-MOMENTARILY PAUSED UNTIL I GET VIEWERS WHICH I THINK I WILL NEVER GET- “Oh, cheer up!” Caroline said as she adjusted the straps of my bright blue, plain backpack. “You’re going to Rivenshade Academy, you’ll probably love it!” “I never have,” I grumbled. “Oh, come on. Mum is paying for you to go to private school for a reason.” She patted Ellie on the head. “Back, El.” Piper giggled and patted Ellie’s ears, and Ellie grinned and licked her tiny, pudgy hand. “You’re going to ABH,” I complained. “That’s the best school there is, and the teachers are as nice as Ellie when she’s trying to comfort Piper.” “You’re going to RSA,” Caroline retorted. “That’s a school you know, and a good one at that.” “I don’t have any friends there.” “So make one. Hurry, Ellie’s getting restless, I can’t believe the principal let me off for walking my dog and delivering my brother, I guess he was sympathetic. Hurry, the house is ten minutes away and so is Ashbrook High, they told me to get there at eight o’clock, and it seven forty-five.” “No sympathy at all,” I muttered as I trailed down into the large private school. It was very old, and some of the letters had faded away, and somebody had attempted to recreate the words but had a massive typo and wrote it wrong— hence the name ‘Rivensarde’. Now I began scraping down teachers and their names in my mind. Principal Hart was okay. Ms. Calder, my homeroom teacher, was slightly strict but also okay. Counselor Avery was okay too. Mr. Fallow—who taught science, which was an elective—Mrs. Griggs, my math teacher, Mr. Donnelly, who taught both history and geography, and Mr. Bennett, the grumpy janitor who also doubled as the librarian, were worse. Mr. Reed, my literature teacher, Ms. DeRubies, who taught music as an elective, and Mrs. Alvarez, the art teacher, were pretty awesome. Chris’s snotty parents couldn’t even manage to yell at Hart into forcing some random teacher to become P.E. coach. After Chris had ‘accidentally’ tripped the last one into a dangerous obstacle, nobody was brave enough to volunteer. Mostly P.E. just meant Chris sending several people to see the nurse, Mrs. Larkin— and Chris getting a detention. Sixth grade also meant computer science and other modern stuff. That teacher was Mr. Sloan. Ms. Holloway taught drama. Ms. Calder supervised recess, which was ten minutes of sitting around in the playground. Now I began rattling off the names of the students and what to watch out for. The two main popular kids of both genders were Sophia Alvarez, the art teacher’s daughter, and Chris Halden. Chris was mostly popular because nobody wanted to get beat up, and he was the principal’s nephew. Meanwhile there were the random other kids who either didn’t care or didn’t want to choose: Caleb Morris, Tessa Nguyen, Rowan Fields, Elijah Park, and Mila Torres. Brent Kline, Derek Moss, Lucas Reed, and Owen Carter were Chris’s friends, and Myah Avery, the counselor’s daughter, Hannah Wilkes, and June Parker followed Sophia. Bella Long, Kallista Murphy, Abigail Nanazsko, and Leo Greens were friendly and nice, and I think there were several new people called Noah Lin, Priya Shah, and Aurelia Miller who were starting to attend RSA. Leo grinned at me as I traveled down the hallway. “Hey. I think Chris just noted that he’s aiming for a certain blonde boy with blackish brown eyes and a slightly dark skin who’s half a head shorter than him.” “He always was,” I muttered. “Thanks anyway, Lee.” As I went into homeroom, Calder gave me a wry smile. “We’re about to introduce ourselves. Until a certain Aurelia Miller comes, anyway.” I laughed tersely and took a seat two rows away from Chris, who was in the back, which meant I had Sophia sitting in front of me at the very front, Leo on my left, and a black-haired kid who must’ve been Noah on my back. I glanced around. A blonde girl who was probably Priya sat right next to Noah, talking her head off about how nervous she was and how she had always been homeschooled and she wondered if the teachers were going to be strict and mean, right in front of one of the teachers. And then she came. The first thing I noticed wasn’t her. It was the way the room shifted, like when a window opens somewhere you can’t see and the air changes anyway. Chairs scraped. Someone laughed too loud. Ms. Calder stopped mid-sentence as she lectured Chris on not kicking people under the desk. Then I saw her. She stood in the doorway with a simple white backpack with golden zippers clutched in both hands, pale hands that crossed across her chest holding her backpack, like she wasn’t sure whether to step in or disappear again. (Continue to notes and credits)
Her hair was dark—almost black—but the sunlight from the hallway caught shining caramel streaks in it, like it had learned how to hold light without showing off. Her light yet deep gray eyes— with small hints of gold flecks and blue shimmers, no less— scanned the room with some expression I couldn’t read— disgust? Joy? Complete unsatisification? A few slightly noticeable, slightly hidden gold flecks danced in her eyes as her impenetrable gaze fell on me and a small crease in her pale, pale skin. There was some unreadable expression about her, like she’d been training with a mental shield for her whole life. “There’s an empty seat in the second to front,” Ms. Calder told her. She walked past rows of desks, her shoes barely making a sound, and slid into the seat next to mine. When she set her bag down on the hook at the end of the desk, it made a soft thud against the metal, like punctuation at the end of a sentence. She glanced haughtily at all of us, a mask of total indifference covering up small streaks of nervousness and joy. “SO!” Calder said, clasping her hands together, apparently oblivious to Chris and his main cronies, Derik and Brent. He was plotting to kick out the new kids, which he had failed numerous times, and began making whispered, yet so loud I could here two rows in front of him, jokes about their appearances. Calder took out a clipboard and began roll calling. “Sophia Alvarez, Myah Avery, Jamie Briarshen, Owen Carter, Rowan Fields, Leo Greens, Christopher Halden, Brent Kline, Noah Lin, Bella Long, Aurelia Miller, Caleb Morris, Derek Moss, Kallista Murphy, Abigail Nanazsko, Tessa Nguyen, June Parker, Lucas Reed, Priya Shah, Mila Torres, and Hannah Wilkes.” By the time I raised my hand, I zoned out, staring at Aurelia’s expressionless and quite striking face, and glared at the hand that lifted awkwardly into the air. “I do believe we have three new people!” Calder added. “Noah, Priya, and Aurelia!” The class applauded dully, sending wary glances at Chris and his gang. “Idiots,” I whispered to Leo, who grinned and stuck out his tongue at the back of Chris’s skull. Aurelia, I note, isn’t friendly at first sight. It’s like her soul got frozen in a freezer and was warming up in front of a fireplace, but the ice takes a long time to melt. Right now she isn’t opening. She won’t open. She can’t open. At least, I hope she will later, or she’d be an easy target in middle school. And yet, I don’t know. Will she be an easy target? Because the emotional wave she sent to everybody— a vibe that told you to back off quickly— seemed to scare everybody else. She didn’t seem to mind, though. We stayed far away from her, and she stayed far away from us. We were casual classmates. We borrow pencil sharpeners and everything. But there’s something off about her. Like she has The Itch, too. And that although she doesn’t know it, we relate so much all the crutches and towers we leaned on, the ones we built all around the years… would shatter. And everything would fall apart. Should I make this a fantasy fiction, or just normal fiction, which was my original plan— and then make a fantasy fiction? Let me know if my chapters are too short. If they are, I’ll try to cram them into the project space so I can make them longer, since Scratch doesn’t like it when our descriptions are too long. Im hoping this will be the first book in a trilogy, Stories Left Untold, Stories Left Unwritten, and Stories Left Unknown— but who knows, maybe i’ll ditch it and it’ll be a stand-alone. And I MIGHT publish it when im older. Im writing this in Google Docs, so it’s easier to copy and paste into description. Thoughts are usually Italic, but Scratch doesn’t support multiple fonts so it’s in quotes. First: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1262846672/ Prev: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1262846672/ Next: I’ll update you when I get to the next! (SLU paused until I ACTUALLY GET VIEWERS OMG) Visit @scoobyrules1 and her studio, Aspiring Authors: https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/50861257/
