Something About Her

"Thanks for the ride Mom. See you later." I said, as I kissed my Mom on the forehead and lugged my heavy bookbag out of the car.

"Bye Sweetheart. Have a good first day of school!" She shouted out the window. I looked around. Luckily, no one heard that. I gave her a final wave goodbye as I stepped on the curb.

So .. this is how it feels to be an outcast, I thought, as I looked around and realized that I knew no one here. Guess i'm gonna have to make new friends. This should be fairly easy..Back in Colorado, I made friends easily. But this isn't Colorado, I thought to myself. This is California.

I guess I could sort of just..fly under the radar this whole school year. I mean, it's thousands of students in this school, plus, it's California. I have a pretty sweet tan remaining from my many trips to Florida, I imagine a lot of other people here do too, so I shouldn't stand out that much.

But anyways, I've been standing here for 5 minutes. People inside were starting to stare out at me through the glass windows, so I decided to come in.

As soon as I came in, I was bombarded with noise. It was chaos, pure chaos. I felt like I could hear every single thought of everyone in the school. Even though the school was large enough to hold 7,000 kids, it sounded like they were all in this main hallway. I had to find the Principal's office to get my schedule and school papers, but the noise level was outrageous and it gave me a massive headache.

"Hey, are you lost?" I turned around to find a girl staring at me. She was good looking, but strange. She had a light mocha skin tone with bright red hair pulled into a messy bun on top of her head. She had large pretty hazel eyes and she was very short. She was wearing a boys jean button up shirt, white skinny jeans and red Doc Martens.

Something about her ..

"Um, hello?" She said. I completely forgot she was talking to me.. I couldn't stop looking at her.

"Oh, uh, sorry. Yes, I'm lost. I need to find the principal's office. Do you know where it is?" I asked.

She grinned, revealing her dimples. Cute, I thought. "Yeah! Follow me. Oh, I'm Zulu. Zulu Clarke. Nice to meet you."

"Oh, cool. I'm Jace. Nice to meet you ..Zulu."

She caught the grin I gave her when I said 'Zulu'.

"Hey, what's so funny? Why are you smiling?" She asked as she raised an eyebrow.

"Nothing." I smiled even wider.

"Why are you smiling?! Tell me!" She was pouting. Damn, she looked even cuter when she was angry.

"It's nothing .. Zulu!" Haha, I laughed to myself.

"Tell me or I won't take you to the office!" Zulu demanded. At that moment, I realized we'd been standing in the same spot for a while.

"Okay fine! It's just that ..you're kind of odd to me. And your name just makes you even odder." I looked down as I spoke.

Zulu went silent as she stared at me. She sized me up and down for the first time. I was wearing my Red Supreme cap, plain black shirt, black skinnies and red Vans. Nothing out of the ordinary for Me.

I don't know, but for some reason, her looking at me like this made me ..for the first time in my life, self-conscious. Back in Colorado, everyone knew me. I was popular and things (and girls) came effortlessly to me. But Zulu was something different. A surprise to Me.

She broke the silence. "Oh, you're not the first person to tell me that." She said, looking a bit relieved.

"So..should we get to cla-"

"You have something on your neck." Zulu interrupted. I bit my lip as she reached as far as she could to get whatever it was off my neck. She was the size of a 6th grader, compared to me who was average 10th-grade-boy height.

She held up a piece of red string. "Got it. What's wrong?"

I must have been blushing, but oh god she smelled good. "Erm, nothing. You smell really good." I felt my cheeks reddening.

Her face brightened up as I said that. "Thanks! Well if we're giving out compliments, your eyes are gorgeous. I've never seen anyone with gray eyes before.." She trailed off. "Where was I? Oh yeah. Let's go or we'll be late!" She dragged me by the arm to the office which was right around the corner from the entrance. I imagine I was grinning the whole time.

The registration process was surprisingly fast and easy. Turns out my Mom shipped in most of the information to the school so I really only needed to go in to get my schedule. I left the office with my schedule and as soon as I stepped out someone snatched it.

"What the fu-."

"Hey, we have homeroom and mod 3 together. C'mon. The bell's about to ring, I'll walk you to class." Zulu said.

"Look, little one," I said, smiling. "You can't just come out of nowhere scaring people and shit."

"Oh yeah? Well what'll happen if I scare you again?"

"I'll stuff you in that trashcan over there. You're small enough to fit in there." I pointed to the trashcan on the other side of the hallway. She playfully pushed me over and I laughed.

"You wouldn't!" Zulu challenged.

"Oh, wouldn't I?" I grinned. I dropped my bookbag in the middle of the hallway, despite the rush to get to get to class. Then, I picked Zulu up by the waist like I promised and started walking towards the trashcan, all the while Zulu screaming in my ear to 'put me down'.

"Ugh! Put me down now! Jace I'm serious put me down! Grr, you're such a douchebag, put me down! Put me down!" She exclaimed. She was kicking and thrashing at me, hah.

"Okay okay, fine." I lowered her to the ground, laughing all the while.

"I HATE you!" She pouted, turned around and crossed her arms. I couldn't help but smile. She looked so cute.

"Come on, little one. We're not going to class today." With that, I picked her up and arranged her on my back in piggy-back position. "We're gonna go get some coffee."

She giggled. "So this is how it feels to be tall?"