The road that led to you

Chapter 1

Summer had ended and it was the first day back as a year 12.
Soon I'd be turning 17, I had 2 more years of school left. I didn't really know what I wanted to do afterwards, maybe go to university, maybe not. A lot of the pressure was on me to figure out what I wanted to do with my life and set an example, as my younger brother, Xander, was only 11.
Who even knew what they wanted to do? I never understood why we had to make such daunting decisions at 16, it never occurred to me that I would be forced to make the decisions that would shape my future, all by myself.
Anyway, I wasn't ready to go back.

My Step-dad, John, dropped us off and I saw my friends waiting for me by the main doors. My best friend, Jodie, ran over and wrapped her arms around me. She'd been away visiting her mum in Italy for the entirety of the three months we had off, we'd never gone a week without seeing each other since we were kids.

"Where have you been?" I squeezed her tightly,

"I could ask you the same thing!" she said, "you always get here so late, come on we need to get to tutor."

"Do we have to?" I groaned, "who do we have this year?"

"Miss Turner" she laughed, "this should be fun."

We both manoeuvred down the corridor trying to get to our form tutor, but typically, high school corridors are never the simplest of places. There were new year 7's scattering themselves, alternating between the right and wrong directions, teachers moving as slow as they could to avoid another year of teaching ungrateful youths, you get the picture.
Being in our form tutors was usually boring and we ditched most of the time, but Jodie and I decided to give it a few days before she actually stopped noticing who was present or not. I had Jodie in my tutor this year, the rest of our group were all separated otherwise. I always thought that Jodie was one of the prettiest girls around, I wasn't sure why she was friends with someone like me. She had dark hair, beautiful green eyes and her skin was really tanned, quite olivey. I had simple brown hair and blue eyes, there was never anything distinctive about me. My attention was suddenly drawn to our tutor Miss Turner, she was a skinny blonde, pretty snobby but everybody liked her. She was one of the young, laid back teachers who didn't really give a toss.

"She's still put no weight on then," Jodie muttered.

"I know, I don't know how she does it." for the first 15 minutes, she talked about her summer and how she travelled with her boyfriend, Jodie and I zoned out when she started talking about her banana boating experience. Over the summer, Jodie had been to Italy to visit her mum, otherwise she lived with her Dad and younger sister. I spent most of my holiday at our lake house, I took the rest of our group up there and for 3 months all we did was party and sunbathe. I also had a slight summer fling. One of the boys brought along their friend, Harvey. Of course he was my age, dark brown hair, brown eyes and super toned abs. But he went to the private school on the other side of town, I wanted to see him again, but then at the same time, I really didn't.
"That's so unfair!" Jodie had been comparing our timetables for a few minutes whilst I shuffled through my bag, looking for my phone.

"What?"

"You have that new teacher as your counsellor, Beth said he's really fit."

"Yeah but we're talking about Beth here, her taste in guys hasn't always been...common."
"Apparently not this time, I can't believe Mr Logan left. Now who am I going to have for physics? Mr Logan was so hot, his black hair and his grey eyes," she groaned, "So hot, I'll probably have some old man now. I still can't believe he left so he could live with her in America."

"Oh you mean his girlfriend?"

"Should have been me, didn't you see the way he looked at me last year?"