A Change In Weather

Chapter 4: Different

Days like these are hard to come by; the ones where I'm actually happy about being at school. I hold my head up high through the hallways with a big smile on my face, one that's not forced just so I don't get whispers about my resting bitch face.

 I actually laugh at Mikey and Ricks absurd stupid teenage boy jokes at lunch and don't mind listening to some girl talk about the dangers of sex in our Child Development class. Although it may not seem that awesome, today is fitness day.

Fitness day is where different sponsors from health and fitness companies come to the school and promote their product or service. Which for us, means free roam around both inside and outside of the school. It's pretty much social day you're forced to go to.  

I walk around with the intentions of finding Sarah. I notice she's wearing a long cream sweater with black leggings. Her curly black hair is slicked back with a headband. 

"You look so pretty Autumn." Her grin was promising but I didn't feel as nearly as pretty as Sarah. I lose connection with our group to scan around the gymnasium. This was our starting point to go wherever we chose.

I notice Marie on the bleachers right in front of me. She was sitting with Jasmine and her little clique, they were all laughing and Marie occasionally glanced over at me, flicking her long dirty-blonde hair.  Marie and I haven't spoken since last week when she told me I would be forever alone.  This wasn't the first time her and I got into some pointless argument that we would forget about the next day. This one, though, seemed different. 

"Autumn?" Five sets of eyes stare back at me when I come back to my senses. They look at me with concern except for Rick, who's probably questioning why he didn't skip the last part of this day. 

"Yeah." I run my fingers through my hair and feel my face get red hot. "Whatever you guys want to do." My smile was bright but I knew they weren't buying it.

"Whatever. I'm going outside." Rick jumps off the wall in front of the bleachers. His hair follows his brisk walk towards the door. The rest of the guys follow. 

I began to trail along until Sarah nudges me. "Autumn. What's been wrong lately?"

"I guess I've just been thinking a lot," I reply, knowing exactly what she's talking about.

"No." She continues, she presses her lips together as she thinks about the past few weeks. It was nice that I made a friend that was so concerned but I also wish she wouldn't care this much. "Like now, your hands are sweating." She picked up my dangling hands and flipped them over to expose the palms. 

I take them back and rub them on my jeans quickly. "It's just hot in here," I stuttered discreetly. "Let's go see where the boys went."

We push the doors open and the gush of wind smacks me in the face. I take in the cool air outside, the light breeze and the pretty leaves on the ground. We talk ourselves over to the field where there's a rock climbing wall, a dunk tank that teachers rotate in and out of, and a variety of games being played.

"Mr. Cabano." Sarah nudges me, remembering all of the things I've said about him. "You want to stand in line to hit him?" She beams and does a little hop. I know she's trying to cheer me up.

"No," I state, my eyes fixated on the rock wall. "There's a person climbing that wall pretty quickly. I actually want to go watch." Sarah nods and says she will be in line waiting to dunk another teacher who's turn is next. I nod back promising I'll meet up with her later.

The rock wall looks bigger the closer I get. I nudge the other high-school kids out of my way to get a better look at the person climbing it. I would notice that long wavy hair tied back anywhere.

"Chad??" I catch myself blurting out. A kid behind me answers. 

"Yeah, he's pretty good at this. He's been the fastest one yet."

"And the bravest." A girl chimes in and it sounds like she nudged the guy behind me. She was right, he had to be. It was an outside rock-wall, meaning there was no harness, just a big trampoline type thing that would catch you if you fell, compliments of the fire department. 

I look up watching him spider-monkey his way to the top of the wall. He taps his hand on the bright orange latch and the entire crowd cheers and claps. He looks down at the crowd, not that impressed that he did it. He makes his way down carefully but quickly finally hopping off the last ledge and doing a shrug. His lack of amazement doesn't stop the energy of the crowd. The guy running the wall was impressed as he stopped Chad before he went to get lost in the crowd, trying to hand him something but Chad shrugged it off. 

He notices me and stands next to me, letting the attention turn over to the new guy who wanted to give it a try. 

"That was awesome." I smile, noticing his look back at me. 

"Let's walk." We get away from the crowd and go through the groups of other people doing various activities. "I just wanted to get out of there." He continues, sitting down under a shady tree. He pats the spot next to him.

"So you didn't think you did a good job?" I can't control my excitement or the bright smile on my face. 

"I think people make a big deal out of simple things because they don't believe in themselves. If they had to, anyone could climb that wall. But the majority choose not to because they're scared of failure. So when they see someone do what they're too scared to do, they lose their minds. Maybe out of shock, fear, or amazement. "

"I never thought of it that way."

"Which is surprising because you don't seem like a simple girl to me. It's clear that you're different."

My smile slowly fades. 

"Am I wrong?"

"It's complicated." I look straightforward monitoring whatever enters my vision space. I needed to focus on something else.  

"Well, I'd love to know more about it. Would you like to hang out sometime?"