I sat at my desk, biting my nails, waiting for the announcements to be over. Waiting to go home. Waiting. Just waiting. When the announcements were over, Mrs. Scott, our math teacher, jumped up.
"We are getting a new student tomorrow, so please don't scare them off", she said.
She wasn't joking either. We had gotten a few new kids this year, and the "fresh meat", as the boys call them, ran off after a week of torture. Food fights and teasing often scared them off, but if that didn't do it, the torturing did. Our school is terrible, to put it kindly. And no one lasts for long after they walk through those doors on the first floor.
I was a new kid once. They almost ran me off. Then I remembered why I moved in the first place, and resolved to stay as long as possible. I only had one true friend at the time that we moved, but then one car crash later, I was left friendless. I know it sounds bad, but it isn't really. Not when you and your best friend have the worst lives ever. Bri and I were like two peas in a pod, mainly because of our circumstances.
Then one day, I was at her house, and her dad came into her room. Let's just say it didn't end well in every way possible. From then on we spent the days at my house, her only going home when forced by my brother. My mom didn't care, but my brother, who is the man of the family, thinks that Bri shouldn't spend the night every night.
"She has a home of her own", he said one day, after she had spent the past few days on my bedroom floor. That upset me, but Bri and I both knew he was just trying to protect me. He knew what happened when Bri went home, and why she spent entire weeks with us, but sometimes he just couldn't handle it. Couldn't handle the crying. The shouts. The pain that his little sister and her best friend felt. Then we moved, because Bri's dad began following us to my house, and confronting us just before we rounded the corner. He would yell at Bri, hit us both, and then walk off. He was drunk the entire time. He was always drunk, or high, or something. That's what got Bri and her dad killed, and her mom severely injured.
What happened was Bri's dad had to pick her and her mom up from some meeting or something, because they only had one working car at the time. He showed up drunk, and they had barley gone a mile when he swerved and hit a tree, killing Bri instantaneously and injuring Tara, Bri's mom, severely. He died a few days later in the hospital, having suffered severe injuries that the doctors couldn't treat in time.
So now I live in a neighborhood where the girls are mean, the boys are even meaner, and the parents are just downright awful. I think that my family is the only decent one I'm the neighborhood. That is, until the new kid came, and I found out that my life, Bri's life, was a breeze.
