And I don't like falling 'cause I've never been good with heights
And not being right
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Joey doubled back upstairs to grab his bike keys. Summer had meant basketball camp so he had just ran to school, completing getting out of the habit of driving over.
Speaking of habits, he was already sleepy considering that he had woken up an hour before his alarm rang, but despite all his wishes to just flop back down under the covers, he dragged himself downstairs and out the door.
Almost knocking into it, he noticed the overflowing bin on the sidewalk between his and the newly shifted neighbor's one if the cardboard boxes and bubble wrap sheets were anything to go by.
Rolling up into the school parking lot, pretty sure he had completely messed up the time Ben had told him to be there at.
Smiling politely at the students, he couldn't for the life of him remember the names of, he made his way over to where the boys were.
Simply placing himself against the hood of Alex's car, Joey tried to catch up on whatever was the most important thing on the first day of junior year. Which was harder than anybody would have expected, considering that he was having to glance between five people.
"It's all over the news," Mark, a friend from the basketball team, waved his hand around.
Alex, taking a huge bite out of his Burger King takeout of the day, his parents were out of town and heaven forbid he even enter the kitchen unsupervised, and nodded, "She might even go to school here."
"Who's going here?" Joey finally asked. Everybody was obviously going to be talking about it so he might as well play catch up.
"Elena Moscovitz," Alex replied in a matter of fact voice as if the name was explanation enough, looking at himself in the side mirror to check for crumbs around his mouth.
Joey waited a couple of seconds for any of them to elaborate and finally asked, "Who's that?"
Ben raised up his hands, "Thank you! Somebody else who doesn't know who the hell that is." He held up his fist towards Joey who, still confused, replicated the gesture.
"She's a tennis player," Mark informed him, disappointment etched deep in his eyes. "One of the best."
The warning bell rang, saving Joey from raking through his brain for any kind of contribution to the conversation.
Ben sidled up to him and said, "Think that girl at the cafe was Elena?"
They walked without resistance, the people almost backing up into the lockers for them walk through the corridors.
Joey shook his head, "She could be anyone and this girl might not even go to school here."
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Elena nearly flung her alarm clock across the room when it rang in the morning, not used to waking up for school. Being home schooled hadn't really put her in the habit of having to get up to face teenagers for seven hours.
Trudging around her room, she got ready still half asleep and texted Taylor to pick her up. Within minutes a horribly loud car horn beckoned her out and Elena managed out a smile at the go to coffee cup Taylor had ready for her.
"So?" Taylor grinned at her, practically shaking in her seat. "How excited are you?"
Elena slowly took in her surroundings as the coffee grounds wafted their way into her brain, "Totally."
Her voice might not have been as excited as she had hoped it would be because Taylor punched her shoulder too hard for that early in the morning. "Way to be enthused for your first day of school."
Elena yawned, pumping up her hand towards the car roof in an attempt to be thrilled. "You're happy enough for the both of us."
"I am actually and you are not going to dampen my mood," Taylor said, still smiling too hard.
Elena was more than glad to be going to school with Taylor, but her overwhelmingly cheery mood was too much for her caffeine parched current self. Mainly to shift the focus away from her, she said, "Tell me about the school."
Taylor started into her characteristic monologue, "Pretty okay. There are jocks, theater kids, cheerleaders, normal people, and a billion others. Most of them are quite nice which is great. Some of the teachers could be better but they're tolerable. "
By that time they were pulling into the school parking lot, right on time because everybody was heading inside. Taylor quickly led Elena to the principal's office and went off to her own class.
Elena steeled herself for the unfamiliar setting and knocked just below the nameplate, Argus Flitwick, before she could psyche herself out.
"Elena!" the man almost shouted in her face and she stumbled back a couple of steps.
"Um, hi," she gave him her best over practiced polite smile. "Sir."
He closed his office door behind him and walked her down the corridor, "We are absolutely thrilled to have you here at Croswell."
Elena tugged the straps of her backpack across her shoulders, already done with the whole over the top welcome. "I'm excited to..." she stopped, not sure what exactly she was excited about. "Finally go to school."
She paid as much attention as she could while taking in the building itself. Along the way to homeroom the principal handed her the class schedule and a hundred different papers that she carefully shoved into her bag.
Finally they reached a door to which he pointed at and said, "This is your homeroom. If you need anything don't hesitate to approach any of the faculty or the students who would be more than happy to help you out."
Elena smiled, somewhat forced, "Thank you, sir." Also thanks for implying that people will be helping me because I'm me, much appreciated.
He offered to walk her in but she declined. She could hear faint noises from inside the classroom, the teacher was obviously not in there, and getting the principal to introduce her was probably not the best way to start school.
Joey handed over his class schedule to Ben who had his desk already full with everybody else's, without any complaints whatsoever because they would be useless anyway.
He was half listening as Ben ranted off which classes who had in common with whom, when the door opened and everybody quietened down expecting the teacher.
However what they got was a dark haired girl, in a red hoodie and white skirt, most definitely not their teacher, and yet nobody started talking. Through the longest minute of awkward silence Joey had ever been in the middle of, he sent a silent thank you to Ben who got up and walked to the new girl who he, from his vantage point, could only see the top of her head.
Elena quickly glanced over the whole room, debating between saying something and taking the seat closest to her. She wasn't very uncomfortable in front of crowds, having played in the midst of a lot more number of people on an almost daily basis for the major part of her life, but this was out of her element.
A genuine smile spread across her face as the boy she had seen at Cups and Co. yesterday.
"Hey," Ben grinned at the girl he already felt attached to because of her very true comment about Arabella. "Didn't expect to see you here."
"Didn't expect to be here," Elena made a disgusted face, though the whole idea of high school was picking up.
"I'm Ben," he extended his hand in between them.
"Elena," she shook his hand and the sudden, visible dawn of comprehension on his face made her wince internally.
Ben took a split second to join the dots, "So you're the famous player that shifted here."
Elena motioned to herself, taking the fact that he didn't previously know about her as a positive thing. "That's me."
The door banged open again and this time it was the teacher so Elena let Ben lead her over to a row towards the back, taking the seat behind hers.
As the attendance went on he quickly introduced her around.
"This is Alex, basketball extraordinaire and perfect boyfriend," Ben motioned to a dark quaffed haired boy who seemed enthused to do the induction himself.
Elena waved at him, and he quickly started talking, "I know you, no need for the whole name thing."
She inclined her head in a grateful gesture. "In a creepy way," Elena teased leaning over to his seat.
Alex almost took it seriously before he saw her small smile and deflated, "Not in a creepy way." He stopped, thinking over it for a second and relented, "Okay, in a kind of creepy way."
Elena cut him off before he could ramble on, "No explanation required. I know what you mean."
From the corner of her eye she caught sight of the boy sitting next to Ben and passed him a quick look and smile. That one half of a look was enough for her to get a full blast of his blue eyes.
Ben smirked at Joey, already planning much into the future as he saw his bewildered look at Elena acknowledging him.
After the teacher introduced Elena to the whole class, a whole couple of minutes of unnecessary talking on his part because everybody in the whole school knew about her by now.
"The grumpy dude next to me is Joey," Ben spoke quietly, leaning forward towards Elena's seat. "A bigger basketball perfectionist and full time grouchy."
Elena heard a thump and slight groan and glanced around again, catching Joey retracting back his arm from over to Ben's side.
What had only meant to be a peep turned into a much longer look as Joey couldn't tear his attention away from probably the greenest pair of eyes he had ever seen. Subconsciously he must have smiled at her because she grinned back and turned back around in her seat, leaving him to think about the absurdity of it all in peace for the duration of the period.
~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.
"What are your views on him severing all connections with his family for Juliet?" John Walker, the English teacher, looked around the classroom, not letting the over tired looks being thrown back at him by said students discourage him.
Elena raised her hand along with barely any other students. They had been given the book to read as summer homework, which off the top of her head she could see nobody had done.
Mr. Walker pointed towards Elena who missed the gesture, her concentration on the corner of her notebook or more specifically the doodles. He cleared his throat to get her attention, making Arabella, who very unfortunately was in the same class, snort out a fake laugh.
Elena calmly rubbed her cheek with her middle finger and focused on the teacher, "I feel that he should have probably slept on it instead of, well anything else. It could've been love but leaving everything you've known up till then for it is just ridiculous."
Mr. Walker gave her a thoughtful and appreciative nod, before acknowledging everybody else, "Would anybody else like to add something?"
His eyes widened and after fumbling around for words for a couple of seconds he pointed to the back of the class, "Yes, Mr. Parker?"
Joey, quickly rethinking why he had thought that raising his hand up in the first place was an even moderately good idea as gasps rang around the class and people started staring right at him, held himself back from rolling his eyes. Halfway across the room he found Elena's eyes on him too, but without the judgement that was inherently branded into everybody else's.
He wasn't one to interact in classes but the shock rolling off in waves perturbed him more than he had expected. "He wasn't a child and any decision he made would have been with keeping his best interests in mind," he was looking at Mr. Walker but even he knew that Joey was answering Elena.
Elena shifted sideways to look more clearly at him, "You're saying that a barely twenty year old thought that he was in love with a thirteen year old kid that he saw once and that justified every nonsensical thing he did for the rest of the book?"
Joey leaned forward on his own desk, smirking lightly, enjoying the whole thing more than he had thought he would, "Love at first sight can happen."
Elena gave him a disbelieving look, having a hard time wrapping her head around the fact that Joey of all people treated the book like a romantic novel. "You can't love somebody you know nothing about."
"You can never really know everything about anyone," Joey replied, realizing as soon as the words left his mouth that he had just made it about something completely other than the book.
Mr. Walker and the bell interrupted them simultaneously and soon everybody was out the room.
Elena gathered up her things and had just rounded against the end of the row when an unfamiliar, gruff voice rang from behind her. She looked around to see burly guy in a varsity jacket, his eyes trailing up her legs, a gesture that left her more disgusted than anything else had in her entire life. "Yes?"
The boy, Grant, according to his jacket lapel, pointed to the pen lying next to her foot, "Could you pick that up?"
Elena held back a groan and carefully bent down, wary not to flash him and the couple of other boys that had come up to flank him. Hoping that her expression communicated how irritated she was feeling, she held the pen an inch away from the boy's face, "Here you go."
"I've been hearing a lot about you," he did another once over of her, "And it doesn't come near the actual version."
He took the other end of the pen, his guise immediately turning as he barely moved it half an inch.
Elena scoffed at his bewildered look, "Try that pathetic attempt at flirting with somebody who gives a fuck or you might get a broken nose the next time you do it with me."
Finally on her way out the door, she nearly bumped into Joey who looked almost respectful.
"That was something," he nodded back towards Grant and his posse of utter idiots.
She scowled and pretended to throw up, "I wanted to break his face but that would mean touching him."
Joey let out a small chuckle, "I've been there and I won't recommend it."
Elena caught sight of Taylor at her locker further along the corridor, her jaw practically on the floor as she looked between Elena and Joey.
"I'll see you around," Elena quickly excused herself already mentally preparing for the freak out Taylor had ready for her.
"Did you just get Joey Parker to talk?!" Taylor leaned around Elena to see his retreating back.
Elena glanced around at the students openly staring at her. She had been expecting it but it was still bizarre. Most of the people instantly looked away so it was slightly bearable.
"Maybe that's why he doesn't talk," Elena looked at Taylor pointedly.
Taylor narrowed her eyes at her, "Do you like him?"
"Oh my God," Elena turned and walked away with Taylor teasing her over her shoulder.
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HIII!!!!!!!!!
Hope you liked the chapter, and if you did don't forget to leave a vote and comment.
Much love,
N.