Ch. 1: Starting Over

CHAPTER ONE:

I dreamed about the moon. It was dark all around except the sliver of light ahead - a few stars out highlighting the empty space. A breeze wafted through that smelled of pine and something more, something that piqued my interest and made me turn. A shadow was there, far down the mountain I stood on. Wolves stood around the figure. I should’ve been afraid. But I wasn’t. I felt safe. I started to walk toward the figure.

And my alarm went off.

I woke up abruptly to the morning of my first day of high school. Again. After suffering through two years at the worst, most stereotypical high school in all of the known universe, I had had enough. Every day I suffered through the most boring classes, with the least impersonal teachers in the world, walked through hallways suffocated in teenage sexual tension and “bro” attitude. Every day I breezed past fights in the making, and the plastic bitches primping and priming in the bathroom, pushing their bras up and their shirt collars down. Every day I came home, started homework immediately, and didn’t finish until 3am. I had had enough. Hearing from my middle school friend, Ally, how great her high school was - it finally got to me. I didn’t have to do high school like every teenage girl in a Lifetime movie. Today I was starting school at Ally’s high school, Pacific High. 

“Ready mija?” My mom asked, one hand digging through her purse.

“Yup.” I responded, looking for a quick snack to grab before she thought to ask me what my plans were for lunch.

My mom finished rifling through her purse right as I turned to her, left cheek full of delicious sweet bread, my ‘breakfast’. She made eye contact with me, smiled at the bread rolls she saw in my hand and nodded, the signal to get going. We drove 35 minutes to Belmar. I was finally going to have a do-over. Nothing could ruin today.

Arriving at Pacific High School over an hour into the school day felt strange. While I had been to the parking lot of this school before, the bus that took us from small town Melbourne (no, not the city in Australia) to the two high schools in Belmar always stopped here first before continuing to Piso High. I was overcome with how great it was going to be to be the new girl. 

While most books, stories, movies, and television shows have characters that hate being the new kid, I always found it refreshing. Being new, being known, getting to start over. Having changed schools once in the middle of elementary school, and then moving to a different town for middle school, it felt great to be able to start anew at a different high school. I could do this one right. The last two years and a month hardly mattered. No mind how the students of Piso High despised the students of Pacific. 

We got out of the car, and walked toward what we assumed the entrance to be. The school was built on the side of a hill. A benefit of living on the California coast. There was a heavy fog slowly rolling down the school, toward the not-too-distant pier barely in view. Once through what we thought was the entrance, we saw classrooms with blue doors and windows lining the sides of this strange indoor-outdoor hallway. The school had an open plan, there were trees in this “hallway” and most of the air above my head was uncovered. The occasional overhang broke the hallway down into large sections. 

I had a hard time keeping up with my mom. Even with her short legs, she could walk three times my speed. After locating the office and opening the door, we saw a dark-haired woman behind the counter, and flagged her down.

Seated on the dark blue bench, my mom suddenly turned to me. “Atonces, mija. How do you like it so far?”

I looked around, at the actual tree growing in the outdoor hallway behind me, and took in all the bright white, contrasted with dark blue. 

“I definitely like the colors...” I noted aloud.

Before my mom had the chance to comment on my miniscule assessment of the high school she so painstakingly pulled strings for me to get into, a petite, pale woman with large dark glasses came flouncing down the corner. I was way too distracted hoping that I was in at least one of Ally’s classes to notice how close she suddenly was. Damn, what was it with tiny women being so darn fast?

“Hello, I’m the Vice Principal, Ms. Arnhem,” she said, eyes focused on me. 

I couldn’t help but smile. Her bubbly personality radiated from her eyes. She shook both our hands fervently, with a Cheshire cat grin, and asked us to follow her to her office. We took seats next to each other, while Ms. Arnhem sat opposite of us. We listened intently as she told us the school's history and explained how my day was going to go today, versus other days. 

After a few questions from my mom, and after Ms. Arnhem presented me with my very own Pacific High School Planner, Ms. Arnhem bade us farewell. My mom waved good-bye and started down the hall before turning on her heel and reaching to squeeze me in a tiny bear hug. She touched my cheek, wishing me luck, and I turned toward the counselor's office. I knocked on the window-door and Mr. Chiu opened up right away.

“Ah, you’ve got to be Rachel,” he said while ushering me past his door and toward the one-seater couch-chair beside his desk.

I caught the striking green eyes of some guy walking into the office as Mr. Chiu ushered my into his office space.

The guy out there had been crazy good looking, it had knocked the breath out of me.

“Yup, that’s me. Transfer from P.H.,” I managed to say.

Mr. Chiu shut his office door and sat back at his desk, looking at his computer screen. It seems he was in the middle of an email when I knocked on the door. He asked me just to wait a moment while he finished his message.

After clicking ‘send’, he swiveled towards me and turned into a serious businessman. He efficiently asked me questions about the transcript he had in front of him, sent from P.H. It seems he was assembling my schedule. Mr. Chiu explained, as Ms. Arnhem had before him, that the school had a block schedule, and further elaborated by explaining that part of the Pacific High experience was what they called “houses.” Freshmen, Sophomores, and Juniors stayed in groups that rotated into Humanities (English and Social Studies) and Science. These groups stayed together until Senior year, and they kept the same teacher for three grades. It sounded great to me, as long as I was in Ally’s house! 

Mr. Chiu spent a few moments clicking through some things and then told me that it looked like I would get an ‘odd ball schedule’ as there were only so many spots left in the different classes I needed to take. Before he could finalize things a bell rang and he looked up at the clock on the wall above his desk. 

“Sh - I don’t have time to -” He paused and thought for a moment turning to the clock above the desk, and back at me, “Would you mind accompanying me to my Homeroom class? I have to get there in two minutes and I can’t leave a student here unattended.”

No problem with me. “Sure,” I responded, standing up while slinging my tote over my right shoulder, “After you.”