Hey, everyone. I'm back with another story. As always the characters are my mine, and so is the plot and all that godo stuff.
This story is dedicated to Jen, a good friend of mine. I wrote if for her and I hope you all enjoy it too!
Chapter One
"Psst"…tick tick tick…"psst"…tick tick tick…"psst." The ticking of the clock in between the desperate tries for attention were driving Jennifer up a wall. Finally she snapped, "Would you shut up," she whispered harshly.
She was rewarded with a few minutes of silence until she heard, "Jen…hey, Jen. What's the-"
Jen whipped her head around to face her desk mate. She was about to respond when the teacher called out, "Okay everyone, please put down your pens and pencils and get ready to hand in what you have written. You will be able to continue in class on Monday. Have a great weekend and enjoy the rest of your day."
Chairs scraped the floor as the students stood up. Putting the rest of her things in her backpack, Jen headed up to the front of the room to drop off her half-written essay.
Leaving the room she was immediately accosted by a blur of red accompanied by an unnaturally peppy voice. "Good morning, beautiful!"
"Hmph," Jen grunted in response.
"Geez, someone doesn't deal well with mornings," Christine, the owner of said red hair responded.
"Chris, we've known each other for what, six years, and you have yet to discover the fact that I'm not a morning person. I'm shocked," Jen said dramatically, putting her hand over her heart.
Laughing the two friends walked down the hall to their lockers to deposit their books and get ready for the next class.
Jennifer and Christine had been friends for ages and having grown up together they knew all the intricacies of each others lives. And, as so, had been there for each other during the tough times that they had faced.
The two girls met when they were in kindergarten. Christine's family had just moved to the area from a small town in Maine, and they quickly set their daughter up in the town's public school system. Ever since they met on the first day of school, the two had been as close as sister's, though they looked nothing alike. Christine was a tall girl, who had close cropped blonde hair and bold blue eyes. She was one of those girls who had a model's body, but she didn't do anything to get it. She had a naturally fast metabolism that helped keep her thin. Her facial features elegant and complementary and her skin was like ivory. Many girls were jealous of her, but she treated everyone, even her critics, with kindness. The girl didn't have a mean bone in her body. And, as such, wasn't one for sports. They were too competitive for her nature.
Jennifer, on the other hand, was an athlete. She had played softball for the three out of four years in high school (not having gotten involved in the sport until her sophomore year). Because of her playing sports, she was forever having her hair up in a ponytail. It was a rare occasion when it was down. And it wasn't like her hair didn't have a nice quality to it, the complete opposite in fact. It was the kind of hair that people spent a lot of money to have. The color was a rich dark brown, so dark in fact that it was often mistaken for black, the texture was soft to the touch, and it was incredibly thick as it fell down to nearly her hips. Hips that she hated. They weren't overly large, but they were the kind of hips that one got annoyed at if they had them, and ones that people wanted if they didn't. She had a very feminine figure, curves in all the right places. And, unlike Christine's complexion, Jen's was almost always tanned, though she never frequented a tanning salon and she never stayed outside longer than she had to. And though she never used make-up (she absolutely abhorred the stuff) she had a very exotic look, one that wasn't often seen in the quiet Boston suburb in which they lived.
"Jen? Earth to Jen," Christine said, waving her hand in front of Jen's face.
"Huh? What?" she replied, blinking her eyes a couple times to focus on her friend.
Christine laughed, "You really don't do well in the morning, do you?"
Jen playfully punched Christine's arm and walked away, towards their next class.
After a few minutes of companionable silence, Christine suddenly started jumping up and down excitedly. "Did you hear about the new kid?"
"Um…," Jen appeared to think for a minute, "no."
"Oh…my…god. He is so gorgeous!" Christine dramatically put her hand on the top of her head and pretended to swoon.
"I take it he was in your first class?"
"Not really."
"But you've seen him?"
"Weeeeell, not per se," Christine said with a little laugh.
Jen looked at her friend, eyebrow raised. "Then how do you know he's gorgeous?"
"Well," she started matter-of-factly, "I heard from Kathy, who heard from Jacqueline, who heard from Magen, who saw him class during first period."
"Wow, I guess news does travel fast. Considering the fact that first period ended all of two minutes ago," Jen replied sarcastically.
The conversation ebbed and flowed until the two reached the classroom and proceeded to take their seats. Christine in the first row and Jen in the last. Best friends though they may be, the two had vastly different views on school. Both very intelligent, Christine was the one who made the conscious effort to get good grades, while Jen didn't pay attention half the time and she consistently got good grades and was almost always on the honor roll. That whole business freshman year about skipping nearly every class ten times didn't help matters. But she had since learned from that. Three years later she had almost all A's (math was never her strong suit).
Speaking of math, class began with the normal repetition of the previous lesson's topic and then slowly progressed to practice problems to warm the students up for whatever that day had in store, today it happened to be the quadratic formula.
They were going over the third problem on the board when the door opened and in walked someone whom Jen had never seen before.
Daaaamn, she thought to herself. It was the best looking boy, no, not boy, best looking man she had ever seen before. Standing at well over six feet, e had long, dark hair with a slight wave to it that just brushed his shoulders. And it was thick hair too, it made Jen want to run her fingers through it over and over (…and over). Next she moved her gaze to his eyes. Eyes that were dark blue. Eyes that said they held many secrets. His gaze swept the room, taking in everyone in the room. When he reached Jen she sucked in a breath. He had such an intense look in his eyes, like he knew here darkest secrets, like he knew exactly what she was thinking. His eyebrow rose in what appeared to be amusement. She immediately dropped her gaze, studying her desktop intensely.
The teacher, oblivious to the student's arrival, continued on with the problem on the bored. Not wanting to wait any longer, the student cleared his throat in a you'd-better-start-paying-attention-before-I-get-pissed-off kind of way.
Whirling around the teacher nearly dropped his marker in surprise, but quickly caught himself. Realization dawned as he said, "Oh! I'm terribly sorry. Didn't see you there. You must be the new student, a Mr. Drake Ciiry…Cromy…Corsy…um-"
"Crimson," he cut in smoothly. His voice was like velvet with an underlying note of something, but Jen couldn't be sure of what.
"Ah, right, Crimson. Sorry. Well, welcome to Calculus II," he paused to let the words sink in, as though they were of great importance. At seeing that his words were met with uncaring he continued, "Well, let's see. We do have assigned seating in this course." He looked around for an empty seat. Jen closed her eyes, knowing what he was going to say before he even said it. "Ah, yes. There we go. In the back," he pointed, "right next to Jen Miller. Jen, wave so Mr. Crimson can see who you are."
Before Jen could identify herself, Drake started to move in her direction, but she waved halfheartedly anyway, to at least pacify her somewhat absentminded teacher. The second Drake sat down her teacher turned back to the board and started up again, "Okay, now what we have here is…" And just as fast Jen proceeded to ignore the teacher and continued to doodle in her notebook.
While drawing random designs on the paper, Jen was studying Drake out of the corner of her eye. He had taken out a notebook and pen but was note writing anything down, he was simply staring towards the front of the room, though it didn't seem to Jen that he was focusing on any one thing in particular. She was too busy staring at her new desk mate to notice that her name was being called, "Jennifer...Miss Miller! Pay attention please."
Jen whipped her head around to face the front of the room, "Sorry, sir."
He looked annoyed, "Well, are you going to answer the question?"
She was completely lost, she had no idea what the question was, so she decided to throw out a random answer and pray that it was the right one. She didn't want her teacher to know that she wasn't paying attention at all. Jen found that if they know she's not paying attention then teachers are more likely to call on her and she absolutely hated being put on the spot. This wasn't good for her. She took a deep breath and threw out the first thing that came to mind, "Um…three?"
He sighed, shook his head, and went to call on another student.
I take it that was the wrong answer then, Jen thought to herself. As if in answer to her thought she heard low mocking male laughter in her ear.
Jen's eyes flew to her neighbor about to tell him off for making fun of her, but when she looked at him she saw that he was facing the front of the room taking diligent notes. Weird.
More laughter.
Review please and let me know what you think!