stellaR (Editing)

Chapter I

Chapter- I

There are chapters in every life which are seldom read, and certainly not aloud.       -Carol Shields

I peered into the cheap mirror of the girls’ bathroom, trying to see what it was that everyone always talked about. The face staring back at me was framed with black, slightly wavy, shiny locks and sported wide, thick lash-rimmed, deep blue eyes. A sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of my nose, and fairly pale skin finished my surveying.

“Stella, hurry up or we’ll be late to class!” My best friend, Margie, hollered from outside the ladies room.

Well, that was that. I still didn’t see it.

-

“Stella! Why don’t you come over here and do something if you’re so great?”

Ugh. What was that shrill, god-awful screech? Oh, right. That’d be Melanie’s voice, barbing me into truly showing her just how far I could kick this soccer ball up her…

“Did you hear me? Come on, Ms. Oh-So-Perfect, and show us how it’s done.” Melanie continued, knowing she was starting to get under my skin. I needed to relax. Once my fingers could manage to unclench I looked up, into her beady little eyes.

If you’d asked me what she looked like, I would have said pretty, what with her strawberry blonde hair and her impressively green eyes. Having heard her open her mouth, however, I’d say a toad had a better personality and I was about to tell her so when I realized exactly what her challenge entailed.

A penalty kick- as in, soccer.

Soccer was my game. For some reason, it just always had been- the field, the ball, the running, the rush of the grass underneath my cleats. It was my game.

Calmer now, I tapped the ball onto the white line marking the penalty kick line and took a deep breath. A few steps back and a few more seconds later and the ball soared into the net, top left corner.

I nearly couldn’t resist turning around and spying the look on Melanie and her groupies faces, but, some things are better left to the imagination.

I couldn’t, however, stop the smile that spread across my face. Competition always had done me good, and winning in soccer was surely no exception.

-

     I hadn’t taken my car to school with me that day; the weather had been fairly nice considering it was the beginnings of fall, so I had left my car, a silver Kia, in my driveway that morning. Walking home from practice I still had a layer of euphoria surrounding me from my triumph over Melanie, so when I turned the corner and slammed into what felt like a brick wall; I wasn’t prepared at all and flew back on my butt. Or, I would’ve if gravity had actually done its job and had been working properly. Instead I found myself almost buoyed by air, but strangely enough the space beneath me felt… empty?

     I was floating on nothing, practically hovering, like one would imagine a UFO of sorts doing. Well, that’s strange. But I shrugged off the thought, not having the time for UFO contemplation now.

     If I was one of those types to believe in invisibility, I would say that right now I was sitting on an invisible stool. As it was, I did not believe in much outside of physics and what I could see with my own two eyes. Now, if I was a religious person, I might believe it was the work of some god. After all, the religious fanatics were always talking about revelations, but had they ever floated in mid-air?