Free Bloodlines: Everything That Glitters by Myunique C. Green Page A

her. Luckily she was still standing in the same place, against the pole. As I got closer to the lonely girl she started tensing up like I was coming over to hurt her.
    Is she coming over here to tease me too? She thought as she clenched tighter to the pink binder she held in her hands.
    “Forgive me, I know this is random but I’m Alizarin, people just call me Aliza.” I heard her thoughts ramble around displaying her insecurities and the lack of knowing of whether or not to trust me. “I’m new here,” I continued, “So I don’t have many friends.”
    “Hey I’m Bethany,” she said with a hint of enthusiasm in her voice.
    “It’s nice to meet you Bethany, my family and I just moved here from Hot Springs.” I stretched out my hand to shake but she flinched and I reflectively snatched it back.
    “Sorry,” I said, stuffing my hands in my pockets.
    “It’s alright. I’m just not used to people around here being so nice to me.”
    “Well I’m different from everyone else around here,” I responded. If she only knew the exact truthfulness of my words, I thought.
    “Being different gets you teased,” she choked up.
    “I don’t think anyone’s tough enough to make a move,” I said jokingly. Although I couldn’t see her clearly I did notice that she was a lot taller than me and very thin, making her awkward to look at. After too long of a pause, her thoughts ate away at me. “It was nice meeting you Bethany, hopefully we have a class together.”
    “It was nice meeting you too, Aliza,” she replied with a small smile on her face.
    I scanned the parking lot looking at all the people, all thinking meaningless things; I searched the crowd of people for my brother. Where are you ?
    Over here , he waved his arms in the air to get my attention, somehow realizing that I wasn’t able to see him all too clearly. He was several feet away standing with a group of girls.
    Mr. Popular already ?
    What can I say? They love me .
    I shook my head at his vanity and moved through the crowd to go inside of the building where hopefully it would at least make me feel a little better.
    ***
    Classes dragged on throughout the day, I could hardly pay attention to any part of the lecture because the people around me were mentally not paying attention. Like the girl that sat in front of me, she was fixated on the teacher, her every thought reflected how much she adored him and it wasn’t because his method of teaching was superior to any other.
    I sat back in my seat and tried to force my mind to block out all of the thoughts being processed, but no matter what I did I wasn’t able to shake the silent madness I was going through. I looked over at the round clock that hung on the eggshell colored walls; it was only 11:15. The bell for first lunch wouldn’t ring until another thirty minutes.             
    I don’t think I can do this anymore . I placed both of my hands on my face and accepted the mental defeat. I have to get out of here.
    Are you sure you don’t want to stick around for lunch? I heard Ash's voice in the distant parts of the thoughts that now took up residence in my mind. He would have been easily missed if I had not been expecting his reply.
    Although I could still barely see anything, I’d managed to get this far, I figured that maybe I was a lot tougher than I was allowing myself to believe. I had three more classes to get through today and I’d decided that I should just brave through them and embrace the opinions and judgments of an entire class of hormone raged teenagers and secretive teachers.
    “For homework, you’ll have to create a chart showing the evidence of evolution.” Mr. Yang passed out the accompanying worksheets and walked back to the front of the class, “Tetra, since this is your first day, feel free to collect the notes from one of your other classmates.”
    My stomach dropped and I shook my head silently, why’d they list my middle name on the attendance