TTW [OLD - HAS BEEN MOVED TO NEW ACCOUNT]

Chapter Three

Everybody rushes off the bus in packs, and instead of squeezing in with the crowd, Ria and I just simply waited in our seats until we were certain we weren’t going to be killed in the traffic rush.

“You’d think they’d know not to jam up the aisles,” I hear Ria mutter.

I shrug. “The bus drivers tell them to be quiet, but they still scream.”

“Yea, you’d think that the end of the world was in an hour, the way they scream.”

“Yea, and they were totally declaring their love to the bus seats.”

We laughed, and made our way off the bus.

It was ten minutes until the bell rang, signaling that first hour was beginning.

We walk toward the tree just outside of the building our first class, joining Karen, who always arrives at school early. Like, an hour early.

“It’s COLD.” That’s the first thing Karen says, upon seeing our approach, and I roll my eyes.

“You’re always cold.”

“Well, you would be too if you came at 6 in the morning!”

“Karen, no one’s forcing you to.”

“Yea, but I don’t want to be late, and what if there’s a traffic accident or something?” When she says it, it’s not exaggerated. Her eyebrows are scrunched up, and there’s true worry in her eyes, as if she already could imagine the scenario.

I sigh fondly. Karen is that girl who’s afraid of getting trouble, is good at everything, and almost could be compared to a fluffy kitten. She also has a perfect life – lives in a rich home with the coolest parents ever, and she can basically do whatever she wants. Plus, she’s pretty too.

It’s almost not fair how many perks one girl could get. But the one thing that turned everyone’s ‘jealous’ indicators off was her great personality. She was friendly and not stuck up at all, and was a nervous bundle of energy -  flying hands, red and puffy cheeks, hair in the air – all that. It was also unbearably hard to be mad at her; it was like trying to kick a fluffy kitten.

“There wouldn’t be, Kare. You even know it’s not possible. You have all the statistics that you researched in third grade.” Ria was calmly reassuring Karen, while using the nickname that only she was allowed to use for her.

Ria positively loved using nicknames. She probably had one for everyone. She called me Al, but then again, so did everyone. She always told everyone else to refer to her as Ry, and for some odd reason, Tony got called Toe (and only when she was poking fun with him, or really mad at him). Mackenzie was Mack, Karen was Kare, and even for people whose names could not be made into a nickname in any which way, she still made it possible. Like in 8th grade, when there was a girl named Jane. I didn’t even know how you could still made something sound good with that, but in the instant Ria met Jane, she came up with Jay.

By now, it was positively a habit. It was also Ria’s nervous tick – she would start coming with variations of nicknames and our names, and generally causing everyone else to tune out. This happened several times during tests, and since I sat by her, I could hear everything. She’d ask me something, then tell me not to tell her, and then rattle off variations of my name, or whoever happened to be with her at the moment.

“But – but –“

“Karen, you worry too much,” I put in, patting her on the shoulder.

“I’m sorry, but I just want to be careful!”

I roll my eyes with a fond smile. “Oh, Karen.”

“Don’t ‘oh, Karen’ me! I hate when you do that! It’s like you’re reprimanding me or mocking me or something!” Her face puffed up, and her cheeks flushed red with indignance.