Always Be Together (NaNoWriMo 2014)

Chapter 3 : The Calm Before The Storm

Dedicated to Rain for being one of the wisest friends out there. You are really something, helping me discover who I am unconsciously.

Chapter 3: The Calm Before The Storm

27 years ago

"Skylar Carson!" a stern voice yelled and slammed their hand on her desk. Skylar looked up with an annoyed expression.

"Can't you see I'm writing, old man?" she rudely told him off in a bored tone. Her teacher slapped yet another detention slip on her desk. She rolled her eyes at him and let him get on with his boring old Math lesson.

Numbers were never Skylar's thing, words and books were. Books made her cry; laugh, smile and they make her feel everything very strongly. Books also taught her many life lessons, plenty more than what school's doing for her. All she does at school is sitting in a boring classroom that provides absolutely no proper learning. School's no longer about learning; it's just about passing and getting good grades to get you into a good college. What's the point of good grades at this level when they aren't going to matter in 10 years time? That's Skylar's life motto; don't do it unless it's relevant to the future. The thing about Skylar Carson is that she focuses on the future rather than the past or the present. To her, the future is all that matter because in the future, she gets to get away from her family, her horrid life here and in the future she can see herself becoming the successful writer she has always dreamt of becoming. As her favourite author quotes, "We use the future to escape from the present."

Skylar's fully aware of that but she doesn't care. All she wants is to get to that future as soon as possible. It is the only thing keeping her going and driving to get what she wants.

The only person who could pull Skylar out of her fantasyland was her first friend at her high school, Wesley Smith who also happened to be her English teacher. Being an English-Indian transfer into an American school was hard for Skylar. Everyone looked at her funny. She was pretty much a loner until she came across Wesley. When she first encountered him, he was awfully polite and looked attractive enough. His English lessons were pretty mundane as well so she couldn't be bothered with him until she joined the school's newspaper. He was the teacher-in-charge of it to monitor the students and so on. He wasn't as polite; he was pretty snarky even yet that's what drew Skylar to him in the first place.

"I don't know how many times you're going to get detention before they suspend you, Sky." Wesley sighed when she entered his classroom after school. She raised an eyebrow at him.

"How did you know that I've got detention today... I didn't even tell you yet." She groaned. He was practically psychic so it came as no surprise that he knew she had detention.

"Who do you think is monitoring detention today, smartass?" He gave her his signature smirk.

Sky scrunched up her nose in annoyance. She blew a stray strand of hair off her face before asking him,

"Do you think you can let me off detention by any chance, Wes?" her tone laced with sickly sweetness and sarcasm. He rolled his eyes at her,

"You wish. In the meantime, you can work on what kind of news you want to gather for the newspaper." She groaned as she flicked the stack of worksheets on his desk.

"I swear that's all you care about nowadays, Wes. What happened to all the carefree and fun debates we used to have? Remember that time we discussed how both of us would literally compete in The Hunger Games just to get Spock's attention. Back when you were actually fun." He narrowed his eyes at her.