First chapter is already gaining likes! 85 likes and 84 comments within the first hour of the story being posted! I am honestly stunned- Silently Falling took months to gain that many likes and comments in any one chapter!
Keep it up ;)
Chapter Two
I narrowly avoid tripping over my untied shoelaces as I bound up the stairs towards my art class. The clock down the hallway reads 8:01, which means classes don't start for almost a half hour. I grin and walk a little faster towards art because that means I have that entire half hour to myself.
Every morning, or at least as often as I can, I come to school early and stay in the art room. Art is my first block class, and I love getting there early to work on my own pieces without any distractions.
"Reagan!" Mr. Duncan, the art teacher, greets me. He smiles widely at me as I walk through the door, and my lips lift up to mirror his.
Mr. Duncan is by far my favorite teacher. He's young, only 27 years old, yet he's the best teacher I have. That may just be because he lets me in his classroom early in the morning and brings me coffee, but I love this man as if he was my older brother. Since I'm an only child, I don't really know the brotherly feeling, but I'm guessing Mr. Duncan fits the description.
"See if you can guess the flavor today," he says, walking my coffee over to me as I put my stuff down.
"This will be easy." I grin, taking it from him. I lift it to my lips and take a sip, and as soon as the coffee hits my tongue I cringe and thrust it away from me. "Hot!" I exclaim, instantly sticking my tongue out and crossing my eyes in order to inspect any damage that boiling water may have caused.
Mr. Duncan starts laughing and I glare at him, my tongue still hanging out. "That was so not funny."
"I probably should have warned you." He grins, sitting down at his desk.
I plop down in my seat and pout, "Might have been nice."
He chuckles at me and then goes to do whatever work an art teacher has, leaving me to do my own thing. Moving my hand along the bottom of my desk, I find the place where I keep my sketchbook and pull it out. My eyes wander over the worn cover and my hand follows. I open it up and look through all of my drawings- some worth a look and some random scribbles that I obviously didn't spend more than a few minutes on.
"You know Reagan, I think you'll really love this project I'm working on." Mr. Duncan says from his desk.
I lift my head and perk a brow, "How come?"
He grins and sips from his coffee. "Because I just know."
"You know that doesn't give me much of an answer." I grumble.
"You'll find out," he says as he sips his coffee. I go to respond, but something in his book catches his attention and all of his focus goes towards it.
For the rest of my thirty minutes I open my book to the next blank page and start another random drawing. Time gets away from me, and before I know it the page is filled with markings of my pencil. I pause as I hear the bell ring and place my pencil down, taking a look at what I drew.
A rose; with detailed petals, two razor sharp thorns, and one leaf dotted along the stem. I don't even really like flowers all that much, so I'm not entirely sure why I drew that. It may be because of the bouquet of roses sitting in my kitchen, or maybe the picture Chloe showed me she took with this morning's dew glazed over it?
The class starts filling in around me and I'm quick to discreetly place my sketchbook back under my table. Mr. Duncan catches my eye as the bell rings to signal the start of class and I smile at him.
"Alright, so the end of the quarter is coming up..."
Halfway through the class, we are interrupted by the locked door handle being jiggled. Mr. Duncan sighs and walks towards it to let whomever it is into the room, but before he can open it, the door opens itself and reveals Hayden Summers with a lock pick in hand and a smirk on his face.
"This school really needs to up its security." He grins, winking at Mr. Duncan before strolling around looking for an empty seat. Every girl in class either glares at who's sitting next to them since they're not Hayden, or, if the seat is empty, they stare at Hayden with hopeful eyes.
I roll my eyes and direct my attention back to Mr. Duncan who is scowling at the latecomer as he waits for him to take his seat.
"If you could find your seat today, Hayden." He snips, crossing his arms.
Hayden glances back at him and smirks and sits at the table directly next to him. Which happens to be mine.
He rarely shows up to this class, and I deem it because it's the first class of the day. Most people diss their first class if it's an easy one, and art isn't necessarily hard. Lucky for me, this is the only class I have with Hayden, and he's never sat with me. Until now.
I stiffen and try my hardest to ignore him as he obnoxiously gets his things out, throwing out a piece of paper and lifting his bag onto the desk as he looks around for a pencil. His hand ruffles through all the loose papers in his bag, making a noise loud enough to attract the attention of everyone around us and Mr. Duncan.
"Hayden." He says calmly.
Hayden pauses his search and glances up with an insufferable smirk. "Yes sir?"
"Do you mind?"
"Not at all."
I close my eyes to avoid letting out an irritated sigh and instead watch Mr. Duncan do it for me. He takes in a deep breath and lets it out slowly before he talks. "Stop disrupting the class or else you're going to have a nice chat with me after the bell."
Hayden just chuckles to himself and nods, placing his hands up in surrender. He places his backpack back down on the floor and Mr. Duncan continues discussing a piece of art history.
Thank you Mr. Duncan. Now, if I'm lucky, maybe Hayden won't bother me for the rest of-
"Who left him in the middle of a fun night to leave him so pissy?"
Of course.
Ignore him, Reagan.
"I mean this guy is, what? Eight years older than us? And he thinks he can boss me around?" He scoffs.
I roll my eyes, "At your maturity level, he may as well be thirty years older than you." I mutter.
What happened to ignoring him?
Hayden doesn't get offended, if anything he gets quite the opposite. I don't look over at him, but I can hear the cocky smirk on his lips as he responds.
"Feisty, heh? Perfect. That's the way I like them." He says, and I have to resist gagging.
Instead I look at Mr. Duncan and give him a helpless look. His eyes flit to Hayden and he gives a ghost of a smirk for a split second before he goes right back to his lesson.
---
Once art ends, I collect my stuff and rush out of the room quicker than the speed of light. Hayden hadn't said much more in class, but just his being there was enough to bother me. I know I don't know the guy and I shouldn't make assumptions, but just his presence was cocky and annoying.
I catch Chloe just as she's leaving her own classroom with her head hung and a paper in hand. Her camera bag is just barely hovering over the floor from her sagging shoulders. I raise a brow and walk over to her.
"What's with the long face?"
"The expression is 'why the long face?'" She mumbles.
"Same thing."
"No, not really."
"Okay, then why the long face?" I ask, scowling at her.
She doesn't answer me and instead lifts the paper in her hand. I take it and glance over it before focusing on the big red numbers on the top.
91.
"Okay? Why are you showing me a solid B?"
Now her head snaps up and she snatches the paper from me. "Because it's a B!"
Yeah, you know those people who get exasperated over anything less than, like, a 95? Chloe is most certainly one of those people.
"Chloe." I say calmly. "One B isn't going to make Yale reject you."
She just sighs and stuffs the 'bad' grade into her backpack. "Let's just go to class, yeah?"
I nod and we start to walk down the hall, finally keeping up with traffic instead of stopping it. "I have to stop by my locker first to grab my textbook."
I enter my combination, fully aware we only have one more minute before the bell rings, and I hastily open my locker door. As I reach in for my textbook, a small, white envelope floats out of my locker and onto the dirty school floor.
A smile worms its way onto my face as I bend down to pick it up, the lopsided red heart in its usual place on the back of the envelope.
"Ooooohhh," Chloe smirks. "Another letter from your stalker."
I glance over at her and try to fake glare, but I can't seem to keep a smile off of my face.
"Well!" Chloe says impatiently, causing my attention to shift from the letter to her. "Are you going to open it or what?"
I bite my lip and look back at the delicate letter in my hand. I shake my head and place it back in my pocket, the limited time we have left not giving me the right amount of time to read and admire the letter.
"I'll read it later. We need to get to class." I say, tucking it into my pocket before grabbing Chloe's arm and pulling her towards AP U.S History.
"Did someone say we need to get to cla-AHHH!"
Chloe and I whip our heads to the side at the sound, and my eyes land on Logan.
"Logan!" I exclaim as we run over to him from where he's sprawled out on the floor. "What the hell just happened?" I laugh as we help him up. I answer my own question when I see his shoelaces untied, and I deem his accident from tripping over them.
"Shit that hurt..." He mutters, dusting his pants off.
Logan is Chloe and my's best friend. He moved here just last year all the way from Nevada and instantly connected with the two of us. He molded right in, and from the first time we met him we knew he would be the newest addition to our duo and make it a trio. He's a goofball, and that's just what Chloe and I needed.
He's tall, has lean muscle, dark brown hair, and a very nice facial structure that attracts a fair amount of girls. When we first met Logan I had a small crush on him, but that crush was, well, crushed when he told us that he's still going strong with his girlfriend back home. And the more I got to know him, the more that crush diminished and turned into a love that one can only give a best friend.
Plus, he became less and less attractive to me every time I saw him lick something that definitely shouldn't have been licked, every time he sneezed on me, and when he decided slobbering over other people's forks and spoons was okay.
He dusts himself off with a scowl but when he sees Chloe and I his face breaks out into a huge grin and he pulls us in for a hug, shoving our faces into his armpits.
Oh thank god he put on deodorant.
"Oh oh oh I missed you two!" He exclaims, squeezing us tighter with every word.
"Logan," Chloe groans, her voice muffled. "Could you maybe, I don't know, let us go?" She struggles to say.
He obliges and we both suck in air since he had cut off our circulation. Plus, the longer he kept our noses against his pits, the more his true smells were shining through...
"When did you even get back?" I ask, craning my neck to smile up at him since he towers over us at a stunning 6'3".
He's been in Nevada the past few days, visiting his girlfriend. We didn't think he was going to be back for another couple of days.
"Yeah, how's Vicky?" Chloe asks as we start to walk down the hall.
"Mom all of the sudden decided I needed to come home because, I don't know, she finally realized what Vicky and I had been doing the whole time I was there." He says, winking at us. "And Vick? Oh trust me, she's good if you know what I mean." He says, biting his lip and doing a little hip thrust.
Chloe and I stick out our tongues and make gagging noises.
"TMI, Logan." I groan.
He throws a grin at me and his arm makes its way around my shoulder, pulling me in so he can give me a noogie. "Just thought my two best friends would like to hear about me getting lucky. Every day. Multiple times a day. Because I can go for-"
He gets cut off by Chloe slapping her palm over his mouth. She looks at me and calmly sighs.
"He's licking my hand, Reagan."
"Did you expect any different?" I ask honestly, moving out of Logan's hold.
She snatches her hand away and wipes it on her jeans with a look of utter disgust. Logan smacks his lips and then swallows, making some comment about how her hand tastes like salt before throwing his arms back around our shoulders and pulling us towards class just as the bell rings.
Vote and comment ;)