Broken Tears 5

Broken Tears 5

Schuller Armstrong walked out of the science lab at the end of the day. He tried to remember the books that he needed to carry home for homework. He had been invited to try out for the basketball team but declined since he still wanted to work at the gym. He knew that next week was his birthday. His parents always gave him some small gift of money but he wanted to use it to buy a some clothes and a corsage for Caroline for the prom. He did not tell Caroline about the extra hours at the gym because he wanted to surprise her.

He needed to reroute his path to his locker because he wanted to avoid Amanda Willis. He felt that she was interested in more that spending time with him learning math. She seemed to always be there when he came out of classes or different parts of school. He did not think that a simple tutoring session to help her with math, as an honor society mentoring program, would be enough to declare a romance between the two. Amanda interpreted his politeness as a love conquest. As far as he was concerned, she could keep her over done eye make-up and loud lipstick. She had even seemed to miss the simplest concepts of math that a freshman would know. Schuller heard from some boys that their girl friends heard that they were becoming a pair. The next time the honor society needed a volunteer for tutoring, he would leave it up to the president, Mark Parks.

Schuller closed his locker door when he saw Amanda standing there. She patted down her coffee brown, long hair and wiggled as if she was doing a move in a cheerleading cheer. She suddenly stopped when she realized that he was turning to go.

“Oh hello.” Amanda moved closer to Schuller. “I just wanted to tell you that I got a B on that math packet work you helped me with.” Her eyes fluttered. Schuller looked around to see if anyone of his or Caroline’s friends was in the area.

“Ah. That’s nice Amanda. It looks like you have the hang of chapter 5.” He glanced over his shoulders and then back to Amanda. “I guess that you are ready to go solo for math now.” He checked to see that his locker was closed and his combination was on zero.

“Oh no Schuller.” replied Amanda as she gently shook her head to let her brown hair sway. She pushed the hair behind her right ear to show off new small hoop earrings that he had never seen before. “I just know that chapter six will be twice as hard. You explain it so much better than Miss Gearry does. She just wants to make me give up.” Then Amanda gave a little pout. As a fickle part of fate, Amanda’s math book slipped out of her hands and dropped to the floor. Amanda just stood there with the book laying in front of her.

Schuller reached down to pick it up. When he returned the book to Amanda, she took the book and his hand. At that time, three girls, Tiffany, Katie, and Nikko came around the corner to get to their lockers. They were Caroline’s best friends.

“What did I tell you!” said Nikko as the three stopped and stared.

“I can’t believe it!” responded Tiffany in a voice that had a higher pitch.

“Oh poor Caroline. Maybe that is why she is not at school. I think that I heard that something happened to her. I tried to call her on my cell phone this morning when she was not in English class and there was no answer. Maybe she tried to, “ and Katie’s voice trialed off.

“Sh! Don’t even say that. Caroline is too cool headed.” insisted Tiffany. “I left her a text message to call me when she could. I heard that she was in an accident, and just couldn’t come to school. She will be here soon. You’ll see.”

The three girls passed Schuller and Amanda and gave them both a cold stare. Amanda just gave a jubilant smug stare back. Schuller pulled his hand away quickly and walked ahead towards the parking lot where Lester Ingram had volunteered to take him to his home. He had tried to contact Caroline and got no answer from her that day. He knew that she would have a good reason for missing a day of school in which her band was practicing for their marching competition that would be in several days. Caroline was one of the line leaders who knew the turns perfectly and the band director Mister Packer had commented that she had a very natural gift of music and marching.

“Don’t forget that math tutoring. I’ll be here on Thursday morning. You are just too sweet to let a girl down.” said Amanda loudly, as she walked down to the bus pick up zone. The bus driver gave the final ‘all call’ for the students to board the bus.

Schuller cringed and shook his head. He continued to hurry down the hall. His day was really one for the books.

Amanda hurried quickly to her bus and saw her best friend Patty waiting for her.

“Where have you been. The bus would have left if I hadn’t dropped my notebook out the window and told the bus driver that I had to pick it up. The driver is furious because he is going to be late to finish his route.”

The girls sat together in the back of the bus. They checked their phones to see who had left messages. Amanda had two messages and Patty had three.

“Hey I got three. I beat you today.” she boasted as she showed Amanda her phone screen.

“Yes but it doesn’t count if someone called you twice. You know the agreement.”

“Oh there’s that Arthur geek, Wendell and,” she read the second message. “And, oh no Arthur again. Who gave him my number. He is so dull.”

Amanda giggled. “That’s what you get for giving Tom my number.”

“You rat!” They both laughed.

“I have my mother telling me that I have to go to the doctor’s when I get home. I guess that I have to get my shots updated. “ Amanda cleared that message and quickly looked at the next one. She stuck her tongue out at that one and then read the third one. “Hm. I like this. Do you remember the super good looking boy at the mall I met?”

“Yes!” said Patty with eyes opened wide.

“He finally wants to see me at the mall again!”

“Way to go. Ask him if he can bring that tall, guy who was with him.”

“Yea. I’ll do that when I am home. Here I am. Must go. I’ll call you after dinner.”

“Okay bye.” said Patty.

“Bye!” said Amanda as she got off the bus. At the doorway of her home, her mother was waiting with her purse in her hand and signaled for Amanda to get into the car. This was a very busy day for her.