BH

Burning Hearts: Seven

 Seven

Raie

Two Weeks Later


"See you, Raie," I gave a small smile and nodded to Sapphire who walked off to join her friends from drama, leaving me once again, alone at our little table. Well, not completely alone.

"You're losing her," Libby stated.

"You are," Tash agreed.

I rolled my eyes at the both of them. "It's not your job to tell me that. Besides, I am not losing her."

"Are too."

I groaned and popped a grape into my mouth. It was lunchtime and everyone was happy in their little groups except for me, who was actually still sitting with her sister. Of course everyone was banded into groups- the drama pros, the 'populars', the losers, the nerds, the girly girls and the highly-inappropriate-commenting boys. Then there was me. Sapphire had blended well, me on the other hand...

"Well," Tash said, pulling herself to a stand. "You've just lost me. I'm going to sit with my friends."

"Same," Libby said joining her.

I sighed and nodded, waving them off. Now I was alone. A cool breeze blew my hair back, and I tugged at the woolen jacket around me, seeking its warmth. Winter was well on its way, and of course in this country, it snowed, so I expected nothing less. I played with the grapes that sat in my plastic container, looking like a loner, until the bell rung for class. My heart started pounding when I realized I had photography next.

Really, I wasn't sure why I enjoyed photography. I think I just found the idea of capturing the beauty in life- the real beauty- and sharing it with the world appealing. Also, I believe there is more than meets the eye, and it's always important to have a camera handy.

Heading into the classroom, I was delighted to see my teacher already there. When I entered, she handed me a camera with an excellent focus, and put us all in groups. In our group, we had to capture some sort of insect or small creature amongst the school grounds using the focus, and then pick the best one from our group. If we needed, Photoshop was also allowed to be used.

Seeing as the groups are always picked, and no one ever picked me, I wound up with a bunch of guys who had come to be a regular. They weren't that bad, and didn't just treat photography as an easy A subject, which to me, was more than enough.

We joked around a bit before deciding to split up and take our own separate shots. I headed into one of the gardens and got a couple of good shots- one of a butterfly, which looked really good, one of a ant carrying a piece of food, which also looked pretty cool, and a shot of a snail crossing paths with a caterpillar. In the end, my group picked the butterfly one, which didn't need any photo shop editing since it was vivid enough as it was. The group congratulated me on my good shot and we handed it to the teacher.

Too quickly, photography was over and I headed over to history alone. Again, surprisingly, the teacher was already there, and I took my seat immediately. I preferred it when the teacher was there before me so I didn't have to hang around and put up with any small talk.

Miss Briggs, my teacher, got straight into it about the Polynesians, and I sort of dozed off- looked out of the window and let my mind wander- while she yakked on about pointless things we'd already learnt, until a knock on the door brought me out of my thoughts. I looked up confused, and realized that there was some guy at the door.

"Oh! Come in, come in!" Miss Briggs said excitedly, beckoning the figure. A tall guy with dark, shaggy hair and green eyes walked into the classroom. He was fairly attractive and stood tall and proud. "This is our new student! Everyone make him feel welcome!" I shrugged and looked down at my book, wondering if I should have been taking notes. "Son, why don't you go sit up the back next to Miss Griffin?" I looked up, my eyebrow practically twitching. Yay...

The guy wove through the sea of desks skillfully and made his way over to the desk beside me. "Hey," he said quietly. I smiled slightly then went back to my book, pretending I was writing something important. "Do I know you?" I looked up at him, his glimmering green eyes still on me.

"Um, no?" I bit my lip and looked at him. He looked surprisingly familiar too. "I'm Raie. And you are?”

“Just Ty.”

“Alright then Just Ty, welcome to Macquarie, but I’m new here too so if you’re looking for a tour, you got the wrong gal.”

“Actually, I was looking for something else, someone, but never mind,” He began his work, leaving me with this thought to ponder on. Who is he looking for? I thought but forgot about it soon after because I was bombarded with work from Miss Briggs.

Sapphire

Believe it or not, Raie and I had had our fair share of fights. We may have seemed like the perfect best friends, but what girls haven’t fought? It was usually over small things, which we forgave each other for in days, but there was once one ginormous fight we had, that lasted the whole holidays when we were eight-years-old.

Raie was never around in the first week of the holidays, but she would never tell me where she was or who she was with, and it annoyed me. We had shared everything up until that point; clothes, food, secrets. So I decided I wouldn't talk to her and instead hung out with my other friends from my school, who I usually never saw in the holidays, since I was always with Raie.

It was boring, but I was proving a point, and by the third week of the nine-week holidays I was missing her terribly, so I went in search of her. I went to her house, and she wasn't there, but Jules told me she was in the park near her school. I went there and hid behind a bush, watching her walk around the park with her dog, Gypsie. This went on for ten or twenty minutes before I was about to walk over, then suddenly, this tall boy came over and playfully pushed her.

He looked at least a year older, but I had never seen him before, so I continued to watch. They talked like they were best friends, which made me afraid I had been replaced, and then they walked away laughing. I was completely confused as to who he was. Raie and him talked like they had known each other forever, but she had never mentioned him before. I walked home with little tears in my eyes, and in a phase I was going through then, I pulled out a diary and wrote all my anger towards Raie down in a letter, which I stashed away under the loose floorboard in my room.

The letter stage ended soon after and Raie and I made up after our Mothers kind of forced us too, and from then the only secret I kept from her was the loose floorboard, which she never found out about, even though she was living in my house, two bedroom doors down.

I was waiting for Raie after class, and Libby and Tash weren’t at our usual spot either, when Cassie came over to me and literally forced me to sit with the Drama group. I didn't want to leave Raie and the others, but honestly since the first day I met them, I thought it would be cool to hang out with the drama kids. And it was.

The whole lunch we messed around doing celebrity impressions and talking about new movies. I didn't once think about Raie, I was having so much fun, but when we went home that afternoon she was unusually quiet. I sat with her for the next three days, but the fourth day after I sat with the others, they asked me again, and I really wanted to, so I invited Raie, and she came, but half way through lunch she silently left, and when I went after her, she said it wasn't her crowd, her thing, but I could still hang out with them.

I wasn't sure what to do, or if she really meant it, so I sat with them and that continued on. At home it was more like we were house-mates than best friends, saying hello, but not really connecting like we did before, and at school we politely waved to each other in the hallways, but that was it. One night, Libby and Tash came in and counseled me about it, but I just shooed them away, annoyed by them interfering. I didn't want to lose Raie, but we were growing apart.

Eventually, when it was two months after the move, I tried to re-connect with Raie, but she had found a new friend, the boy I had dibs on, Eric Sorrenson.