To Keep Her Safe is All I Know

Chapter 7

"Metallica." He'd answered.

"Oh, yeah, I remember you telling me you were starting to get into them more. I'll have to steal one of their CDs from you some time." Melanie said, "So, are you going to go out for the football team like to coach said you should?" (A/N: I saw in an interview somewhere that Chris actually almost did play football in high school.)

"Nah, I don't think so."

"Why not? You're obviously good, or the coach wouldn't have sought you out. And you love playing. Not to mention the ladies would probably be all over you."

Chris chuckled, "Yeah, I guess that'd be a perk. I just don't think that's for me anymore."

Melanie paused, then spoke, "You've changed a lot over the summer."

"You say that like it's a bad thing."

"I'm not, I'm just thinking out loud." Melanie said, "Ooh! I'm kind of starting to get the hang of skateboarding."

Chris smiled, "Yeah?"

"Yeah! I mean, I'm not good by any stretch, but I can make it a few feet without falling on my face, so it's a start!"

Chris laughed, "Yeah, for sure. Here, let me see your schedule so I can see if we have any classes together."

Melanie nodded. She reached into her yellow backpack and pulled a neatly folded piece of paper out of a folder before handing it to Chris. Chris pulled his slightly crumpled and bent schedule out of his black backpack, and he held the two pieces of paper side by side, looking back and forth between the two of them to compare them. He then sighed and hands Melanie's schedule back to her.

"Well, we don't have any classes together, but we do have the same lunch period."

"Well, that's good." Melanie stated, "So...Now that we're going into high school, we're probably going to get into a lot of new things and making some new friends..."

Chris nodded, "Yeah, probably."

"I guess I'm just kind of worried. I mean...you and I aren't gonna, like, drift apart with all of the other things we'll have going on, will we?"

"No, God, no. Mel, you and I have been friends for forever now; nothing's gonna be able to separate us. We've already been friends for ten years; four years of high school will be a piece of cake. I'll come over to your house after school every day to do homework and study with you and you can come crash at my place every weekend, okay?"

Melanie smiled, "Okay."

The bus arrived at the school and the kids began to pile off and walk into the building. Chris and Melanie got off and walked side by side. Chris looked Melanie up and down as they walked.

"You know, you've changed a lot too over the past couple of months." He stated.

"How so?"

"Well, you got your braces off."

"So did you."

"Yeah, but then you started wearing skirts and makeup and actually doing your hair and shit. You're, like, actually a girl now."

Melanie laughed, "As if I wasn't before?"

Chris chuckled as well, holding the door open for Melanie as they walked in.

Later on that day, Melanie walked out of her world history classroom - the same classroom that Chris would be quite literally dragging her out of two weeks later as she sobbed - and went to her locker to get her things for her next class. As she opened her locker, Chris approached her.