not to leave my bedroom until whatever I had was gone.

Unfortunately for me, it wasn't gone. It'd gotten worse. I went from feeling like crap and having a fever to throwing up and having tremors. I'd never been sick before, so this was new to me. And as sick as I felt, there was no way that I was going to miss my first day of school.

I stood in the driveway wearing my nicest pink skirt paired with my white cotton three-quarter sleeve shirt. My backpack is light on my back only holding a few notebooks and some pencils. I was the only one out on our street waiting for the bus. I wanted to escape before one of my parents could stop me. If they even noticed that is.

Just before the bus came bumbling down our street, Nathan stepped out of his house. Shutting his door behind him, he froze as he spotted me. His gaze was curious, and I didn't understand why. We held each other's eyes until the sound of a garage door opening had us looking away. I turned my head to see Kota walking to his car. Nathan jogged across the street toward him, and while he kept giving me backward glances Kota never looked at me once.

As soon as the bus came into view, Kota had backed out of his drive and was pulling away. The bus came to a stop in front of me, and my trembling legs almost had me tripping over the steps. I threw myself into the first open seat that I found. The bus was nearly full. When the bus started moving, nausea hit me like a freight train. I breathed slow, deep breaths through my nose to try and hold it off. I was not going to throw up on the bus. I would not miss my first day of school.

The school parking lot was packed full of cars. I rushed inside and nearly ran for the bathroom. I barely made it to an empty stall in time to empty my stomach. By the time I was done, my throat felt like it had been shredded and my abdomen hurt from heaving. I rinsed my mouth out with water from the sink then I dragged myself out of the restroom and headed to the first class on my schedule.

It was a bit of a struggle to get through the crowd of students just to make it to my class, but I managed it just before the bell rang. There were only three desks open, two were next to each other towards the back and one was in the very front. The tremble in my legs told me that I had to take the seat in the front.

Just as my butt hit the seat, a middle-aged man with dark hair strode into the room. He dropped the bag that was slung over his shoulder on top of the desk in front of the room and pulled out a notebook. Everyone talked quietly as they waited for him to speak. He moved to the front of the class standing before my desk as he looked at each of the students. He opened his mouth, presumably to speak when the door opened revealing a familiar grumpy giant and his blond brother.

I focused my eyes on the teacher. Kota told me to stay away from them and after how he acted in my bedroom, I wasn't quite sure that I wanted to push him. I hadn't really understood what he was talking about, but I did understand that he was angry and my experience with people's anger was that pain usually followed.