Gone Like The Wind

Chapter One: Isolated

I breathe in the crisp autumn air. Usually I'd be enjoying the pretty fall weather but lately my mind has just been foggy.

Last week I moved from my hometown in Minnesota to Long Island. I had to say goodbye to everything: my best friends, the house I grew up in, my swim team, the summer camp I went to every summer.

Everything. I lost everything and now I have to start all over in a completely different state.

It's kind of like when you worked really hard on your English paper on the computer and you're super happy with how good the paper is but then the power goes out and you have to restart the paper, a lamer, worse paper.

The red and yellow leaves crunched underneath my feet and I walk down Carman Street. My new school is within walking distance from my new house, which by the way, I'm pretty sure used to belong to rich people.

But we'll get to that later. Right now I'm just walking to school. It's my first day at Chamber Oaks Middle School, a month after school started. You know how sad that is? To start a new school year but then have to move away? To say goodbye to that really nice math teacher? To say goodbye to your middle school, the one you kinda see as a second home?

I sigh as I look around the street. I see a few kids walking to school just like me. But unlike me, they're walking with their friends. Laughing, talking about their vacations...

I reach Elm Street and see it. Chamber Oaks Middle School. It's gigantic. A huge public school painted white and red, with gold accents. I walk behind a group of boys walking into the school. One of them leaves the glass door open for me. I walk inside Chamber Oaks Middle School and the inside was a very positive scene, but didn't make me feel very positive.

Inside, is the main lobby: a gray and red room that looks super cozy. Plush couches and chairs, a fireplace nearby for the winter season, wooden tables holding school telephones and bowls of candy.

Students are chilling in the main lobby before school starts. That's what's upsetting me. Everyone has their own group of people to hang out with. All of them laughing, obviously deep in conversation. I can't just walk up to one of them and say, "Hi! My name is Nicole! What's yours?" They probably wouldn't even hear me.

I wandered around the main lobby for a bit before deciding it was too crowded. I head out in the hallways. A few students are decorating someone's locker. Two teachers are discussing over coffee while walking down the hallway.

The rest of the school, just like the main lobby, looks pretty cozy: shiny wood floors, a few fireplaces here and there, smells faintly of pumpkin.

Yet in the coziness of the school, I feel quite empty and cold. Alone. Isolated. I look around the long hallway. This is the hallway I'll walk in everyday until graduation.

And I don't like that.