Rolling Dice [sample]

6: Rolling Dice

I just huff loudly, and turn back to my closet. Surely there’s something in here that’s perfect. There has to be. Something casual, but something that looks good.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Mom says, backing out of the bombsite that is my bedroom. “I have to leave for work in a minute. But make sure you clean this up before you leave.”

“Yes, Mom,” I say testily.

Before she leaves though, she gives me a kiss on my cheeks and squeezes my shoulder. “You’ll be fine, Dice, don’t worry about it. You’re a tough girl.”

I smile, but it’s a sad kind of smile. “Thanks, Mom.”

*

I’m thirty six minutes early.

Dad drops me off, because I don’t really know the way so I don’t want to walk to school on my first day just to get hopelessly lost and turn up late.

But I’m genuinely shocked when I check the time on my cell phone and find out I’m so early to school. The gate across the main entrance is open, but as I walk up to the front door there’s nobody around.

There’s a field on one side, with a whole bunch of painted black wooden picnic benches. On the other side is a parking lot. There are a few cars there, but I guess most of them are the teachers’.

The gravel on the main path up to the school – which is plenty wide enough to fit a car – is uneven, and I teeter in my one-inch black stilettos. They’re not excessively fancy or high shoes, quite casual, really. But I don’t walk in heels. Even little ones.

It’s harder than I anticipated.

In the end, I opted for a pair of denim cut-offs, and a white tank top. I’m wearing a chunky brown and gold beaded necklace, too, just to add something to my outfit. I figured if it came off as too fancy, I could always take off the necklace.

I look okay, I guess. Not too fancy and not too casual. At least, I hope that’s how it actually looks.

I’m over-thinking it, I know, I know.

But I’m scared.

And when you’re as scared as I am, it’s hard not to be totally paranoid about every little thing.

I have an earphone in my left ear with my iPod in my pocket. I may be a heck of a lot happier and more confident here than I ever had been in Pineford, but I’m still too insecure this morning to go without what I can only call my security blanket.

Back in Pineford, I’d taken to wearing an earphone all the time around school, even in class. I wouldn’t necessarily be playing music all the time, but it just made me feel a little better. When I had music on, I could tune out the rest of the world, ignore the sneering, joking comments thrown my way, the people pushing into me.

I am determined not to have the earphone in all the time here. But I need it right now. At least just for this morning.

Now, I let the guitar and bass and drums and vocals fill my ear. The music covers up how hard and loud my heart pulses and how the gravel shifts slightly under my feet.

I don’t even know the car’s there until the horn blares.

Jumping, I yank out my earphone and spin around. I barely even noticed I was walking in the middle of the road – I was just trying to stay on my feet in these darn heels.

“Didn’t your mom ever tell you to look both ways before you cross the street?”

The driver leans out of the window as he calls out to me, and then I realize why it sounds like he’s mocking me.