After home room, we all trudged away to the next class. My first class of the day was English 1 and I was lost. After asking multiple teachers, I finally found it and rushed in seconds before the late bell rung. The teacher was a shorter woman with dyed reddish brown hair, glasses that looked like it was going to slip off the tip of her nose, and a voice that had become raspy due to what one can only suspect as years of smoking.
She turned to me and said, "Ah, almost late huh? You're not the first and certainly won't be the last. Just take that seat over there." She pointed to the desk 3rd row on the right and 3rd from the front. I took my heavy backpack and tried to not sling it onto the floor and sat down, pulling out my notebook and mechanical pencil. The person sitting in front of me was some preppy blonde in a pink blouse and heather grey v-neck sweater whereas the person sitting behind me from a glimpse was all dark, black hair, black pants and shoes, black polo and a hoodie painted with light grey tattoo designs mishmashed together, screaming rebellion. I looked to the front of the class as the teacher started passing out our book for the year and syllabus as well as introducing herself.
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Ms. Harding had assigned us some in-class work then left the room. I had bowed my head and started my reading when I felt a finger tapping my shoulder. I turned around and felt my soul fall into a pool of warm chocolate fringed with sweeping midnight fronds. My body was free falling and I didn't know how to catch myself. His thin lips, the color of grapefruit, quirked up in a half smile as he whispered to me,
"Hey, do you have a pen I can borrow?" I nodded and bent over to dig in my messy backpack, finally pulling one out.
"I need it back after you're done with it okay?" I whispered to him, "I don't have a lot of these." He nodded back in confirmation and I turned back to my paper.
Eventually, like most high school classes that have a teacher missing for more than 5 minutes, the students slowly ceased focusing on work and started focusing on their new neighbors instead. This was a particularly good moment for me to sneak in a few more pages of the third book in Elizabeth Haydon's series. Just as I got to a particularly good part in the book, I felt another tap on my shoulder. I quickly faced the person disrupting my momentary escape from reality and see it's the rebellious dark guy, who was smiling at me.
"Hey, I'm Hahmeen," he introduced himself, "What's your name?"