Volume I Chapter 3

Now, contacting her would probably be easier, right?

Wrong.

I quietly told myself before sinking deeper and deeper on thoughts about surnames and math. A couple of minutes later, I reached the doorstep of a maroon gate. Without any hesitation, I opened and quickly went inside the household. Reaching for my own set of house keys, a loud creak emerged as I opened the front door of the house.

Walls of beige came running down my vision as I peek inside for any other human traces besides my own. There was nothing moved when I last left it earlier, so I proceeded to go inside the darkened wooden hallway and tossed my shoes at the shoe rack behind the door. Partitions of wooden columns blocked my way in the darkness as I try to feel up the walls for the light switch. Finding it two meters away from me, the barren and empty house came alight.

"Water. Water..." I strode passed the living room and went behind the kitchen counter for any glass that I could find.

Creak...

"Shit. Forgot to close the damn door again." I cursed myself and continued picking up an empty glass bottle. I then opened the metallic fridge nearby for a small pitcher of water. "Good evening." A deep and low voice, uttered from my back.

"Why are you here again, Kai." I drunk the water I had poured for myself and turned around to see a tall, and lanky man leaning on the doorway with a doctor's get-up on.

"Well, sweet cheeks, the door was open so I let myself in. Hope you don't mind."

"Well, I do mind." I answered and went pass him to plop my bag on a coffee table in the center of the living room. "You know you should fix that, right?" He said as I fiddled with my bag to get my books for today.

"Do you mean the door or my attitude?" I commented.

"I meant your habit of leaving it open." He bellowed with an annoyed tone as I snorted at his words. I knew that he was just worrying about me so I didn't sass him back like I use to. "If I didn't check on you every day, I figured that your house would be robbed clean by now." He added, trying to scold me as he made himself comfortable to grab a drink from my own home.

"I'm beginning to think that you're my dad with all this reprimanding." I teased him and went to change and fetch a laptop at my mom's room. "Harhar, Nessa. You know that I'd want to do that but your mom says otherwise." He screamed at me when he didn't saw me in the room and I gave off an amused chuckle to myself. The night continued on with him inquiring about my day at school, while I kept eating the pizza, he had ordered to avoid telling him how disastrous it was.

Kai Hepburn, was my mom's best friend at high school and college. They met at university by chance, and hit it off when they figured that they had went to the same high school. They graduated for one year apart and with different professions, Kai being a licensed neurosurgeon working at St. Patrick's Medical Hospital, and mom being a photographer on the popular WiTCH magazine in town.

You've probably heard that Kai had the hots for my mo-scratch that, he's my mom's long-time secret admirer based on our earlier conversation. He had liked my mom the moment that he had laid his eyes on her, but never did had the gall to confess because of my father. And because he can't seem to get over her, he visits and plays with me, giving me all the affection bottled up inside him to the daughter of his long-time crush. I got mad at him when I had him figured all out. But I couldn't really blame, nor push him away when he was technically there for me longer than both of my parents ever had.

"Sorry about this sweetie. I promise that I'll stay longer for another time. Just that d-"

"Duty calls, I know." I gave him a tight hug as I send him off the doorway and went back inside to clean up the leftovers from dinner.

It was about near midnight that I finally finished filling in the slides on our math presentation. The lights on the whole neighborhood had long been turned off, well, except for one that was three houses away from me. Deciding that it was time to rest, I double checked every lock in the house before sending the presentation files to Gian and drifting off to sleep.

The next morning arrived, and I realized that I had fallen asleep on the couch once again. My eyes felt more tired than yesterday as I had awoken myself from a nightmare in the middle of my sleep. The hardness of the couch and the sounds of dripping rain was the only thing that helped me sleep a little more than an hour or so. It was about six in the morning that I decided to stand up and prepare for school; I went to class a little groggy because of that.

Reaching the school after a few minutes of operating myself half awake, I was so ready to slumped down and spread my arms on the arm chair for a quick power nap. But before I could get the chance to lean my head in and close my tired eyes, the girl that I was waiting for yesterday had appeared in front of me. "Err... Yes?" I spoke, my voice a little raspy from rarely using it in the morning.

"Did you make this?" The Clementine girl showed me her opened MacBook that was displaying the fruits of my labor last night. Gian must've sent this to her last night, I thought as I nod in response. Slowly glancing at her expression, gauging, if what I did was something that would receive bad remarks from a girl that came from a section filled with the most intelligent kids in the whole senior year.

"W-was I not supposed to do it?" I let out a stutter, preventing my mouth to give up a yawn as my sleepiness came back like waves of a crashing tide.

"I suppose it's alright." She answers my question in a direct yet indirect way, and I gave a closed-eye nod in response as I lean my head on my arms for a well-deserved rest. Her respects for my efforts in contributing to the team gave me a spark of hope that I could at least be a good candidate for a group mate to be carried into passing this year. It was a progress on giving off a good impression to the girl that would most likely take the top spot in the class.

Few minutes of silence passed and I genuinely thought that everything was over so that I can finally fall asleep. But someone had to shook me awake before I got the chance to do so. "Have you had breakfast babe?" I peeked my eyes to who was asking, and saw that it was just Stanford who was talking to me. I mumbled a no and buried my face further, signaling her that I don't want to talk to her at the moment. She already knows I skip breakfast, so why bother asking?

"I've bought pancakes and bacon. Would you like to eat some?" My stomach grumbled as I heard her mention my favorite food, and I forced myself awake to eat the piece of bacon that was dangling right in front of me. Minutes later, class started as I half eat and half listen to the lectures of the day. Everything was going fast and before I knew it, math class had arrived.

"Alright devils, settle down! We'll be doing draw lots for the first group presenter for today. Class President, pick a number please. "Mr. Gandley hurriedly plopped down on his seat as he scrambled the papers inside the small fishbowl he brought in the room.

"Ten." Wency unhesitatingly said to him into which he quickly browsed through his class roster on the teacher's table. "Mr. Shackleton please come forward and pick a paper from the bowl of misfortune." How he got to put the number ten into one of the students numbered after 20 was a mystery, but Benedict stood up and did what he was told to do so.

"Trigonometry sir." Of course, I had the feeling that the bowl only consisted of papers with our group's topic on it.

"Good lad! Sit down, and presenters, please start the lesson." I took a deep breath and stood up carrying my phone, flash drive and a few speech cards I prepared beforehand. Clementine's Collins was the first to stand up at the front and introduce ourselves for formality. The boys of the group huddled up to set everything as quick as possible and I hurriedly slipped in my flash drive for a small video that simplified the introduction of our second assigned topic. I looked up to our smart leader and saw that she was looking at my direction in signal to start the overall process of my presentation.

I turned around and announced in a lazy tone, "Here's a short video to get your brain up and remember last year's math class." Clicking the play button, I grabbed the confused Clementine girl away from the front to stand up by the side and someone automatically turned off the lights. She didn't say much but the kind of glance she directed towards me was telling me that I should spill about the things that was going on.

"Sorry. I figured that they might need a little recap and stimulation to absorb our content better." I leaned my face for a whisper when I noticed that everyone inside the room was intently watching the short funny video that I made. She didn't give me any response as I see her watch the screen in a transfixed state, so I moved to Gian's direction to pass the speech cards I had earlier stored in my pocket.

Everything went smooth sailing after that. I didn't need to talk at all when we have a Clementine student to explain things like I used to, nor did I have to incite questions and energy upon the crowd when Gian and his bros had it all covered. All in all, I was in charge of sitting and clicking the arrow keys on a MacBook until it was over.

"As expected from a group with a great leadership! Such quality of presentation is-" Blah blah blah and I didn't bother to listen after that. It was probably the first time he had praised any report in our room. Clearly, he was doing some ass licking again, but all of us could care less. The bell rang and Mr. Gandley gave us homework before going off into another class.

"Nice vid, Pearson!"

"Make it a little longer next time."

"Carry me on the next group assignment, Toyota. I'm starving, let's go and eat!"

I waved them all off and fetched my bag, Jill walking behind in tow. We walked off the doorway and turned into a nearby flight of stairs to go hang out in the library.

"Does he think that we don't know what he's doing? It's like, we could practically see him groveling like a dog on that Clementine's feet." Jill remarked at the earlier scene in the classroom. I hummed at her in agreement and said, "I think that he was always like that. We only see it now because one of his favorite students had transferred in our class." Jill nodded at that vigorously and ranted a few more things; how difficult the lesson was even though the smartest in our class had explained it earlier. I only shook my head with a smile because I know that she was only buttering me up so that she could copy off my homework.

"Yeah, yeah. I'll let you copy off mine if you give me breakfast tomorrow."

"My darling is the best! Hehe..."

"I'm not yours, Dora."

"Sometimes, I feel like you're no fun."

"Follow me." Our teacher of a few words, Sir Martin, quietly mumbled to us as we followed him into the school's indoor gymnasium. What greeted us was different shades of green. The ceiling was green, the posts were dark green, and the bleachers are darker than the two combined. I do apologize for such vague description. But the only thing that I could think about is, how much greener I could take when all of our provided school tracksuits are of the same color. We've pretty much been camouflaged at this point.

The interior other than the slightly irritating new coat of paint, still consisted of two long and tall bleachers by the sides and two basketball courts in the middle combined. Dressed with the camouflaged outfit that we were provided, I wore my tracksuit open like a cardigan to provide myself some breathing space for some later exercise. All of us then hurriedly divided ourselves on the two courts and circled around our two athletes, Daniel and Sasha, to lead the warm-ups for today.

"Hands clasp on your hips and rotate your left foot clockwise, everyone. One! Two! Three!" When warm-ups had finished, sir Martin gave us evaluation sheets to test each other's nerves of steel. Well, not really. But the first question in the paper indicated how many seconds would we take to finish 25 laps on a whole court, so I would say that its somehow similar to that. We quickly hopped on to it, me partnering with Jill like we always do of course, and the first batch of students took off. It took about 15-20 minutes until the second batch, the others and me, had the chance to experience the torture of burning legs and ragged breathing.

"Ready. Start!" Everyone ran as fast as they can, bypassing me with each moment I took to even my breathing. My body wasn't exactly that adapt nor unfit for running, it's just that my lungs are much smaller than most people, is what I always told myself whenever I notice that I pant for air very fast. I don't really know if what I think is true when no one in the family said anything about body illnesses that I might have. But with frequent happenstances, like my short fuse on holding out air, I couldn't hold my worries to myself as I took upon my hands to determine my body condition with research.

On the later stages, every now and then I would try to make short bursts of running whenever I see some of them stop for a short walk. After all the fast running that they did at the beginning, it was to be expected. That's why I tried pissing them off for being more tired than I was, and each time it would actually work.

It all turned into a frenzy.

All of them were cursing me left and right. Some trying to stop me from my tracks by running alongside me without a second thought of resting. They were all idiots and I had fun laughing at them chasing me with red faces similar to mine.

Soon enough, I was left with five remaining laps to run and everyone had more or less had the same as mine. Without tacit understanding of one another, half of us ran along in a group side by side and passed by the Clementine girl who I just noticed was running along us on this batch. She wore reading glasses and I couldn't help myself but question her choices as I got closer to her. Everyone sped through the final lap, while I slowed down for a last check on my breathing. And when I opted to run ahead to catch up, I heard sir Martin shout for the first time and a loud thump resounded behind me.

I turned around the next second that I heard screaming and all I saw was a girl that was kneeling on the floor looking extremely out of breath. Without thinking much, I abandoned everything else and went straight back at her to check if she was okay. When I arrived, however, she looked far worse than everyone of us did.

"Are you okay? Can you stand up?" I knelt beside her and like a small cat statue that says hello, her head lolled back and forth in an unstable rhythm. Her condition made me grimace, and I gave an imaginary pat at myself from not giving in to the temptation of going with the flow of running fast.

I let her lean her head on my shoulders as our silent teacher ran quick into our direction, shouting something about getting the school nurse informed while I asses her situation. She looked utterly pale, her eyes darted left and right, and her hand gripped my shirt with extreme ferocity that I thought it would rip at any moment's notice. I knew what she was currently feeling just by looking at her, and all I could say is its very bad if an attack happens when your body is extremely worn out.

"Hey, hey. Look at me. Take it easy. Listen to my voice and breathe. Here, do you hear that? Listen to my heart and feel my chest rise up and down. Good, good. Now focus on my voice and listen to my breathing. Breathe with me. Inhale... Exhale... Inhale..." I grabbed her shoulders as I talk to her lowly, and put her hand above my chest. I soothed her with small breathing exercises to stabilize her condition, and sir Martin took over the whole situation when he reached our position.

"You kids can continue. Don't overexert yourself!" He announced before asking the same questions as I did, and went on to lift her off in a princess carry to the school's clinic. My eyes followed them like the others. Each of us watching them with unreadable expressions. It took Wency's three yelling curses to shake us awake and continue our running, so that we can proceed into finishing our evaluation.