Chapter 2
Start of Something New: I Will if You Will

Our bocce ball group consisted of me, Mr. Protect Your Nuts- otherwise known as Phil, a girl named Kirsten, and broody loner boy, aka Riley.

“Okay, so was anyone paying attention to that at all?” Kirsten asked. She gave off this space-y air as though she didn’t care about anything.

Riley shrugged, and knelt down to open the little green bag that held the bocce set.

“Half and half,” Phil said, retrieving two bocce balls and thrusting them into my arms.

I stared down at them. “Hey, why do I get red?”

“Because,” he explained, “I want the booger-colored ones.” Holding up one for emphasis, he passed the blue ones to Kirsten and picked up the little ping-pong ball from the bag. Riley picked out the yellow ones and took a few steps back, out of the conversation. “They’re, like, little, green Hulk balls.”

“Hey, Phil, did you see the flyer for High School Musical?” Kirsten asked, piquing my interest a little. “What is this school coming to?”

“I know,” he groaned, tossing the ping-pong ball onto the court. “Dumb movie.”

“Well, my little sister will probably make me try out,” I muttered, though I knew I’d end up auditioning because I figured, ‘what the hell?’

“And do you always do what she says?”

“Hey, she’s been known to bite.”

I threw my ball towards the little one on the field. Riley stepped up to throw his.

“But Zac Efron needs to go die in a hole,” I offered.

“I hear you there,” Phil agreed.

A smile crept across Riley’s face as he threw the bocce ball, hitting Phil’s ball out of first place.

-----

“Is anyone else already sick and tired of their classes?”

Thus spake Mitch, also known as my chemistry-obsessed, weapons-knowledgeable, slightly obese, elevator-music-loving…

Stalker.

Yup, that’s right. Stalker. It’s bad enough that I have one. That my stalker has to be an annoying, sadistic, twisted guy with a unibrow is just one more lemon squeezed on my papercut.

“Eh. It’s alright,” Aly mumbled through her ham and cheese sandwich, lovingly made by her own hands.

It was lunch time, and Mitch, Aly, Carly, and I sat around the table, devouring our respective lunches. It was three days into school, and we had already fallen into a pattern. Third hour would end, Aly and Carly would get their stuff from the third floor, Mitch would save the table, and we’d all group together to discuss religion, politics, and sex. Despite the fact that we had some strange political perspectives clustered and arranged on both the left and right of the spectrum, we somehow managed not to get pissed off at each other about such things.

The one thing that collectively pissed us off was Mitch.

“Go figure, right?” Carly groaned. She looked me in the eyes and said “You don’t even want to know what goes on in Chorale.”

Chorale was the elite choir that I was unable to get in to. Not that I didn’t have the talent, so Mr. Bernstein, the director of Chorale, said last year. No, the reason that I wasn’t in Chorale was because I was a lowly sophomore, and, unless you were a guy, sophs couldn’t be in Chorale- because it was the elite choir. And apparently sophomores can’t sing or something.

See, most, if not all of my close friends were juniors. It was my mother’s fault, really. When I was a youngling, my mom didn’t want me to skip a grade because it would ruin my self-esteem or some such nonsense. Ironically enough, not skipping a grade was much more detrimental to my mental health than it probably would have been had I skipped a grade. See, being the so-called ‘smart kid’ who actually paid attention in the slack-off classes (aka band and choir) isn’t exactly good for your social status. In my case at least, it led to a huge-ass chip on my shoulder. Go figure.

“Eh. Williamson is a flaming democrat. And you all know how much I hate flaming anythings. Kinney is as boring and monotone as ever,” I offered. “And I can just sense impending doom when I look at the student teacher.”

Aly and Carly both rolled their eyes.

I continued, “Liberty’s pretty awesome, though. Don’t think anyone in there realizes I’m a sophomore yet.”

“Wait, what class?” Mitch asked.

“AP Calculus.”

Mitch’s jaw hit the floor. Aly raised an eyebrow as Carly casually continued eating.

“You’re in AP Calculus?”

“This is shocking?”

“Um, yeah, not really,” Aly said, shooting a questioning look at Mitch. “You didn’t know that?”

Mitch continued to stare. Awkward. “How the hell are you in AP Calculus?”

I put on my best mocking I’m-talking-to-you-like-you’re-a-first-grader voice and explained, “It’s this little thing called… I took a buttload of math at the U the last few years. Some special ultra-smart-kid math program whose name I could never remember. Or pronounce, come to think of it.

“…So yeah.”

Aly groaned, fidgeting with her backpack as in the distance we heard the bell ring. “Euro is going to suck.”

“Have fun with that,” I offered, groaning. My next class involved scaling three flights of stairs.

It was going to be a long school year.

-----

The day ended quickly enough with surprisingly few problems. Aside from the fact that I had to deal with about twenty different people almost running me over to get into the auditorium for the Drama meeting.

Swanny, the director of the show, kept it short and sweet. Reagan, a kind, quiet girl who had been in the same choir as me last year and was currently in AP Language with me was the stage manager. Pretty much he told us the stuff that was on the flyer, what kind of things they needed, and how they were going to do auditions. Pretty simple, actually.

Mr. Bernstein- the choir director who apparently was doing the musical bit of the musical- had horribly miscalculated and only had 30 copies of the music as opposed to the about 90 who had showed up. I was one of the lucky ones who ended up with a copy- which was good, seeing as I had seen the movie maybe once and didn’t really know the music.

Pretty straightforward stuff, really. I got to see Johnny again, which was great. I hadn’t seen him since July.

I packed up my things and headed home.

-----

“So, uh, Carrie, right? What did they say at the meeting yesterday about the musical?”

I looked over to the person speaking to me, totally missing where I was trying to throw the ball.

And I could not for the life of me remember his name. It was Mr. Protect Your Nuts from the other day.

Mr. “Zac Efron needs to die”, Mr. “High School Musical sucks”, Mr. “I-hate-theater”, asking about the musical?

… There are no words.