My textbooks are scattered amongst the threads of dark grey flooring after I had cleaned out my entire locker and I ignore the huff of students as they step over them, annoyed by my carelessness. My wired earbuds tangle around my hand as I sweep it through my bag and I shake my hand in front of my face until they finally release me from their grasp. The bell rings over the intercom and the last of the students pile into their first class of the day, and I hear a teacher call over their heads to get to class before they’re written up for being tardy. A pair of familiar converse shoes appear in my peripheral vision as I fish through my backpack on the carpeted floor by my locker.
“What are you looking for?”
Natalie’s voice silences the murmur of students that floods my brain, but I don’t look up at her as I answer.
“My phone.”
I lean over and grab my other bag that I normally only use for my sketchbook and pack of pencils. My fingers pick at the zipper and I thrust it open, cursing when it catches on the leather fabric.
Natalie leans against the adjacent locker and watches me as I tear through my bag like a lion ravaging its prey. “Did you leave it at home?”
I toss my pack of drawing pencils onto the floor next to me and the flap of their cardboard encasing flies open, spilling them onto the floor. My eyes roll dramatically and I purposely smack my head on the open locker door in front of me in annoyance. At this rate, I am going to have to go to the nurse later to get some medication for a headache.
“I don’t know,” I finally answer. Natalie leans down and picks my box of pencils up off of the school hallway floor and hands it to me, allowing me to toss it back into my leather bag. I finally tilt my head up to meet her eyes. “It’s only the second day of school and I’m already losing shit.”
“Shit?” she questions as she leans against the locker again. “I thought you lost your phone.”
I grimace at her sarcastic joke and roll my eyes playfully. “I don’t know where it could have gone. I thought I grabbed it off the charger this morning.”
Natalie adjusts her grip on her notebook and textbook she has in her hands. Her appearance is similar to how it was yesterday. Faded blue jeans with white tennis shoes and her hair pulled into a ponytail, but her sweatshirt is a pastel purple this morning. So simple but fitting to her, unlike the other materialistic girls in this school.
She watches as I grab my possessions I had strewn out onto the floor and place them neatly back into my locker. My leg throbs under the weight beneath me and I shift my weight so my leg is stretched outward. My crutches had long fallen onto the floor from where they were propped up against the lockers and I am surprised that nobody has tripped over them yet.
“Did you do anything with it on the way to school this morning?” Natalie suggests.
I shake my head. “No. My uncle tried to talk to me about the funeral arrangements tomorrow, so I wasn’t on my phone.”
Natalie shifts her weight awkwardly and seems to be unsure about what to say in response to my blunt, emotionless comment about my father’s funeral. It is strange to me that his own daughter was not involved in the planning of his funeral, but Mark explained that they wanted to leave me out of it in fear it would stir up emotions that were never meant to surface. They wanted me to focus on going back to school at this time and not worry about making the arrangements, as if school is more important than grieving properly.
”So you aren’t going to be at school tomorrow?” Natalie bends down and retrieves my crutches from the carpet and leans them up against the locker that she was previously leaning against. I shake my head and ignore the thoughts that seep in my brain about the funeral and push down the anxiety that builds in my stomach. I turn my head and notice that all of the teachers had retreated into their classrooms and are now beginning their lessons for the day, oblivious to the two students who are still loitering in the hall. Perhaps they are being sympathetic to the girl on crutches for her lack of ability to get around easily without assistance, but I would have thought that they would be nagging at Natalie by now to hurry to her first class period of the day.
Feeling defeated because I did not find my cell phone, I decide to lazily toss the remainder of my binders in my locker except for the one I need for my first class. Thankfully, I do not have a lot of papers amongst my school supplies and assignments that threaten to be crumpled under my mountain of textbooks crammed in my locker.
Natalie sighs and bends down to help pick up the last green binder that I use for Chemistry. She neatly slides it on the shelf in my locker and I brace my hands on the floor, slowly bringing my legs under me so I can put more pressure on the leg that isn’t broken. I pause in the proposal position for a moment and my knee presses into the carpet, the sharp pain radiating down to my foot. The pain is so intense that I can feel my own pulse under the cast. Carefully, I use the momentum of my body to thrust myself towards the wall of lockers while using my only good leg to push the weight of my body off of the floor. Natalie quickly drags my crutches towards me and I grab them before placing them under my arms with my binder for Pre-Calculus latched between my fingers.
“I don’t suppose Sherry and Mark are going to be too happy when they learn that I lost my phone,” I gripe with an exaggerated eye roll.
Natalie closes my locker for me and turns to walk with me to class. “Where was the last place you had it?”
I take a few strides on my crutches and watch as an unfamiliar teacher steps into the doorway of his classroom and shuts his door rather harshly, seemingly frustrated by the underclassmen that have made paper airplane throwing into a new high school sport. I begin to think of the last place I saw my phone and retrace my steps in my head. I remember texting Miranda briefly when I had gotten home from school yesterday. She is probably annoyed that I left her on read. My aunt texted me and I had told her I had a lot of homework before changing my mind and leaving the house. I wasn’t on my phone last night, except for when I checked the time at the park to see how long it would take them to notice I was gone.
The park.
I slowly wipe a hand down my face in frustration and close my eyes, careful enough to not smear my makeup. I groan and remain stagnant in the senior hallway as Natalie turns around to face me.
“What?” she asks as she raises an eyebrow.
I tilt my head back and place my hand back on the handle of my crutch “I left it at the park.”
“What park?”
As I begin to speak, I let out an audible sigh. “I went to a park down the street from my aunt and uncle’s house last night and I must have left it on the picnic table there.” I begin to think about the moment I set it down on the table and think about how distracted I was when James arrived and interrupted my lonely night. “I swear if James…”
My voice trails off and Natalie cocks her eyebrow upwards again. “Who’s James?”
My mind paints a picture of him in my head. I had only seen him in dim light, but I can still make out every detail from memory. His dark brown hair that was impossibly possible to be darker than mine, almost black. His pale blue eyes that are full of luster no matter what angle the light strikes them. His toothy grin that was mischievous yet captivating.
I swipe away the painting in my head and shake my head. “I met him at the park. He randomly showed up there and talked to me for a while before I left.”
“Creepy old guy meeting you in a park. Got it.” Natalie nods her head awkwardly and spins around to continue walking towards our class that we are late for.
“He’s not old. Creepy, maybe, but not old. He’s, like, our age,” I inform her as I try to catch up with her. I gather the fact that he never provided his age, but he couldn’t be a day over twenty years old.
Natalie shrugs her shoulders and adds, “Jeffrey Dahmer was about eighteen years old when he started killing people.”
My first thought is to ask how she even knows that fact off the top of her head and I figure she is fond of too many crime documentaries.
“He’s not a serial killer. At least, he doesn’t give off that vibe.”
Natalie spins around again with a smirk on her face and walks backwards as we make our way down the hallway. “Serial killers can be charming. Ted Bundy was the 1970s idea of an attractive man.”
“You really need to stay off of Netflix,” I scold her jokingly.
Her amused smirk morphs into a full smile. “I watch Hulu, too, thank you.”
“You want an award?”
She laughs at my sarcastic response and I find myself smiling. It has been awhile since I have had a genuine smile appear on my face.
Natalie spins back around and the hallway fills with the sound of my crutches clacking against the floor until we reach our first class. Mr. Frost glares at us over his dark rimmed glasses the moment we appear in the doorway and interrupts the teaching of his students who are clearly disinterested by tutting, “Ladies, you’re tardy,” in his gruff voice to appear as if he is more intimidating that he really is. Multiple pairs of eyes stream their gaze towards us as we linger towards the back of the room where two chairs remain available and empty. I feel them follow us as I awkwardly slump down in one of the chairs and keep my head down while Natalie slaps her book onto the adjacent desk and proudly sits down. Mr. Frost lets out an agitated breath and spins back around to the whiteboard where he had previously written a math formula that I had already learned at my old school.
Math was always an easy subject for me besides the time when we learned about imaginary numbers. What is the point of them anyway? How can they produce a factual result if they are up to the imagination? I never understood their importance, nor do I ever think I will enter a job field that uses them in real life.
I open my notebook and write the notes that Mr. Frost instructs us to jot down, attempting to keep my thoughts distracted from the thought of James. Mr. Frost drones on as he draws a pitiful representation of a graph on the whiteboard and I think about how he would be an unsuccessful artist if he ever chose that as a career path. His salt and pepper hair is thinning on the top of his head and his voice is monotone and boring. Without thinking about it, I find myself doodling flowers on the corner of my notebook page and ceasing my note taking, already having an understanding of what is being taught from memory.
After a long duration of him speaking, he finally reminds us about the due date for our math packet he had given us the day before and tells us to use this free time to work on it, but none of the students ever use their free time wisely. With that being said, I twist my body towards Natalie and continue our conversation from earlier.
“I’m really hoping James did not steal my phone,” I admit to her with concern in my voice.
Natalie closes her maroon notebook and sets her pencil on top of it near the spiral rings that hold the pages together. She shrugs. “Maybe you just left it sitting on the table. It might still be there after school.”
“Or some little kid already went there today and snagged it because their parents won’t buy them a phone. I have too many photos on that phone and I can’t afford to lose them. I’m just glad the phone didn’t break in the accident.” The screen had cracked in the impact, but it was still functional, nonetheless.
“Don’t you back up your photos?” she asks as she pulls the hair tie out of her blonde ponytail and readjusts it where it had started drooping lower.
I shake my head and gnaw on my lip. “I keep forgetting to set it up to back up the photos automatically.”
Natalie raises her eyebrows as if to suggest that my mistake is my own dumb fault without speaking the words. She finishes her ponytail and sits upright in her seat before raising another eyebrow.
“You mentioned funeral arrangements earlier. Who passed away?”
My blood runs still in my veins and I retract my eyes back to the flowers on my notebook page, mentally tracing each pencil mark in my head. I regret revealing that information and the thought crosses my mind that I somehow felt more comfortable willingly telling James that my father had passed away than telling Natalie the same thing when she asked.
I swallow a lump in my throat and slowly place my hand over the flower that decorates my notebook. “My dad.”
I don’t look at her, but I can feel a sense of awkwardness when she seems to not know what to say. She pulls one of her legs up over the other to cross them and leans up in her seat. “I’m sorry,” she whispers.
The lump returns to my throat and I swallow again. “You didn’t know.” My fingertips fumble with the hem of my orange sweatshirt and I pull it down to smooth out the wrinkles. “But yeah,” I continue. “That’s why I live with my aunt and uncle.”
Natalie grabs her notebook off of the desk and places it on her textbook neatly, and there is an odd silence between us as the murmurs of students continue in the background. She sits up in the chair and stretches her back before yawning and changing the subject, thankfully.
“So are you going to the park to look for your phone after school?”
It’s a simple question that seems a little dumb considering we were previously speaking about me trying to do whatever it takes to find my phone, but I knew she was just trying to break the awkward silence and she let out the first thing that came to mind.
“Yeah,” I reply softly. I watch Mr. Frost as he takes a sip of his coffee from across the room and enters grades at his computer.
Natalie fakes a smile and rests her cheek in the palm of her hand as her elbow props her head up on her desk. “Maybe James will be there.” She says his name in a playful tone to insinuate myself having a crush on him like a middle schooler.
I flash a smile that I fail to contain and roll my eyes. “Shut up,” I demand jokingly.
But although I don’t want to admit it, I can’t help but to hope for the same thing.
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