The Gang: Freshmen Year End of September

LeeAnne Wolfe walked towards class, her coltish legs showing beneath the oversized Hawaiian t-shirt. Her thick brunette mane hung long from her head, sleek and flowing, framing a daydreaming face. LeeAnne was on her own planet, mind was buzzing with thoughts, possible weekend plans, images of friends, images of boys.
Something smacked into her shoulder, causing every book LeeAnne was carrying to drop to the floor.
"Maybe you should watch where you're going, Missy," Winter McBride said with a mean laugh. Winter looked mean. Her hair was dyed a jet-black and the makeup on her face somewhat resembled a vampire.
LeeAnne shook her head. Winter was the older sister of a friend of hers. "I can't believe someone as sweet as Jake would have a sister like Winter," she grumbled, bending to pick up the scattered books.
"No joke," came a familiar voice behind her. Connie was a friend, one of The Gang, who went way back with Lee. She grinned and knelt to help LeeAnne pick up, pushing a blonde curl from in front of her glasses. "I saw what happened when I was coming from the bathroom. Someday someone's going to teach her and her dumb hooligan friends."
All her things collected, Lee rose and rolled her eyes. "Well, you'd think she'd be aware of it by now. Winter's only what, seventeen? Eighteen? And still in tenth grade?"
Connie nodded, giggling in her sweet voice. "Guess Jake got all the brains. Hey, listen, here's my plan for the weekend: we rent some sweet babe movies, say Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise or something, and stay up drooling with a bunch of junk food."
LeeAnne couldn't help but laugh at that one. It was more or less Connie's plan every weekend. "Sure, why not," she replied. "I turn here - gotta go complain to Jakey Boy."
"Later, Lee!"

A skateboard came flying down the hall, ridden by the ultimate jockey: Garland Eastwood. He skidded to a halt inches in front of the locker of Risa Hunter, the best friend of his friend Sasha's live-in cousin. "Hey, babe," Garland said in a characteristically cocky voice, "Where you gonna be this weekend?"
She made a face, trying her best to ignore Garland but knowing it was impossible. "I don't know, anywhere you're not?"
He wagged his finger at her, grinning through the curtains of his VERY red hair. "Funny, funny, funny! I knew there was a reason I was so crazy about you - it's that fantastic sense of humor." Garland put his arm around Risa's shoulder, winking a green eye at her. "What would you say to the idea of you, me, maybe a candlelit Chuck E. Cheese's?"
Risa raised a fist in warning, and Garland backed off, laughing. "Fine, fine, fine. Guess I'll just have to see you at the meeting then. My good fortune that you're always over at Sasha-Poo's place."
She sighed, disgusted as always at Garland's shenanigans. She didn't bother to watch as he skateboarded away.

Jake slid into his seat, trying to arrive undetected by his science teacher. Mr. Patterson turned just in time to see Jake's late appearance, and he pointed a finger at Jake. "One more tardy and it's detention for you, McBride."
The class around him snickered, and Jake turned pink. "Yes, sir," Jake muttered, putting his head on the table.
LeeAnne, his lab partner, was sitting across the table from him. She nudged his head of strawberry-blonde hair until his blue eyes raised to meet hers. "Your sister's a jerk," she informed him.
Jake rolled his eyes. "Yeah, tell me something Ah don't know," he said. "What did she do this time?"
"Knocked me over on the way to class, sent everything in my arms flying down the hall. Did it for no apparent reason."
Jake chuckled - not at what had happened, but at the way LeeAnne had worded it. "Don't you know by now Winter doesn't think she needs a reason?"

Morgan Chonce squinted his eyes, drawing on the white art paper with his utmost concentration. It was his fifth try to replicate his thumb with a charcoal pencil, but everything kept coming out disproportionate.
"Hey, Morgie."
Morgan jumped. His pencil went flying and left a thick, black line across the work he'd been doing. He swiveled around in his chair, furious, chocolate-brown hair practically whipping him in the face. "Jerks!"
Reed Benson and Josh Gray stood behind him with seemingly innocent smiles plastered across their faces. "Hi, Morgan," Josh said with a grin. This grin read: the lights are on but nobody's home.
"Hey, Josh," Reed said loudly, holding up Morgan's picture. "Lovely artwork, isn't it? It even kind of looks like a thumb. Awful small though."
Morgan rolled his eyes and mouthed the next line.
"But then, you know what they say. His name is Big M, little organ."
The protagonist shook his head, turning back around to start Thumb Attempt Number Six. "Get some new material, guys."
Reed crumpled up the picture he'd helped sabotage and pointed to Morgan. "Watch it, Chonce. After school, your butt's mine!"
Josh patted him on the shoulder. "See you tomorrow, Morgie."

Mariah Stephens leaned over her desk to see the doodle unfolding beside her. "Cool picture, Sash."
Sasha Blake glanced over at her, somewhat startled. When Sasha was drawing, the world disappeared around him. "Oh, thanks," he whispered. He glanced up at their English teacher through his crystal-clear ice blue eyes. "Needed something to pass the time."
"You need to get into the AP class," Mariah replied. She made a face and looked back down at her paper. The assignment had been to write a two- page narrative on the most profound thing that had ever happened to them. The brunette had gotten her name and date written on the top of the paper. Besides that, a sea of white mocked her from below.
Sasha's paper, she observed, had long been finished. His near-black thick wavy hair hung down in his face as he returned to drawing. Sash was not paying attention to see Mariah's big brown eyes trying to read what he'd jotted down. "I hate English," she announced finally, shaking her head. "I'm not quite fifteen yet - what big and important profound thing has happened to me?"
Sasha looked over at her, putting his attention from the detailed, amazing sketch to her frustrated face. With serenity and clarity that would astonish a monk, Sasha replied, "More than you will let yourself realize."
This, too, made Mariah roll her eyes. "Oh, really. And what did you write about, oh mystic one?"
His smile was simple and lovely. "The forming of The Gang, of course."

Paige Mitchell batted her eyes, trying to make sense of the worksheet in front of her. She couldn't understand Algebra at all. Was it X, was it twenty-two. nobody knew. The school day wasn't halfway over yet, and already she was falling asleep.
Paige laid her head on her desk to take a nap - the lunch bell would wake her, and she could save this headache for homework.
"Hey, Paige," said a boy from behind her, "What did you get for number seven?"
"Sleepy," she replied. Paige smiled, eyes still shut, when she heard his laugh.
"Yeah," he replied, "you and me both."
Paige allowed her tiny body to curl into a ball as best it could in the chair, and decided she wasn't opening her eyes until the bell rang. She betrayed herself though, because after another fifteen minutes they opened not to the bell, but to the door opening.
Paige felt her eyes widen and her jaw somewhat drop as in walked-

".the cutest boy I have ever seen," gushed Paige.
She was sitting with The Gang. Paige had set herself beside LeeAnne Wolfe, her best friend and across-the-street-and-one-door-down neighbor. Across from her was Sasha Blake, The Gang's unofficial leader and host of all outside-school meetings. She was reporting to them and the others already sitting down about the new guy in her math class. "He isn't new to the school or anything, he just changed his schedule up or something."
"What's his name?" asked Connie Williams. She was eager to hear gossip on boys.
"Stephen Wallace," Paige replied, rolling her eyes dreamily. "He's got amazing eyes - I could just melt!" She clutched her heart, giggling.
Sasha smirked, nudging Mariah on the other side of him. "We know Stephen. Remember, he used to go out with Hillary what's-her-name. The cheerleader."
"Oh, yeah," Mariah said, snapping her fingers. "That's right. He's on the J.V. football team. You like this guy?"
"What's happening?" This was from Morgan, coming to sit on the other side of Paige, across from Mariah. "What's wrong with Paige?"
"She's in love or something," Mariah answered, shaking up her drink.
Morgan made a face. "Again?" He hated when Paige was talking about new crushes - it slimmed his chances with her. "After the whole Jacob thing?"
Before Paige could defend herself against that one, Connie broke in. "I think it's kind of disgusting. I'm all for boys and dating, but the simple fact of the matter is that if nine out of ten guys are cute, then the tenth one goes here."
"I beg to differ," put in Garland, sitting beside LeeAnne. He set his skateboard up on the table and placed a lunch tray on top of it. He thrust his fingers through his red hair in a move he believed (falsely) to be sexy. "Come on, you guys - take me for example. Tell 'em, Lee, don't you think I'm cute?"
"This from the guy who wears stick-on mustaches to the mall to look older? No, sorry Gar, I'm going to have to pass on that one."
Jake McBride came and sat next to Connie, across from Garland. He was grinning. "LeeAnne's gonna have to pass, kind of like any girl with twenty- twenty vision." Everyone laughed at Jake's comment, even Garland.
With that, all eight members of the Gang were present and accounted for.