Cypmphony's POV
“Where’ve you been,” asks Chloe, a girl I met this morning. To be quite honest? She’s everything a geek is. She’s red-headed, wears glasses, ties her hair up which looks like a dog’s tail and she’s never, ever, not once since I’ve met her, spared a glance at any guy.
Unless she positively and absolutely had to. This probably meant she only looked at them if it gave her any marks for her assessments.
I mean, she ticks every box on the ‘Geek List’.
Her best friend, Tyler ,or Ty as she goes by, on the other hand (who I have to admit is very boyish indeed), just mixes in with the guys. From my point of view, she’s one of the guys yet she looks so girly. Brunette, tallish and loves football, ‘especially the part where they beat the beep out of each other.’ She’s a mix of a bitch and Barbie. Yes, I’m confused too but if you meet her you’d get me.
“Yeah, where’ve you been?” echoes Ty, Chloe’s intimidating best friend.
“Oh....” I murmur twirling my vomit-cafeterian-pasta around my fork. When I look back up I see them giving me a ‘we’re-suspicious’ look. “I’ve been.......” I think of an excuse to hide the fact that I nearly kissed a very good looking boy but decide to twist the truth. I mean, you can’t exactly lie to people on the first day of school, right? And plus, lying is NOT on my list. Yet.
“I ran into trouble,” I tried. Receiving a ‘c’mon-spill look’s’, I carry on. “I dropped my phone on the way down the stairs.”
“Dios, mio. How?” Ty asks with full concentration on me, eyes widened, jaw hanging and her perfectly shaped brows furrowing. I have no clue what she just said but thank God she used at least one English word.
“How? Um........scared of the dark.” I replied, my sentence sounding more of a lame question.
Ty rolls her eyes, which happened to look very much like Nathaniel’s but whatever. It’s not like I remembered the color of his eyes on purpose or anything.
“I don’t blame you. Nobody even walks down them damn stairs, nonetheless try. Wait,” she narrows her eyes at me and I immediately have the urge to run. “Why didn’t you use the elevators?”
“Because I kept pressing the button thingy and it wouldn’t open so I took the stairs instead. I mean, what was I supposed to do? Jump out of the window and kill myself?” I exaggerate on ‘kill’.
Chloe looks up from her books and laughs while Ty just stares at me with a extremely malicious grin plastered on her face.
“Since you’re new, I would like to help you with that,” and we all laugh so loud that some of the kids around us stare and I spot the popular girls.
Cheerleaders, all blonde except for one, skinny on the brink of being anorexic, makeup and on their lunch trays: SALAD.
My God. How do these girls not eat properly? I would kill myself if I had to eat salad for only one meal. I tear my eyes away from them and at the cafeteria doors where Nathaniel walks in with a blonde guy beside him blabbing and Nathaniel laughs at what he says. I then notice that the whole cafeteria is eerie and silent, with everyone’s eyeballs locked on the football jocks.
The group head over to the cheerleaders table and I see the only brunette strut to sit next to Nathaniel who’s now been groped by her and he grins down at her. Ugh.
Just like nothing had happened, the whole entire school-body starts talking. I couldn’t believe it. Seconds ago the school looked at the footballers like they were celebs and now they’re acting like nothing seemed out of the ordinary?
I spin back around to look at Ty and Chloe for some information on how to take this crazy scene in. But what I see is indescribable. Ty is eating my pasta and Chloe is furiously scribbling things in her notebooks.
“What the hell just happened?” I catch them glancing at each other and Chloe speaks up.
“Look. You’re new so you’ve probably never seen anything like it—”
“Yeah, no shit.” I forget about my New Year’s resolution because this school just effed it all up.
“As I was saying,” Chloe looks at me and then at the ‘Popular’ table, “You should habituate—”
“Habituate?” I cut her off looking at Ty who just shrugs and I stare at Chloe like a lost dog.
“Familiarize. You should familiarize yourself with it. They’re like.......how do you put it?” she turns her head to face Ty who’s looking at the popular kids with....................not anger, but disappointment.
“They like to think of themselves as philanthropists— hint, we’re the charity case.” She finishes her sentence with her maybe famous eye roll.
“Wow. Philanthropist. Big word, Ty,” I smirk while biting into a very weird apple in taste.
“Gracias. I’ve been working on my vocab,” she stands and takes a bow when she stops halfway, stares behind me and slowly sits back down. I hear Chloe murmuring something like, “Oh, dear.”
Still chewing my apple I turn around slowly, preparing for the worst. When I see what they see I choke on my apple, coughing like a retarded person having a fit.
When I was a kid, I always knew there was a moral to the story of Snow White. It wasn’t the ‘never talk and take things from strangers.’ It was ‘never eat apples because they’ll end up clogging in your throat trying to suffocate you.’
I feel a hand patting me on the back trying to calm me down and I turn around to face Nathaniel.
“Hello there, Cymphony.”
“Hey,” I choke out; still not sober from my fit. Wait. “How d’you know my name?”I point at him, eyes narrowing.
“I did my research.” And as a proud and cocky person he is he smirks.
“Oh, really? I don’t think a person like you would ever be caught dead in the library so tell me. What’s the big secret into finding things in this school?” I smile innocently.
“Well, I do have my people,” he grins, showing his dimple.
“Your people?” I gag, “You make it sound like these kids are your slaves.”
Once I finish my sentence I hear a few gasps and I look aver to the cheerleaders who stare at me with their mouths shaped like an ‘o’. Looking around I see everybody staring, including the lunch ladies trying to figure out the schools’ latest gossip.
“Pftt.” I turn my head back round to look at the blond guy Nathaniel came in with. He’s trying to hold his laugh down and I swear, if he decided to hold it down any longer he’d fart. But luckily he lets it all out and unfortunately, he’s howling like a maniac.
“She just— she- she,” he says in-between his sniggering. “She is a unique one, huh?” He asks Nathaniel (who’s now gaping at me in shock), after his piggish fit. Nathaniel, now unfrozen looks at Ty and asks “She with you?”
“Sí, por qué?” I click. How could I not hear it the first time?
“Spanish!” I shout and everyone near the table jump, including Nathaniel and blonde.
“You’re Spanish.” I explain sheepishly to Ty who’s holding her own laugh down.
“Mexican, to be precise. Me too.” I stare at Mr. Popular staring at Ty.
“I smell something oddly peculiar,” I mutter looking around at everyone standing near me.
“It’s me.” Blonde puts his hand up. “Played a game of footy,” he declares with a very cute smile.
“It’s not what she meant, you doltish idiot,” Chloe glares at him.
“What does that mean?” he asks, totally oblivious.
“Oh, good Lord. He,” she clenches her teeth and point to blonde, “is pointless. Absolutely and thoroughly brainless,” she throws her hands in the air.
I look at blonde and he lowers his eyes, saddened by the fact that Chloe had just finished insulting him with words he doesn’t even understand.
I examine his face and realise that he’s not just upset because of the abusive insults, but he likes her. And I don’t even think she knows. And she calls him brainless.
“It’s alright blonde,” I whisper so that only he hears because Nathaniel and Ty are busy laughing at how serious Chloe is. Blonde stares at me weirdly and I smile, then he clicks and his cheeks start to turn a deep shade of red.
“Don’t tell, please,” he whispers back, looking at the others to see if they’re listening, and then his eyes are on me, pleading. I put my thumb and index finger together and run them along my lips in a ‘my lips are sealed’ kind of way and then I ‘throw away the key’.
“Thanks. Oh!” he smiles excitedly, “Name’s Jake. Schools linebacker,” he holds his fist out.
“Cymphony.” I greet his fist with mine and he says, “Cool.”
“Or you can call me Phoney,” I smile and he cracks up again.
“What are you guys laughing at?” asks Ty curiously.
“Oh, nothing much. Just bonding,” Jake winks at me.
“He doesn’t know?” I nod my head at Nathaniel.
“Nope,” he chortles.
“Know what?” Nathaniel asks.
“Nothing, man,” Jake pats his back reassuringly and Nathaniel pouts.
“Oh. Yo, sissy. Wait for me by my car after school, entiendes?”
“Whatever,” Ty replies while scoffing her face with Chloe’s ham sandwich.
“Wait, what? You—” I stammer, “You’re sister and brother?”
SHUT. THE. FRIDGE.