Sasha Blaus had spent the 1 1/2 car ride to Trost high school nervously staring at her feet, and chewing her lip.
She was hungry. She always got hungry when she was nervous. Well to be fair she also got hungry when she was excited too.
Her dad looked over to his daughter, and noticed that she wasn't unusually quite.
"Sasha, you alright?", Artur asked.
"I'm....just nervous, what if I can't make friends here. What if it's just middle school all over again", Sasha said feeling a lump in her throat.
Her 3 years at Dauper Middle had been hell. She hit a growth spurt earlier, was athletic, and goofy, and didn't really start being into more girly things like fashion and make up until 8th grade. But it was too little too late. People who had been her friends in elementary school turned their backs on her. It was fun to make fun of the "giant", or the "tom boy". She was good student but definitely had her moments of idiocy, and the kids pounced on that too. "Sasha why are you so dumb?", "that's not funny Sasha". By the time she had tried to fit it, she was just seen as a "try hard". The final straw had been the 8th grade formal.
Since 7th grade she had had a crush on Kevin Anderson. He played basketball and soccer and so did she, but again she was the class loser so no chance at that. Unfortunately her secret crush got out, and she was teased relentlessly for it, but never by Kevin so, she held on hope.
So imagine her excitement when she got a note in her locker, two Friday's ago talking about how cool and pretty she was, and that he wanted to take her to the dance. Sasha was ecstatic. She quickly texted the number that was on the note, assuming it was Kevin, saying that she would love to go to the dance with him. Getting a winking emoji & heart emoji back. Finally she was going to be in the it crowd. That weekend her sister, mom, and her went dress shopping, and found the perfect dress. Finding a beautiful dark green dress that made Sasha's brown eyes pop.
She was in cloud 9. Until lunch on Monday. With a new sense of confidence, Sasha went to Kevin's lunch table, not even noticing Kelsey and her friends eyeing her, trying to hold in their laughter.
Sasha had excitedly told Kevin that she bought her dress for the formal and was excited to know what he was wearing. Her stomach immediately dropped when he had a confused looked on his face and then busted out laughing. At that moment Kelsey and her friends couldn't hold it in any longer.
Through he laughter Kevin explained that Kelsey had paid him $20 to write the note, and that the number on the note wasn't his, it was Kelsey's. He went on to laugh at the idea that he would even think about taking the "class weirdo" to the formal.
The room had started spinning, it felt like the whole lunch room was staring a her. Kelsey's friends laughter echoed in her head. She heard the whispers "she actually bought a dress and everything".
Before the tears came Sasha crumpled the note and threw it at Kevin. As she passed Kelsey's lunch table she gave her the finger, thank god a teacher didn't see, and got out of there as quick as she could. She spent the rest of lunch and part of 6th period in the nurses office with "period cramps", while she texted her mom to come get her.
Sasha had kept the dress though. The night of the dance, her dad was going to take her and Kaya out for a fancy night on the town. Considering that he had just expanded his agricultural engineering company and their stables were expanding as well.
Sasha had begged parents to not get involved, she knew that would make it worse. At the time they had been considered let Sasha go to the local private school for high school. But since the family now had jumped a tax bracket, and Artur's business moving to Trost. They were moving too, which meant no school uniform and a new town and a new start.
"We here", Artur said pulling up to Trost High School. "You'll be ok Sasha, you are a ray of sunshine that lights up the world".
"Thanks dad. I love you."
"Love you too darling"
Sasha walked into the front office in a pair of overall shorts with a shirt with daisies underneath, hair in a loose ponytail and keds to finish to look. Kaya had picked it out for her.
The kind lady at the front office smiled at her. "Are you here for the preview day?"
"Yes ma'am Sasha Blaus, I'm not from one of the local middle schools."
"Right Ms. Blaus," she handed Sasha a name tag. "You'll be with the group from Ragako Middle School, actually that's them now". She said as a bus pulled up.
An hour later after an assembly in the gym where department heads and student leaders introduced themselves they broke up into their groups.
Sasha hung in the back, not really wanting to draw attention to herself, but of course the kids wanted to know who this new girl was. Then she heard a familiar voice.
"Sasha!!!", her student leader pulled her into a big hug. "I'm so happy your in my group!!!, the girl with dark red hair said.
"Nifa, it's nice to see a familiar face."
Nifa and Sasha were on the field hockey team together and were in the middle of spring practice.
"Don't worry I show you all the ends and outs of Trost!", Nifa said with a smile. Then went to the front of the group curious 8th graders.
As Nifa and her partner, some freshman named Bertholdt did their welcome speech, she kept noticing a boy looking at her. He had cropped blondish brownish hair, and was wear a sweatshirt that read "Rakago baseball". She caught her gaze and he quickly looked the other way. They started walking a noticed the back of the sweatshirt said "Springer" on it.
They made their ways through the halls of Trost, with Bertholdt and Nifa talking away. Eventually Sasha and Springer ended up next to one another, with the boy trying to catch glances at her. Finally he spoke. "So your not from RMS are you?"
Sasha giggled nervously, "what gave it away?"
"Well we don't have a lot of pretty girls at my middle school", he said, and immediately his eyes went wide. It was clearly something he had not meant to say out loud.
Sasha looked at her feet to hide her blush.
"Im sorry I sometimes don't have a filter and I, I promise I'm not a weirdo, I'm sorry I said that, not that you aren't pretty just...."
Sasha giggled, "it's ok, I guess that's why your last name is Springer, words just spring out of your mouth".
The boy gave a genuine laugh at her corny joke. Which earned a shush from one of the teachers walking by in the hall.
"Do you like sour patch kids?" Sasha asked, "I got some in my bag if you wanna share?"
"Is the sky blue?"
"Well not all of the time"
The both quietly laughed.
The rest of the tour was spent with them hanging in the back sharing sour patch kids, and making silly jokes and such. Sasha had never felt more relaxed around someone, especially a cute boy like this one....Kevin who?
By the end of the preview day. The Springer realized that Sasha wouldn't be going on the bus with him, and was bummed because he wanted sit next to her.
"Hey by the way, I never got your name" he said.
"It's Sasha...Sasha Blaus, like the shirt"
He laughed and extended his hand, "Connie Springer, I'm glad you were put in my group"
"Me too" Sasha said with a warm smile.
Later that evening while she was sitting at the kitchen table doing her homework, she got notification on her phone.
"One new follow request" on Instagram.
She opened the app, and started blushing when she saw that Conman21 had requested to follow her & had recognized the cute boy in the profile picture. She accepted and requested to follow back. Not a minute later did he accept.
Sasha smiled....maybe high school wasn't going to be so bad after all
To be continued...
