Shine Bright Shirley

Chapter 6

Grace's POV:

After looking for Lucas for around 10 minutes I decide that I have well and truly lost him so I end up heading out of the crowd of sweaty teens thats actually starting to make me feel rather claustrophobic. I see a small bench off in the distance away from the crowd at a more open bit in the woods and decide to go and take a seat on it. As I take a seat I look around and admire the view of the party, watching as I see groups of guys standing with drinks in their hands laughing with one another, some girls drunkly dancing with each other and looking over to my left I see a boy and girl sitting on the ground clearly flirting with one another.

Sighing I look up to the sky to see thousands of tiny sparkling stars starting to make an appearance, I smile feeling a little comfort in them. After my mom died, at night I used to always look up at the stars imagining her being one of them shining down on me, it would make me feel as if she was right there keeping me company. Kind of ironic how her last words to me were "Shine bright Shirley" when in reality she is the only one I can imagine to be shining brightly right now.

My thoughts are interrupted by someone clearing their throat, I look up to see two extremely pretty girls standing in front of me smiling widely making feel a little self conscious. Maybe I should have put more effort into what I'm wearing.

"Hi your new here right, I haven't seen you before and I'm sure I would have remembered if I saw someone with that gorgeous colour of hair around here before. Is it your natural colour?" The smaller, curly haired brunette girl asks.

"Erm... yeh this is my natural hair colour." I say, awkwardly touching my hair.

"Well its really pretty, I wish my hair was that colour." The brunette replied sending me a big smile, in which I awkwardly returned not used to getting compliments on the colour of my hair. "Oh sorry we forgot to introduces ourselves, I'm Alison but everyone just calls me Ally and this is Nora." She said pointing towards the girl next to her with bright blue eyes and blonde hair.

"Hi." Nora says sending me a small wave.

"Hi, I'm Grace." I reply sending a small wave in return to both girls.

"Nice to meet you Grace. So when did you move here?" Alison asks me while inviting herself to take a seat beside me on the bench.

"Um just yesterday actually." I say letting out a little awkward laugh.

"Wait so how did you know about this party then?" Nora asks me with a confused look on her face as she takes a seat on the ground in front of the bench, clearly not caring if her white shorts get dirty from the ground.

"I came with some people that I know." I said vaguely really not wanting to bring up the whole foster situation just yet, some people were so quick to judge.

"Aw that makes sense." Alison said, either sensing that I didn't want to say anymore or just didn't care enough to ask which, I appreciated either way. "So are you going to be starting our school?"

"Yeh I think I'm starting on Monday, I'll be a senior." I replied back looking at my chipped nails. Damn I should really redo my nails one of these days.

"Oh that's great you'll be in the same year as us." Nora says excitedly.

"Our school isn't too bad, a lot of cool teachers. It is a very sports orientated school and has your typical cliques like any other school." Alison said taking a swig of whatever drink she has in her cup.