Beautiful Secret (Part One)

Part Two

Most of my day was boring beyond words. The only fun class I had taken was a drawing and painting class. I was normally pretty good at anything art related, so I figured this would be an easy A.

            We were set up at tables of four. The girl to my left, who had frizzy red hair and a crooked smile, shook my hand when I sat down. I found that to be just a little odd. Who really does that anyway?

            “Hello! My name is Ignacia.”

            Weird girl. Weird name. Got it. I held out my hand.

            “Angie.”

            The boy to my right, a small boy with freckles and glasses, peeked at as from around a book.

            “That’s Ethan,” Ignacia informed me. “I’ve known his since pre-kindergarten. He’s really shy.”

            I smiled and Ethan whipped his book back in front of his face. We were still one person short. There was one chair not filled at our table. All the others were completed. Our teacher, Ms. Halverson, began taking attendance after waiting for the majority of the students to make it in. When she got to the missing girl, she looked around.

            “Does anyone know who Falon Murray is?” she asked. Everyone looked around, but no one knew. So we collectively shook our heads. “Okay, well, we’ll just have to continue anyway. Maybe she dropped the class or something.”

            Just then, as if she had been planning to walk in at the precise time everyone stopped caring about her absence, Falon Murray whipped the door open and stood with her arms out wide.

            “I’m here!” she announced rather loudly, as though she was something special.

            I rolled my eyes. So this was the girl I would be working with the whole semester. Ms. Halverson sighed and remarked her as here. Meanwhile, Falon practically skipped to her seat across from me. She took a lot at each one of us after she sat down. As I had predicted she would, Ignacia held out her hand. Falon gave her an odd look.

            “Hello,” Ignacia began. “My na….”

            “Yeah, yeah. Okay. I’ll learn names later. When do we get to the art part?”

            Ignacia looked sad as she put her hand down.

            Smiling as she walked over, Ms. Halverson stopped and placed a hand on Falon’s shoulder.

            “As it turns out, I was just going to announce that until you so rudely interrupted. A warning on your first day, Miss Murray. Not a good way to start off a new semester.”

            Falon rolled her eyes. It seemed like she was having the same kind of start to hers that I was with mine. Maybe we’d actually get along.

            We listen to the teacher tell us about our first project, which we would be working on as a group, and then got to work.

            “So we have to each tell a story about ourselves and have one of the other group members draw a visual representation of that story?” Ethan asked. I nodded. “Sounds hard….”

            “I’ll start!” Falon announced.

            Of course she would.

            “Well I wanted to,” Ignacia added, pouting just a little. “But whatever. Go ahead then.”

            Falon smiled.