Infinite (Strange and Beautiful, Book 1) (3 page)

When they reached their respective cars, I just stood and
watched. Neither of them had offered me a ride, but I was sure our parents
assumed that one of them was going to drive me to school.

I couldn’t wait until I got my license. Then I could just drive
myself places and not be a burden on anyone else, but I still had over a year
before I turned sixteen. Heck, I still had two months before I reached
fifteen
.

Finally, Skylar rolled down her window and called with a huff,
“Are you getting in or what?”

She didn’t have to ask me twice. I scurried over to her car and
jumped into the front seat.  I buckled my seatbelt as Skylar backed out of the
driveway. I always wore my seatbelt. I’d been scared not to ever since I saw
those commercials with the crash test dummies whose slogan was “You Can Learn a
lot From a Dummy.” I thought the slogan should have been “You Can Get the Shit
Scared Out of You by a Dummy.”

The drive to school was quiet because the first time I started
to open my mouth to ask Skylar a question, she glared at me as if she say,
“Don’t talk to me.” She really was not a morning person, but then again she
really wasn’t an afternoon or evening person either. If she weren’t a nighttime
person, I wondered if she’d be a person at all. Despite being so pretty, she
really was kind of scary looking sometimes. The last few years she’d been into
this look that was something of a mixture of a punk rock Goth.

Her taste in music was good, though, with exception for Fall Out
Boy, who just annoyed me. Pete Wentz was kind of cute, and I did like the video
for “Dance Dance,” but their songs were like a virus that infected your brain
and refused to go away. Thankfully, they weren’t Skylar’s favorite band, and,
hopefully, just a passing fancy. Skylar’s favorite band was, without a doubt,
Green Day. I thought she was partially convinced that Billie Joe Armstrong was
her soul mate. I thought they both just shared a passion for excessive eyeliner.
Regardless of her beloved Billie Joe, Skylar dated—a lot.

She didn’t date the same guy for very long. Luke called her a
slut once, and Dad overheard. He grabbed Luke by the arm and got up in his face
and told him
never
to say anything like that about Skylar—or me, for
that matter—
ever
again. Skylar cried, which didn’t happen often, and
even though she and Luke bickered almost daily about something but usually get
over it pretty fast, Skylar didn’t speak to Luke for almost a month after that.
That was an exceptionally tense and quiet month.

I couldn’t blame Skylar for being upset. Luke was just being a
jerk, and I was sure he didn’t mean it, but even if he did, I didn’t think
Skylar was a slut. But that could just be because I snooped around her room
once and found her diary. There was a lot about what she would and would not
let the boyfriend of the moment do. Most of it was from the waist up, but I
just skimmed because I didn’t want to read any of the details. I mean, c’mon,
that’s just gross! I felt really bad after I read her diary, though. I could
admit that I was a bit of a snoop, but I usually didn’t invade people’s privacy
like that, so to make up for it, I was really nice to Skylar for a whole week,
and I knew I deserved it when she was mean to me even if she didn’t know.

Even though Skylar usually dithered between annoyance and
indifference when it came to me, she was occasionally nice and would let me
borrow her CDs. She had a great collection—30 Seconds To Mars, The All-American
Rejects, Dashboard Confessional, The Arcade Fire, Radiohead, Foo Fighters,
Nirvana, Linkin Park, Coheed and Cambria, and the list could go on forever.
Looking through her collection was almost like going to a record store. Sadly,
she’d only let me do that when she was in a good mood, so it was hard to tell
when the chance would arise. Skylar was pretty moody.

Luke also had good taste in music. He was more into the classics
like The Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Eagles, The Who, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix,
Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Terry Reid, and stuff like that. Since my brother
thought I wasn’t trustworthy or was irresponsible or simply because he didn’t
like me, he wouldn’t let me borrow his CDs. He acted as if I intended to break
them or something if I were to get them out of his sight. I was fourteen—almost
fifteen—not four, but that didn’t seem to matter. Luke could be such a jackass.
Sometimes, I sat in the hallway and listened to the music coming from his room.
I liked to read while I listened, but someone would usually come along and tell
me to get out of the way.

That was me. Always in the way.

When we got to the school, Skylar met her friends in the parking
lot and left me to walk inside alone. I wasn’t surprised. After all, I wasn’t
allowed to tell anyone we were related. I didn’t know what her and Luke thought
I was going to do when I got to school. Maybe shout from the rooftops that I
was Skylar and Luke Granger’s weirdo little sister. Maybe I would have if I
weren’t afraid of heights, but then again, maybe not. I was sure Skylar really
would punch me if I did that. I didn’t know what Luke would do, though. Dad
always told him never to hit a girl, so I doubted he’d hit me. Maybe he’d just
be extra mean to me, or grumpier than usual, or give me a swirly. He tried to do
that once after I ate his Easter candy. Luckily, Mom caught him before he
actually got my head in the toilet. I felt a little uneasy about bathrooms in
general now.

I found my locker pretty easily, but probably only because I
went to the school with Mom when she went to register us. I had this paralyzing
fear after a traumatic experience in junior high that I would arrive at school
the first day and wouldn’t be able to get my locker open. When I relayed this
fear to Mom, she told me to just come with her.  Once she had registered all
three of us, she accompanied me to my locker and watched me practice on the
combination until I was sure I’d be able to get it open without any problem. 
Though in the past combinations and I did not have the best relationship, after
a little practice the numbers 12-24-18 and I came to an understanding at locker
312.

If I hadn’t been so worried about opening the locker, I would
have thought ahead to bring stuff to decorate it to make it look cozy and cool,
but I hadn’t. Besides, I really wasn’t sure what to put in it other than a
mirror, which I probably wouldn’t use. Not that I had anything against looking
at myself, but I always knew my hair is flat, and I didn’t bother with mascara
most of the time and eyeliner was completely out of the question, so it wasn’t
like I had to fret over ending up with raccoon eyes by accident—or on purpose
in Skylar’s case, and who really needed a mirror to apply lip gloss? It wasn’t
brain surgery.

So my locker was a blank canvas until I figured out how I wanted
to decorate it. I thought maybe Tegan could help me. She was craftier than I. I
was willing to bet she already had her locker decorated.

Tegan found me as I was putting things away in my locker, which
was probably a good thing because I had no idea where her locker was. I knew
she’d have to show me because it had been determined that I was directionally
challenged.

“I just finished decorating my locker,” Tegan announced. Her
long hair was the color of melted caramel, and it was parted down the middle
and waved down to the center of her back. It looked as if she’d spent hours
styling it, though I knew she had not. She was blessed with naturally wavy
hair. “Tierney brought me extra early so I could get it done.” She smiled,
which made her pale gray eyes sparkle.

I considered it a pity I’d had no one to bet with. Of course, it
usually required money to gamble, and, unfortunately, my funds were less than
stellar. I decided I needed to talk to my parents about renegotiating my
allowance.

“You need to decorate your locker,” Tegan observed.

“I know, but I need your help,” I answered. “I’m not good at
this kind of thing.”

“Well, you could start with a mirror,” she said.

I then explained to her why I didn’t need a mirror to which she
laughed and said, “Well, we’ll think of something, Silly.”

Then we headed to our first classroom. Again, I had scoped out
the locations ahead of time because I really didn’t want to get lost. For once
the fates were on my side because Tegan and I wound up with the same class
schedule.

Each class was about an hour and a half long, which was a huge
jump from taking seven forty-five minute classes a day. I had a feeling I was
going to miss several things about junior high. For one, the school was a lot
smaller, so I never got lost. For another thing, there wasn’t a lot of
difference in the size of the kids in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade, which
was a good thing in my case because tall I was most certainly not. I couldn’t
even claim I was average height, really. I was vertically challenged, as I
preferred to call it. When I complained about this fact last spring, Mom said I
just hadn’t had another growth spurt yet, and Luke, being his usual jerk self,
made the snide remark that it was because I hadn’t hit puberty yet, to which I
replied, “I got my period last year, thank you very much.”

That was more than enough to keep his mouth shut after that.

I didn’t mention that God just forgot to give me breasts. The
Big Guy was such a joker. I considered stuffing my not-so-necessary bra, but I
didn’t think I’d be able to get them to look the same every day.

Mom said that I was just a late bloomer, and Tegan said that
boobs were useless anyway. I guess she’d know better than me since she actually
had boobs, but I suppose they’re both right. I didn’t get my period until I was
thirteen, and I was just fine without it. Who needs cramps and zits anyway? And
the only reason my lack of breasts concerned me was that I had a fear of being
mistaken for a little boy. I made a vow never to cut my hair above my shoulders
until I got breasts. By the looks of things, it was going to be a while, which
was really just a shame because the woman at the salon said she thought my hair
might’ve had more volume if it were shorter.

But I digress. My breasts, or lack thereof, had nothing to do
with going to class.

Tegan and I sat in the middle of the classroom. We had a theory.
The really smart kids always sat up front because they liked being close to the
board and wanted to make sure the teacher could see them raising their hands,
and the anti-social kids sat in the back because they didn’t want to answer
questions, so, naturally, the teacher liked to call on them to put them on the
spot. Therefore, if we sat in the middle, we were basically overlooked. All we
had to do is sit there and look pretty. Well, not really. We hadn’t really
considered looking pretty or not into the theory. We just decided that we had
to
look
like we were listening even if we were totally zoned out or
bored to tears.

As it turned out, Algebra was basically the same thing as
Pre-Algebra, which I took in eighth grade. It kind of felt like a waste of
time, and Tegan agreed with me when I said so after class, but we agreed that
at the very least we knew we’d do well in one class.

Our teacher was Mr. Ludlow. He was a tall, plump guy with short
black hair. I also recognized him, from when Luke still played football, as the
high school football coach, and from what I’d heard Luke say in the past Mr.
Ludlow really didn’t care much about teaching. He just liked coaching footfall.
He kind of reminded me of Mr. Garrison from
South Park
. He said
“mmmkay?” at the end of almost every sentence. It was kind of funny, and based
on the random snickers from my classmates I wasn’t the only one who thought so,
but it was also kind of annoying.

The Spanish teacher was nice, though. Her name was Mrs. Willis.
She kind of reminded me of Mom because she wore these kind of ugly looking
cardigans that I was sure someone once told her looked nice and she ran with
the compliment. Mom had some sweaters like that too, and I always wanted to ask
her, first, what decade it was when she bought or was given the sweaters and,
second, why she still had and wore them. Mrs. Willis had curly dark brown,
almost black, hair that fell to her shoulders. Personally, I thought her
hairstyle looked a little too young for her, but then who was I to judge? I’d
guess that she was probably in her forties. She looked like she could’ve had
some Spanish in her blood just because of her dark hair and eyes, and I didn’t
think it seemed like too much of a jump with her being a Spanish teacher and
all.

When she started speaking in Spanish to the class, I was a
little taken aback because the only part I understood was “hola,” but then she
went back to speaking English and it was okay. My first choice for a foreign
language was French, but that class was full. Tegan and I decided that Spanish
was more practical anyway. It wasn’t like we were likely to happen upon any
French-speaking people in town, aside from maybe a foreign exchange student.
Spanish, on the other hand, might come in useful.