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“Well, hello girls,” she coos in a very thick, very fake, southern accent. Daisy and I trade wide-eyed glances. This woman is a character and I can already envision writing her into one of my stories. “You must be the Fontaine girls.”
“Ames,” I rectify quickly, surprising even myself with the vehemence in my voice. But I have to make it clear, my mother may be a ‘Fontaine girl’ now, but we are still Ames girls.
Daisy shoots me an approving smile, but the woman frowns.
“Alright,” she drawls, “the Ames girls.”
“Daisy and Skylar,” Daisy presses as a bell rings in the hallway behind us.
I begin to panic. That’s the start of school bell. Which means I’ll be walking into my first class late. Which means everyone will stare. Which means there is no way I’ll go unnoticed today even if I tried. The buzzing sound in my ears increases until it’s the only sound I hear.
Daisy cuts off my impending panic attack by grabbing my hand and squeezing it tightly. She knows all the signs for when I’m about to lose my shit. I take as many non-descript breaths as I can, trying to avoid the woman’s attention as she types on her computer.
I’m almost all the way back to normal by the time she glances back at us. “All honors classes?” she asks me with a raised eyebrow. “Are you sure you can handle that?”
“My sister is basically a genius,” pipes in Daisy.
I flush under both of their stares. The woman is frowning again, her red lips showing off a myriad of wrinkles. Mercifully, she doesn’t push anymore. She simply hands us both a packet. “Class started ten minutes ago, so head right there,” she chides as if we were the ones moving at a snail’s pace. I didn’t even know people could type that slow. Especially school admin personnel whose main job is to type.
The panic threatens to burst forward again at the thought of walking in so late, but I do my best to hold it at bay.
Daisy shoots the woman one of her trademark mocking smiles that always seems to make people fall all over themselves, and then we’re blissfully free. We walk out into the perfectly still hallway.
"You're going to write about her, aren't you?" Daisy teases.
I shoot her a sly grin. "How could I not?"
We both erupt into giggles, and it's all I can do to pull myself together as I open my folder to look at my class schedule.
I've got Honors Algebra II first. Math is the bane of my existence. It's the subject I have to work ten times as hard in as everything else, but the guidance counselor in our last school had told me it wouldn’t reflect well to colleges if math was a regular class, so I’d been forcing myself into torture every year since then.
There's not a single honors class on Daisy’s schedule, and that's how she likes it. Daisy has no plans for college; she has no idea what she'll do. She just knows she'll do something, be something. My stomach clenches because I know the second she graduates, Daisy will be gone, and I worry I'll never see her again.
But that’s my little secret too. I know that Daisy is going to leave the second school is over…but then again, so am I.
"Ready?" Daisy asks, finally recovered from our bout of laughter.
I nod and square my shoulders, ridiculously wishing Daisy and I were actually twins so I could be in all of her classes with her and not one year behind. She waves at me and heads off in the opposite direction of where I have to go.
And then I'm all alone. I trudge to class, every step feeling like a death march. I know I'm being dramatic. Starting at a new school is the least of most people's problems, but with my anxiety, it feels like I've been asked to climb Mount Everest…butt naked.
I'm finally standing outside the door. I can see the teacher behind his desk, standing up and talking to everyone. For a brief second, I think about dropping everything and running out of the school, disappearing forever. But since that wouldn’t go over too well with my mother, I find myself pulling down on the lever to open the door.
It’s exactly as I envision it, except maybe a million times worse. The teacher’s voice trails off, and I can immediately feel the room full of people staring at me. I make sure to keep my eyes locked on the teacher’s and not on the rest of the class.
"You must be Skylar," he says, except he pronounces the “ar" part of my name all wrong.
"Skylar," I gently correct, impressed with myself that I was able to even do that. It's not a hard name to pronounce, at least I don't think so, but people do it all the time. My first grade teacher actually called me the wrong name for half the year and I never had the courage to correct her. Look at me now, growing a set of balls, if balls were what it took to have someone actually say your name right.
Daisy would be proud.
But just as that fleeting thought crosses my mind, I start to panic again when I realize the teacher asked me something, and I completely missed what he said.
Some of the class titters at my awkwardness.
"Why don't you head to that desk in the back and I'll get back to it," he says gently, and I already like him. He has kind eyes, dark brown, sort of like a puppy’s.
With flushed cheeks, I nod, turning towards the class, right as a familiar voice cuts through the room.
