Teenage dreams are rarely realistic and seldom come true. High School years are supposed to be a time of wonder, the time in your life where you find yourself between trouble and mischief, discovery and maturity. Having fun without consequence, without pressure.

  Not that I did any of that back then. I was too preoccupied feeling sorry for myself.

  That morning the sun rose like usual in September, with mist or rain, or better, both. It was still warm though, and humid, summer still riding on the coattails of a gentle breeze that spoke of a brewing thunderstorm. Light rain its harbinger.

  That same morning, I was up bright and early, my mother cheating me out of a good night’s rest. I was chased from my bed, made to change, given a piece of toast, then hurried off to school in a matter of minutes. I was still groggy, walking down the street to the yellow stop sign when the school bus passed me by.

  It never stopped.

  School wasn’t too far from home, but a thirty-minute walk was only relatively close. I thought of calling one of my lucky friends who owned a car to come pick me up, but one was likely still dreaming, and the other was probably on her way to school. It was good old walking for me.

  "At least the weather's not bad," I said.

  And before the words left my mouth, as if the world had decided to laugh at me, rain started to slowly patter the slanted wooden roofs of the houses on either side of the road.

  Involuntarily, I sighed, my feet taking off on their own. I raised my hands above my head in a failed attempt to cover myself against the rain, and ducked. I don't know why I did that, maybe I thought that the extra inch would make the raindrop decide I was too much of a hustle to bother and leave me alone.

  Panting, I stood outside an enormous building, its name etched on a grey plaque, Volpora High School.

  I was drenched from head to tow, one shoe squeaking, and I was sticky with sweat. And if you can believe it, it had stopped raining the moment I stepped foot on the concrete outside my school. Staring at the front entrance, at the wide-open glass doors, I saw most students shaking their umbrellas.

  Volpora High was a school of fifteen hundred students, and I was the only one who'd need a wet floor sign with me.

  My school was newly built, with slick walls that stuck out like some failed Tetris puzzle, large windows that made up a whole face on the side of the building, and a parking lot that could house an entire stadium. I was exaggerating, of course, it was simply a lie to say that so many people would ever gather to watch our football team play.

  An arm slung around my neck as if to challenge that very notion; I staggered and balanced my weight on my left foot. A cold jolt crept up my calf, and I winced. The pain wasn’t real, it was in my mind, but that made me no less annoyed at that person, and I turned to face him.

  “Good morning,” said Harry, his smile beaming.

  I pushed him with one arm. “Morning,” I mumbled.

  “Why the grump?” Harry folded a see-through umbrella and shook it off to the side.

  Of course, I thought.

  “Are you serious?” I looked at him and spread my arms.

  “You’ll dry.” He waved his hand dismissively, sniffed the air, and cringed back. “As for the smell, I think I’ve got a roll-on in my locker.”

  “Smell?” I sniffed at myself, “there’s no smell.”

  “Keep telling yourself that.”

  My mood was stained by the uncomfortable set of my wet clothes on my shoulders. “Not my fault I missed the bus. Driver was blind as a bat.”

  “I missed it too,” he walked in front of me, “hence the instrument that’s kept me dry.”

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  “Gloat all you want, musclehead.”

  “I don’t need to gloat when you smell and look like that,” he said.

  “Look like what?”

  Harry smiled. “Come on, snoozer, we’re moving too slow.”

  Snoozer? Who taught him that? “Sleep’s important you know, some of us are still growing.”

  “I seem to be doing well on that regard.” He measured the top of his head with his palm. “Guess how tall I measured this morning.”

  I scoffed and rolled my eyes. “Five fifteen,” I said.

  Harry did some math in his head. “Actually, shy of six two. You weren’t that far off.”

  “Yay me. What do I get?”

  “A code for you to live your life by: ‘you’ve got to spend energy to make energy.’”

  Harry went on, and I shook my head, smiled, and walked after him towards the entrance where the rest of the students slowly gathered. Chatter flew off from all directions, a jumbled unintelligible mess of noise that would be off-putting to anyone passing by. But to those who found themselves a part of it, even a small one, it was familiar, comfortable.

  “Call me a drag, but somehow I doubt that’s how it works.”

  “It is how it works,” he raised a finger, “just look at me, never once have I been caught sulking in the morning. You simply refuse to accept it—Hey,” he tapped me with his elbow, “Anne and Donna, let’s go.”

  I hesitated for a moment, but Harry was having none of that. He grabbed me by the arm and half-dragged me along through the clumps of students towards the two girls.

  Donna and Anne were huddled close together, whispering in hushed tones. Donna seemed especially frustrated, outwardly calm, but her posture clearly tense. Harry walked unnoticed behind Anne, wrapped her in a deep hug from behind, and planted a kiss on her cheek. “Morning, beautiful,” he said.

  “Harry!” Anne exclaimed, taken by surprise, but so happy for it. Her brown eyes shone with joy, and she turned and hugged him, planted a kiss of her own on his lips.

  Watching those two be happy together warmed something mellow inside of me, though they did make me feel awkward at times. If I were to provide some context to this, I’d say that I’ve known them for the better part of their lives, long before they decided to get together, long before they even knew they liked each other. I knew, but it didn’t take magic to get them alone in the right place, at the right time. Those two made me believe they’d go the distance, even with my sixteen-year-old skeptical view of love.

  And then next to them was Donna: short, dark-haired, with almond shaped eyes; caring, understanding, and awfully clingy when she felt like it. She was there, and she was nice to talk to, just so happened to be the best friend of my best friend’s girlfriend, which meant that we got to hang out quite a bit. But we were nothing more than that—simply pleasant friends.

  She turned to me and smiled with the corner of her lips.

  “Someone’s awfully tired,” she said, her tone almost playful.

  Do I really look that tired? I thought and decided that it bothered me more than it should have, “Okay, is this really the first thing that comes to mind when you look at me?”

  The three of them laughed and Anne brushed a straight lock of red hair from her face as we walked down the corridor; she lifted her finger and pointed at her eye. “Honestly, between the red eyes and the messy hair, what else are we supposed to notice?”

  “And what’s that smell?” Donna sniffed. “It’s like a wet raccoon came running through the hallway.”

  My cheeks heated, and my eyes darted to more interesting views, like the polished floor. “It was raining, Donna. What did you expect? Peonies and coneflowers?”

  Anne and Donna giggled, and Harry, who had turned to greet another student, somehow heard me and barked a laugh.

  Way to go, self.

  “It’s really not that bad,” Donna said.

  “I think Harry’s got a spray in his locker,” Anne said and turned to him. “Baby, you should give it to him.”

  The bell rang before we could even reach our lockers. Damned school, why did it have to be so large.

  “We’ve got Algebra,” Donna said in a hurry, and grabbed Anne by the hand. “See you later.”

  Anne looked amused when she glanced back at me, holding back an obvious smile.

  “We’ve got English Lit later,” I pointed at her then myself, “we’ll see how you like the smell then.”

  Anne’s eyes widened in stoned shock. At least that gave me something to smile at as Donna dragged her halfway down the corridor before she recovered her senses.

  Harry was wafting the air in front of his nose when I turned to him. “I’m not forgetting this,” I said.

  He let out a throaty laugh, then watched me with the side of his eyes.

  “It’s not funny.”

  He laughed again, finding it even funnier that I was annoyed by something like that.

  “Monday,” I grumbled as I walked down the corridor. How much worse can this morning get? I thought, then something horrible came to mind. “Hey, what do we have for first period?”

  Harry was only now recovering from all the continuous laughing. “Chem,” he half-said, half-spat, then fully laughed at my pained reaction.

  Anne would have been proud of the drama exuding from my distress.

  Great, I sourly thought as I moved closer to first-period chem, the cheery jock walking beside me for added contrast.