In Between

Between Ch 1

It was one of those days. You know the kind. The kind where, from the very beginning of the morning, you know everything is going to go wrong. I seem to have a lot of those kinds of days. When my alarm clock rang and I reached over to turn the damn thing off, I managed to fall out of bed and slam my face into the floor, knocking my entire bedside table on top of me. I was pretty sure I had broken my nose. Then I looked at my clock. It said 8:30. Shit. School had started half an hour ago! The stupid thing was supposed to ring at 6:30! What was wrong with it? In a momentary fit of rage I threw the alarm clock across the room. It hit the door knob to my bedroom, knocking it off onto the floor. Shit. Again.

I uselessly tried to put the knob back on the door, then I started to fiddle with it to see if it might open. 15 more minutes passed. I was missing my first period history test. Ms. Scope was the hardest teacher in the grade, rumored to be the hardest in my whole high school, and if you missed her test she would only make it ten times harder for the make-up. I started to freak out, but then the door swung open and I bounded out into the bathroom to brush my teeth and wash my face. No time for a shower.

I rushed back into my room and threw on the first thing I grabbed out of my closet, which ended being jeans and a t-shirt from the beach clean-up I did last year. Oh, well. No time to change that. I threw on a pair of converse, grabbed my keys, and slung my back pack over my shoulder before heading out to the car.

I was half-way to school when I realized that I had had nothing to eat. That could be a problem. No one wants to be around me when I haven't eaten. I get a little bitchy. The fact that I admit it myself just shows how bad it is. Oh, well, I thought to myself for the second time that morning, I guess I'll just need to buy something at break. That's when I realized that I had left my money at home. That means no breakfast, and no lunch. Today was going to be a bad day.

I got to school at 9, and by that point there was only 20 minutes of the class left, so there was no way I would be able to finish the test. I resigned myself to studying all that night. When I went to get out of the car, my foot caught and I fell onto my face for the second time. This time when I got up, I felt something warm and sticky drizzling from my nose. I quickly went to the bathroom while covering my nose, and I saw in the mirror that I had a huge cut going across my nose that was bleeding considerably. I grabbed a paper towel, wet it, and started dabbing at the blood on my nose, wincing at the pain. Stupid morning. Stupid school. Stupid Mondays. It sucked.

I had to go to the Student Life office to get a band aid, and I felt stupid walking into my second period math class with a huge thing stuck to my nose. When I came in through the door, my best friend Penelope looked up and immediately busted up laughing. My cheeks started to turn red when everyone looked at me, and I rushed to my seat mumbling "Shut up, Pen."

"I didn't say anything." she smirked at me.

I sat there in stony silence for the rest of the class. I wasn't really that mad, but I was starting to feel hungry, and I never want to talk to anyone when I'm hungry. But I figured I was going to have to talk to somebody, and talk very sweetly to that person, if I wanted to borrow money for lunch. Penelope brought her own lunch every day, and she never had money with her. My other friends would probably lend me some, except most of them were in choir and where going to be away all day for some event that no one really knew about. I was going to have to ask someone outside of my groupete ( that's what we call our group of friends. I'm not really too sure how it got like that.) Not that I didn't know these anyone else in my class. I was on pretty good terms with all of them. I just felt uncomfortable asking people for money, even if I was going to pay it back. As I was sitting there thinking about this, the pain from my nose seemed to wash through me all at once. I tensed, and grabbed the edge of my desk. Penelope looked at me, concerned, and opened her mouth as if to say something, but the teacher turned around and gave her a sharp look. She closed her mouth, but continued to stare at me sympathetically.