Out of the Shadows

Starting a New Life

After moving in all weekend, unloading boxes and what not, I get ready for my first day of my new school. I'm nervous and excited at the same time. My head starts to spin and my mind starts to run again. Before it gets to bad Tucker runs in and gives me his stuffed frog. "I HAVE TO GO PEE!" he screams. "Take care of Mr. Froggy for me..... please." He asks in the cutes little pleading voice ever. While he goes to the bathroom I realize that I'm gonna be okay. If Tuck can survive with Autism, I can survive a little bit of anxiety. I finish up packing my bag and I make sure Tuck washed his hands before I give him back "Mr. Froggy". I slip on my shoes and kiss my mom good bye while my dad warms up the truck. I get in the struck and let out a sigh. I don't know if it's a sigh of relief or a sigh of anxiety. Maybe both. "You okay there, Amy?" He asks. "Yea. I'm fine. Just nervous. What if I don't have any friends? What if it's just a repeat of Georgia." I start to spiral into this pit of what-ifs and anxiety. "HEY!" my father yells to get my head out of my ass. "You're going to be just fine. Look that little town in Georgia was different. It was closed minded.  Here in Dixon, you don't have to be a house wife or a nurse or a teacher you can be who ever you want to be. Gay, straight, bi. You can be an engineer or hell if you wanted to you  could go off to war. You're going to be just fine. People will treat you better here.  People here are more open minded. Maybe it will change your mother. In the sense that maybe she'll be more open minded too. I can guarantee you're going to make at least one friend at your new school." I take a deep breath and realize he's right. I nod and smile and hug him, "Thank you Daddy. I really needed that."  He smiles. "I love you, sweetheart." He says with a proud smile on his face. "I love you too." I say with a soft smile. He starts the car and we drive to Dixon High School. I walk into the office where I'm greeted by the Principle. "Hey hun. You must be Amelia. Welcome to Dixon High School. I'm Debora, or Ms. Kingston. I will always be here if you need anything. Your counselor is Mr.  Leach. You probably won't talk to him much, but it's still good to know his name just in case. Here is your schedule.  You have 1st period English 10, 2nd period French 2, 3rd period Chemistry, 4th period Math 2, 5th period US History and 6th Period it looks like you have..." she takes a long pause as if she cant read what is written. "Oh! Ahh! Right here. Study group. The room number is wrong here I'll change it for you." She grabs a pink pen and scratched out the room number that was written and writes down p2. "Here's the map of the campus and if you have any questions you can ask Charlotte Johnson." She points to a girl who looks about my age. She's blonde with medium length hair and milk chocolate eyes and freckles like mine. She seems about my height with a sweet welcoming smile. She waves to me "Hi, I'm Charlotte." "Hey, I'm Amelia." I wave back.  "Want me to show you around campus?" Charlotte asks still smiling. "Sure." I reply shoving the papers I just got into my backpack. I start walking behind her and we start on our way out of the office. "Sorry. I'm not actually that smiley and creepy I'm just a suck-up." she rolls her eyes and grabs her phone out of her back pocket. "What's your schedule?" she asks not looking up from her phone "Oh. Ummmm, here." I say scrambling through my backpack. I hand her my paper with my schedule on it. She quickly studies it and then quickly studies her own. "Oh my god. That's so funny you, Ellie, Maddie and Maya all have the same schedule." She squeals hugging me. I just stand there kind of surprised. "You're going to have to meet all of them. Well, except for Maddie. She just left on a 3 month cruise. Lucky bitch. You're just going to have to meet Maya and Ellie for now. You could become part of our group." She rambles on. I just kind of stand there and wait for her to be done but we reach the English building. She opens the door that says E-4. She goes and sits next to two girls, who I assume are Maya and Ellie. Maya is a bit taller with shorter, cork-skew- curly sandy blonde hair and big bright hazel brown eyes, like my mothers. She has little pale, pink, bow-shaped lips. Ellie was about 5'4 and she had long, straight red hair that almost touched her waist and dark brown eyes that seemed to pierce through you when she looked at you. She had very pale thin lips and she had a constellation of freckles on her face. "This is Amelia." Charlotte says as if she was presenting someone she'd been talking about for ever. "Hi Amelia. I'm Maya" Maya says as she waves to me. "Hi. I'm Elizabella, but you can call me Ellie. That's what everyone else calls me." Ellie says smiling. "Hi." I say with a nervous smile. I take my seat next to Charlotte as the bell rings for class to start. "Good morning class!" The teacher says. "Good morning Mrs. Rhine" The class repeats. "This morning, some of you may have noticed, we have a new student with us toda-" She was cut off by the slam of a door. "Late again, Mr. Green?" Mrs. Rhine says clearly annoyed. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Rhine. There was a accident and I got stuck in traffic and I tried so very hard to get here on time but I-" The boy was cut off my Mrs. Rhine. "Just sit down, Jackson. Please." Jackson walks over to a group of boys and sits down. "Anyways, as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted. We have a new student today. Her name is Amber Fawn. She's sitting right over there next to Charlotte." She announces. Jackson looks back at me and we make eye contact for just a second and then I look down and blush. "She moved here all the way from Georgia. I encourage you guys to say hi and get to know her." She finishes. We go through with class and finally after what feels like forever, and after making small seconds of eye contact with Jackson at least 15 times, the bell rings and I start packing up to leave. "Oh my god, Amelia." Charlotte says smiling. "Hmmm?" I reply. She smiles and then starts to giggle, "You totally have a crush on Jackson. Don't you?" I blush and look down. I go back and forth in my head do I come clean or deny it all. I decide to just come clean. "Yea. Is that a bad thing? Is he a bad guy?" She starts giggling again. "No. He's a good guy. You just got so red." I blush again and look at the floor. I suddenly realize that Ellie and Maya are over there talking to him. It wasn't until they looked over at me that I realized that they were talking about me. "Wait!!!" I say in a panic, "Are they doing what I think their doing?!" I ask, pretty much already knowing the answer. "Calm down Amelia. Ellie got a text from Jack saying that he thought you were beautiful. Right then and there my heart stopped and melted. I felt like running or hiding under the covers. I wanted to disappear. I wanted to become invisible. I go through the rest of the day fearing to make one small interaction with Jackson.