Yours Truly, Rylie: Chapter 1

To Emily and Clay;

If it weren't for you guys,

I wouldn't have a story.

        It seemed like a good idea when I first thought about it. Actually, it sounded like a great idea! But if it was such a great idea, why did it cause my world to come crashing down and shatter into millions of tiny, microscopic pieces? Wait, don’t answer that. You probably have a better explanation for it that I do, and I’d rather sit here and wallow in self-pity than have you tell me I did something wrong and that I need counseling.

         But let’s back this up a bit so you understand everything I just told you. I’m Rylie. Rylie Thompson. I go to Clearwater Middle School, and I’m in eighth grade. We’re nearing the end of our school year, but as I said before, I think I’ll back up a little so this all makes sense to you.

         Let’s go back to the beginning of eighth grade. I think if we go back that far, this whole thing will make the most sense to you.

         My locker was next to one of my best friends, Cammi. I never see her much in the morning because of her stage crew “duties,” but when I do, she’s always bubbly, happy, and more awake than anyone else in our grade. I swear, she’s on some kind of happy pill, she’s so enthusiastic! For coming in at 7:15a.m. every morning and then staying later than almost any other student, she definitely has energy at the end of the day, which, to me, is impossible.

         My other friend, Brady, has a locker in the same hallway as me, just a little farther down. He’s also not in the same homeroom as me, which is sometimes a relief. He gets a little…how do I put this nicely…oh, heck with the nice. He gets annoying sometimes. He tends to pronounce my name with an elongated –ie sound, like “Rylieeeeee!” making it sound like he’s a little kid and making my name sound childish. It gets old, let me tell you. I mean, he’s a good friend and all, but sometimes I like to get away from it all.

         So, after Cammi was done with her daily duties, she comes bouncing into homeroom for first-day-of-school orientation. As she plopped down beside me, she said, “Hey!! How are you? How was your summer? Did you do anything exciting?” and started pouring out question after question. See what I mean about the bubbliness?

         I wasn’t very awake yet, so I just smiled and said, “Great!” Luckily, I didn’t have to say much, because Mr. Farico started homeroom.

         “Welcome to your first day of eighth grade!” Every teacher always says this, no matter what grade you’re starting. The thing that was different about this one was that he said it in a way that implied that we were supposed to respond. I don’t know why, but he paused like he wanted us to say ‘thank you’ or something.

         When we didn’t say anything, he kept going with his speech, although I could tell he was a bit disappointed that he didn’t get a response. Like he’s ever gotten a response before. “As you all know, my name is Mr. Farico-” as if we didn’t know this… “-and I will be teaching you social studies this year. If you take a look at the pile of papers in front of you-” and boy, was it a pile! “-the first thing you should see is your schedules.” Immediately, everyone looked down and started comparing their schedule to their friends nearby. I compared mine with Cammi, and found out that we had Algebra, Science, Social Studies, and Language Arts together. This caused Cammi to go on another one of her little excitement outbursts, and I decided that if I couldn’t beat the cause, I would join it. I was totally excited, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not one to freak out in excitement just because I have algebra with my best friend.

         “Aaah!” I screamed as quietly as I could, not wanting to draw more attention to myself. I tried to act as excited as I could on a Monday morning. That wasn’t much, but it was the best I could do at the moment, and I wanted my friend to feel better.

         Mr. Farico cleared his throat loudly, and once everyone was quiet, he kept going with his announcements. “If you need one, a map is located on page 32 of your student handbook.” As if we needed a map. We’d been in this school for three years. You’d think he would assume that we knew where our classrooms were.

“Our revised schedule for today is on the board. Please copy it down onto a piece of notebook paper, as it will be erased directly following morning homeroom.” I looked up at the clock and groaned. Only five minutes left in homeroom, and Mr. Farico expected us to have the eight hour schedule written down on a piece of paper that no one but Cammi had.

        Cammi was always the prepared one. She was the one that came into the first day of school with five notebooks and a pencil case with pens, pencils, white-out, staples and a stapler, a flash drive, and sticky-tack. Who needs sticky-tack in eighth grade, anyway? That’s what I’d like to know.

        Since no one but Cammi had paper, people were asking her for paper, and she refused to give any out, claiming that if they had been prepared, they wouldn’t need paper. That made me nervous, since I didn’t have any paper either.

        “Uh, Cammi?” I asked tentatively.

        “Me! Yes. What?” she exclaimed. She always answers like this when someone says her name. I don’t know why, but it’s one of her little habits. That, and she always adds the suffix –ness onto the end of words, making words like grrness, awesomeness, yayness, and…well, you get the point.

        “Do you think I could have a piece of paper?” I tried to look as pathetic and ashamed as possible. “Please?” I added for effect.

        She sighed and looked like she was about to say no. Then, her facial features changed completely and she said,  “Sure.” She tore a piece out of her notebook and handed it to me. I sighed in relief and started to quickly copy down the schedule on the board.

        As soon as I scribbled down ‘Go Home!!!’ with a bunch of hearts and smiley faces at the bottom of my “temporary schedule,” the bell rang for the change of classes. Everyone jumped up quickly and started towards their first class. My first class was Latin. I went to the classroom that German was in last year, since Latin and German were taught by the same teacher.

        Speaking of German and Latin, our teacher, Mrs. Homel, is a little on the odd side. I have never seen her without striped socks. She will not, for the life of her, wear a pair of plain-colored socks. And I don’t, for the life of me, know why.

        Anyway, back to me on my way to class. So, to my surprise, when I got there, I found out that it had been converted into a Language Arts classroom for seventh grade.

        I guess we will need our maps, I thought to myself. I looked at my schedule and found out what classroom Latin was in and then turned to my map to try and find it as quickly as possible. Of course, with my luck being so horrible, it was on the first floor (I was currently on the second floor) and on the opposite side of the building. Taking the nearest stairwell, I rushed as fast as I could without running to Latin class.

        I got there in time and was one of the first ones in the classroom, surprisingly. A lot of people staggered into the classroom in little bubbles that apparently stuck together for the first class since homeroom. A couple of kids from my homeroom came later than I did, so I figured that they probably had to check their maps just like I did. When I found this out, I was feeling a lot better about my day, although I also knew it wasn’t going to get any easier.