Kerass walked down the sophomore locker hallway searching for her. It had been a week and he had only seen her once briefly catching her eye on the first day of school. They didn’t have a single class together and he couldn’t help but feel that she was avoiding him. He found himself at a standstill. He was angry at Cadence for avoiding him, but he knew that if he pursued her Julia would be angry at him. He didn’t know what to do and all of a sudden it made sense to him why Cadence was avoiding him. He still blamed her for being a coward and he was still mad at her, but he understood why she created a distance between them.
The moment he and Julia became official he hadn’t talked to Jay. He felt bad for ditching his best friend for a girl, but she helped him forget all of his problems and well Jay was a constant reminder of them. He just wanted the school year to be over and it was only the second week. Sophomore year was going to majorly suck.
Finally giving up on seeing Cadence he stopped by his locker and pulled his Chemistry book out for first period. A guy was putting his stuff into the locker. That locker had been vacant a week ago. The guy had a completely shaved head, a full beard, jeans with holes up and down them and a t-shirt that had holes around his stomach. His hand lay inside the hole in his t-shirt as he pulled out the same Chemistry book that Kerass had pulled out. He closed his locker and looked straight at Kerass.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey, uh, I’m Kerass by the way. What’s your name?” Kerass asked.
“Gus.”
“Cool name,” Kerass said and then instantly shook his head. What a stupid thing to say. Trying to move on quickly to not sustain the embarrassment he said, “You got Ms. Williams for Chem?”
Gus nodded his head.
“Do you have her first period?”
Gus shook his head.
“Ok, I guess I’ll just see you around then.”
Gus shrugged putting ear buds in his ears while walking away. Kerass felt so inferior to Gus it wasn’t even funny. The craziest thing was he didn’t say anything that would have implied that Gus felt superior to Kerass, but just his nonchalant mannerisms in the conversation made Kerass boil inside. A lack of passion was worse than death to Kerass and Gus appeared to not have a single drop of passion running through his veins. Taking a few deep breaths, calming himself down, he walked upstairs and prepared his mind for chemistry class at 7:20 in the morning.
Julia sighed as she started to walk down the sophomore hallway. While it was at least passable to talk to sophomores it was still way uncool as a junior. She was looking for Kerass but it looked as if he had gone to class early…again. Rolling her eyes, Julia continued to walk down the hallway. A girl caught her eyes putting her books in her locker. She looked familiar, but she couldn’t tell from where.
Walking straight up to her Julia said, “I recognize you from something. What is it?”
“I have no idea I’ve never seen you before, emphasis on the never part,” Cadence replied.
Julia thought back trying to remember why she stood out to her. “Oh, I remember!” Julia exclaimed. She continued saying that she recognized Cadence from the peer support group flyers the previous year.
“Well that was a bust,” Cadence said slamming her locker shut. “No one showed up except for one person. It didn’t even go past a single meeting.”
“I’m Julia, by the way.”
“Cadence,” She replied holding out her hand. Julia shook it. Cadence continued asking why the sudden recognition. “I mean that was a long time ago. Why didn’t you say anything then?”
“Duh, you were a freshmen then and it’s high school suicide to talk to freshmen, it’s sacrilege.”
Cadence smiled. Julia felt it was a fake smile, but she didn’t care. She wanted Cadence to be her friend and that would happen. When Julia wanted something she got it. Plus, from her heart for peers she felt Cadence would be great friends with Kerass. She wanted to be the type of girlfriend that was totally ok with letting her boyfriend have friends that just happened to be girls. She wasn’t the jealous type and looking down at Cadence she thought what would she be jealous about anyways? Cadence wasn’t a knockout in any sense of the word…still she wondered if Kerass could handle having a friend who was a girl. There seemed to always be strings attached when it came to Kerass. On second thought, it made more sense for Cadence to be her friend first as opposed to bringing Kerass into the equation.
“What are you doing after school?” Julia asked with the peppiest voice she could muster.
“I have no plans. I mean, it’s only the second week.”
Julia asked Cadence if she wanted to meet up after school that day. Cadence replied that she would love to. “It’ll give us a chance to get to know each other better, you know?” Cadence said.
“Awesome. I’ll just come over and grab you,” Julia said. She told Cadence how nice it was to have finally met her and then turned around and walked away. Cadence intrigued her and she didn’t know why. The warning bell rang. Julia casually walked into her English classroom with a smirk on her face. It finally dawned on her. Cadence had been Kerass’ first girlfriend. In their first week of getting to know each other he never stopped talking about her unless they were making out with each other, which truthfully was quite often after the first day. She was letting her boyfriend’s ex get close to her…what was she thinking? She smiled. I’m just keeping my enemy as close to myself as possible, she thought to herself. She had made fast friends with her boyfriend’s ex and just as quickly labeled her an enemy and decided she would ruin Cadence’s life. All of this was happening way too early for 7:20 in the morning. It was definitely going to be an interesting school year.
Cadence sat down in her sophomore Pre-IB English class. They were currently reading Lord of the Flies. As dull as the book had been, the class discussions were even worse. The book killed trees by wasting paper considering there was no heart in it. Now THAT would be a worthy discussion in class. Looking over at her assigned desk she realized that Gus had finally made it to school. She sat down next to Gus without making any introduction. They waited for the teacher to arrive. He was usually late anyways. After 15 minutes of waiting, they decided they would just talk to each other and wait until the teacher showed up.
“Hey,” Gus said looking over at Cadence.
“Hey,” Cadence replied and then looked over at the class schedule on the board beside her.
“You’re not very talkative are you?”
“Not at 7:35 a.m.”
Gus started giggling. The longer he laughed, the louder he became. It got so loud that all the other conversations stopped. Cadence couldn’t believe it. He seemed like he was high on his first day at a new school! As quickly as his laughing fit started it stopped. Cadence scowled at him. She hated being even near the center of attention and Gus had just had everyone focus on him.
“Sorry your bluntness just took me off guard.”
“Really?” Cadence asked and added that he should get used to it. “Oak Stream is littered with blunt people. I’m actually considered quiet here.”
“If you’re quiet I don’t think I ever want to meet the loudest person here.”
“Who are you anyway?”
“My name’s Gus if that’s what you’re ask-”
Cadence shook her head. “I mean, what are you passionate about? What makes you tick?”
“Nothing really,” Gus replied shrugging.
Cadence wasn’t frustrated, she was curious. “Maybe you don’t know what you’re passionate about yet and that’s ok,” she said unleashing the counselor inside of her.
“Don’t analyze me. You can just stop wasting your time now. Not even professionals have been able to crack me. What makes you think that you, a sophomore high school girl, could figure that out for me?”
Gus’ voice had risen showing some form of passion. If he really lacked any at all, he would have been monotone, deadpan. His eyes had been alit with fire in defense when she suggested that he didn’t know what he was passionate about. She knew that he knew, but he appeared like he would take that passion to the grave.
“You don’t have to get all defensive,” Cadence whispered.
“What’s there to be defensive about? There’s nothing to talk about now is there?”
Cadence bit her lip. “You were the one who had started this conversation…” she said trailing off.
“Well if I started it then I should end it, shouldn’t I? We’re done talking for today. Leave me alone for the rest of the hour.”
Cadence and Gus sat in silence for the rest of the hour. The teacher never showed up in the entire hour and a half block. When the bell rang, Cadence shot up out of her desk pushing the door open as hard as possible causing it to slam against the wall. She wanted to get away from Gus as quickly as possible. She had been packed a solid half-hour before the bell was going to ring.
She noticed the movement before she recognized his face. Damien was now standing beside her with his bright red Seniors shirt on. He pointed at the word with the goofiest smile on his face. “Pretty cool shirt, huh?” he asked.
“Yeah it would be if I could wear it,” Cadence snapped back. She hated how seniors flaunted class ranking around like a caste system.
“Oh you’ll be able to in due time. It’s only 3 more years right?” Damien smiled and told her it was great to see her again.
“Please don’t say you waited for me all summer,” Cadence said secretly hoping that he had.
Damien shook his head. “I didn’t, don’t you worry about that. I had a very eye opening summer, went through a ton of changes. I feel like I’m truly happy for once. I want to savor every second of senior year that I can.”
Cadence sighed realizing that when she left for Our Savior, she had left people’s thoughts at Oak Stream. Her decision to return constantly seemed like a mistake. “I’m happy for you,” she paused taking a deep breath, “really.”
“We should talk, catch up soon, yeah?”
Julia waved over to her beckoning her to come, her car keys jingling. The second block hadn’t even begun. She decided then that she was going to ditch the rest of the day and spend it with Julia.
“Cadence?” Damien asked.
“Yeah, soon. That’s chill.” Cadence told him she would see him later and walked away. She felt empowered being a sophomore ditching her first class. Julia smiled at her. Right now the only thing she wanted to do was ditch. She knew then that this was going to be a day to remember.
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