1001+flat+tales

Isabelle Weissman March 24, 2009

Upside-Down Girl Episode 1

Wyatt walks through the big maroon doors entering the first day of 11th grade. He walks down the hallway that brings back memories as he smiles. All his old friends wave and some give him hugs. All the girls swarm him, making remarks like, “Wyatt I’ve missed you so much” and, “You wanna sit with me at lunch Wyatt?” His blue eyes sparking and his silky brown hair tossing around as he walks and everybody recognizes him. He’s got on his soccer jersey with his last name printed on the back in big letter “Jamesly” and brand new sneakers, which he immediately gets a zillion compliments on. Looking across the hall at the hottie at his locker surrounded by half the school Hayley murmurs to herself, “Who is that?” “That’s Wyatt Jamesly, he makes me sick. He just has to be good at everything, soccer, basketball, baseball and even school. He gets good grades and volunteers at the children’s hospital. He’s super popular and his family’s loaded because his dad invented Twinkies.” A girl named Shelly answers. “You’re new right?” Shelly asks Hayley. “Yeah.” Without asking her to, Shelly decides to walk with Hayley to her classes. Shelly told Hayley about almost every kid in the grade. It was evident that Shelly was too fond of the popular kids. Hayley started to get a little annoyed with Shelly and her nagging but not knowing anybody the way she does, she just thinks whatever and continues to walk. Distracted by all the new things at her new school she’s barley listening to anything Shelly says. “Are you even listening?” Whines Shelly. Hayley replies, “Mhm.” Excited to have found her first class Hayley signals to Shelly that this is the room. Shelly excitedly waves and tells Hayley she’ll see her after class and smiles a smile too big. The door entering the room is clearly labeled Chemistry 2. Hayley felt shy and small infront of all these new faces. She walked in and immediately the teacher grabbed her by the sleeve announcing, “This is our new student Hayely coming to us all the way from Tennessee.” Hayley could tell barley anyone was listening, except for the select few that sat up straight in their chairs with books stacked up in front of them. “The geeks.” She thought. The teacher pointed out an open seat next to a girl named Tara who was conspicuously chewing gum and twirling her long blonde hair with her finger. Hayley said hi in an excited voice but Tara didn’t even turn to look at her. She looked around the room at all the people that seemed so different. At her school, everyone was nice and welcoming but welcome was the last thing she felt. She noticed Wyatt sitting two rows in front of her next to a scrawny looking boy with a bowl hair cut. Without even noticing it, she smiled at first glance of Wyatt. When she realized, Tara was looking at her she turned her head and wiped away the smile. She spent the rest of class staring at the back of Wyatt’s head and doodling flowers on her notebook. After class she managed to get to her locker without running into Shelly, but to no surprise she appeared at her locker within a matter of seconds. Hayley asked Shelly about Tara and the kid with the bowl hair and she found out that Tara was an actress infact, she had her own hit T.V show on ABC Family called Summer’s Way. She plays Summer a girl who’s a spoiled brat and when her parents refuse to give her the sweet sixteen she wants and not everything goes her way, she decides to run away. The show deals with the struggle of a teenage runaway and all the odd things, adventures, and people she encounters. Shelly talked about how Tara goes to all these fancy celebrity parties and is friends with Hannah Montana, Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez, Camren Diaz, Carmen Electra, David Henry, Robert Pattison, Johnny Depp and more. It was even rumored that she went out Joe Jonas and He broke up with her for Taylor Swift. Lucky for Hayley (who Shelly now called Hails) her next class was on the opposite side of the building, far away from Shelly. On her frantic dash to find Algebra 4 she bumped into a short kid with curly hair carrying a sketchpad and a pencil. She dropped her algebra book accidently and knocked the sketchpad out of his hands. Apologizing over and over, Hayley quickly picked up the book and ran down the hall. About a second after she walked in the door the bell rang and she sighed in relief. The teacher gave her a strange look but she turned immediately and went to the first empty seat. Her eyes suddenly opened wider when she opened her algebra book and inside the name written was Clifford DeAngelo. Hayley flipped through the pages and was astonished. It was full of amazing drawings. They were all so detailed; she couldn’t believe how good they were. She had always wished she could draw or anything for that matter. She had never been especially good at one thing, not sports, not singing, dancing, acting, school and she wasn’t nearly as pretty as Tara or the girls in Clifford’s drawings. In one of the pictures towards the back she stopped at a picture of a girl who looked strangely familiar. It was a picture of a girl holding her head up with her hand looking out a window as if she was daydreaming. It was beautiful. The picture was labeled at the bottom, “Mia.” She had seen her in the hallway this morning. The teacher got up and told the class to take out their textbooks to page 229 when the same boy that she had bumped into just before class walked in. “Late as usually Clifford.” Mr. Toldam said annoyed. Hayley whispered to him from across the room when he finally reached his seat, “I think I have your sketchbook.” Clifford turned around looking at her weirdly and mouthed, “Give it to me after class.” On the way out she gave him the book hoping he wouldn’t be angry. To her surprise, he didn’t get mad or hit her or anything, he looked into her eyes, and asked in the sweetest voice she could imagine, “What do you think?” Lifting her head to look back at him, she replied, “It’s great.” She had wanted to say more but was to afraid and nothing more came to mind. Clifford smiled, “Catch you later.” Hayley made it to lunch confused and unhappy, she hadn’t felt like she made any friends and at this new place everyone seemed so much better than her. Unfortunately it hadn’t occurred to her how awkward it would be at lunch. Standing in the center of a cafeteria bigger than her entire house, Hayley stood frozen. She felt like she didn’t belong anywhere. Passing by each table it was like her old school, each one had their own clique. She never knew what it felt like not to belong to any of them. Scanning the room, she saw Tara with a whole bunch of beautiful looking people, “Most likely the cool kids” she thought. At the table to the opposite side of Tara’s group was Wyatt and like a million of his friends. All the guys wanted to sit with Wyatt so you could imagine that the table was packed. Behind Tara’s table were some Asian kids, next to them a group of boys reading books bigger than their heads, there was a table with Clifford and some other punkish guys, one with a group of Hispanics wearing barley any clothes, and as she passed by the rest of the tables she heard her named being screamed. At the very last table in a corner of the cafeteria she saw Shelly dramatically waving and calling out, “Hails, Hails over here!” Despite her hate of Shelly she was happy to be invited to sit somewhere. That was where the trouble began. Hailey smiled at Shelly and some of the other girls she was sitting with and they started to give her weird looks. Hailey noticed an extremely pretty girl sitting at the end of the table and introduced herself, “I’m Hailey.” She said. Daisy, looking down at her sandwich, mumbled, “I’m Daisy.” She held her mouth to hold herself back from bursting out into laughter. A girl next to Shelly leaned forward to look at Hailey and sat back to giggle with a girl sitting next to her. Hailey started feeling uncomfortable. She was wondering if she should leave. Before she knew it, a huge group of teenagers crowded around the table laughing. She noticed one person standing quietly looking upset. It was Clifford. She wanted to run and hide in the bathroom but couldn’t move. She couldn’t even cry despite how much she wanted to burst out into tears. The worst part was, she didn’t even know why people were laughing at her. Afraid of being made fun of, Shelly began to laugh at her too. The cafeteria was in a roar of laughter. Then in a sudden jolt of movement someone grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the crowd. In the hallway, Hailey opened her tear-filled eyes to see Clifford looking up at her. It was the first time she had really looked at him; he was really short and thin, but good looking at the same time. Looking up at her, Clifford asked if she was all right. She really didn’t know how she was feeling; it didn’t even seem real, more like something you see in a movie. She nodded anyway. He reached behind her head and pulled off a post-it note that said in big letters I love Clifford DeAngelo. She felt a wave of embarrassment wash over her entire body and worried Clifford would hate her. It made no sense; she had no idea who would do something like that to her. She hadn’t even talked to him that much. She had only talked to him a couple of times that day. By the time the bell rang to end the lunch period she had broken down into hysterics and surprisingly he had stayed there to comfort her. Being late to class was nothing new to Clifford but Hailey had never been late to anything since kindergarten. Being late to class was the least of her worries. In the matter of a day her entire world had flipped upside down. Unsure of what to say Clifford picked up his head and looked at Hailey as if he was about to cry. Softly, he said,” I know who it was, I’m so sorry.”