SHORT STORY- JOSHUA

 The New Kid

By: Joshua

Kai wakes up to the sound of his alarm. A decently tall kid, with brown hair, picks up his phone, his blue eyes reflecting back at him, turns off the alarm, and throws it back down on his nightstand. Today is his first day of Sophomore year. After a couple more minutes he decides he better get ready for school before his mom comes and makes him. He gets out of bed and heads to the bathroom to get ready. He walks back to his room, and gets dressed. After he gets dressed, he heads downstairs and makes some eggs and toast. He sits down and starts eating as his mom walks in looking surprised.

“You made breakfast already!” his mom says.

“Yeah, what about it,” Kai says. 

“Normally I have to drag you out of bed and then it's still about 10 minutes before you get ready.” 

“Not today.”

“I’m proud of you”

Kai rolls his eyes and continues to eat his breakfast as his mom walks past him. Once he is done eating his breakfast, he throws his plate in the sink. 

“Go get your backpack and get in the car,” his mom says, “We need to be at the school in 10 minutes.”

“Okay,” Kai says.

Kai goes up to his room and grabs his backpack from the foot of his bed. He walks back downstairs and sees that his mom is gone. He looks out the window and sees his mom standing next to a bright blue car holding a little black box. 

“You left this on the counter,” his mom says as Kai walks out the front door.

“Thanks, I would have probably forgotten it,” Kai says

“You better text your girlfriend to make sure she is getting to school.”

“Maya is not my girlfriend!” Kai yells.

“How much you two talk to each other you would think you are.”

Kai grabs his phone from his mom and gets in the front seat of the car. As Kai and his mom head to school he texts Maya, his best friend since 1st grade. She has black hair with green eyes and is somewhat short. People always confuse them for dating and it is easy to see it as they are always hanging out and talking to each other, but they have never dated and they have never thought about it. 

As Kai arrives at school he can see Maya sitting on the front steps waving at him. Kai exits the car and walks toward Maya holding his schedule. She realizes and pulls her schedule out of her backpack before Kai makes it over to Maya.

“We only share one class together,” Maya says after she snatched Kai’s schedule from his hands and compared them. She puts both of their schedules into Kai’s hands. He compares both of the schedules. Maya was right, they only shared one class which was math. 

“Let’s go inside,” Maya says as she stands up. They both walk inside and head to their first class. Kai walks into the classroom when he pulls out his schedule to check that he was in the right room. 

“Spanish I, Room 107,” Kai says to himself as he checks the room number. As Kai walks into the room he sees a seating chart on the whiteboard in the front of the room. He finds his name and sits down in his seat. As he sits down, he sees a person standing in front of his desk. The kid has blonde hair, and his black eyes seem to stare right through him.

“Are you Kai Phillips,” the kid asks with enthusiasm.

“Yeah, why,” Kai replies.

“I’m new here and I heard that you’re really popular, my name is Ethan,”

“Where did you come from?”

“Minnesota.”

“Why did your parents decide to move down here?”

“My dad had to move us because of work, but my mom decided to stay.”

“Why didn’t she come down with you guys.” 

"She wouldn’t leave her parents, she helps them out a lot.”

“Ahem,” Kai hears from behind him. He turns around and sees his teacher staring right at him, with his hands on his hips. Kai had been so caught up in the conversation that he hadn’t realized that class was about to start. 

“Thank you for ending your very important conversation for us,” the teacher said. The class started to giggle. 

“Sorry,” Ethan whispers behind him. Kai shrugs. After a couple more seconds the class starts. Kai learns a couple of words in Spanish, like hello, how are you, and other typical words. When the class ends, Kai leaves the classroom. Kai turns around and notices that Ethan is right behind him. 

“Sorry about getting you in trouble with Mr. Johnson,” Ethan says.

“It’s okay, he doesn’t really like me that much any way,” Kai says.

“What's your next class, mine is Biology.”

“Same, follow me.” Kai leads him down into the basement and shows him where the classroom is. Kai goes to look at the whiteboard, expecting a seating chart, but to his surprise he sees a message saying: Sit Where You Want. Kai follows Ethan and sits at the desk next to him. 

“Welcome class,” says the teacher, Mrs. Rine, “Today we are going to go over the syllabus for this semester and then we are going to start our first lesson.” When she finished saying this Ethan handed Kai a massive packet. 

“I’ve seen books smaller than this,” Kai says as he struggles to find a place to put it. 

“I think it’s for the whole year,” Ethan says.

“It better be, or else I’m not passing this class.” Ethan laughs at Kai’s remark and flips through the packet that was handed to them. Kai took Ethan’s lead and decided to flip through it as well. As Kai was flipping through the packet he noticed that it covers a wide range of topics and units. Unit I was about bacteria and viruses, Unit II was about ecosystems and the biosphere, Unit III was about cells and cell life, Unit IV was the project unit where they were going to have to study a different species of insects, and finally Unit V was the dissection week where they were going to dissect frogs. 

“Looks like this is going to be a full semester,” Kai says as he leans over to Ethan’s desk. 

“Yeah I don’t know how well this year will go,” Ethan whispers back. After a boring hour of going over the syllabus, the bell rings.

“Looks like English is next,” Kai says to himself as he looks over his schedule. 

“Whatcha got next,” Ethan says as he wraps his arm around Kai’s shoulder. 

“English,” he says, showing Ethan his schedule. 

“I got math next, and I don’t want to go so do you want to skip with me?”

“Ethan, it’s the first day.”

“And, what are you scared you’re gonna get caught?”

“No, I just don’t think it is necessary to skip on the first day of school.”

“Whatever man, just sounds like you're boring to me.” After Ethan says this he walks off somewhat angrily. Kai heads up to the second floor where he meets up with Maya. 

“Hey,” she says as they walk into the classroom. 

“Hi,” Kai responds. They find two empty seats and sit next to each other. 

“There is a new student in both of my classes before this,” Kai says.

“Where is he from?” Maya asks. 

“Minnesota, his name is Ethan.”

“What class does he have next?”

“Math, but he said he was going to skip it.”

“Really on the first day of school.”

“Yeah.” After Kai said this the teacher slammed the door shut and started teaching. Kai struggled to keep up with the syllabus for the semester but Maya helped him write it all down. After that class Kai and Maya walked down to the lunch room. 

“Hey Kai!” someone yells. Kai turns around to see Ethan waving at him. 

“Hey Ethan!” Kai yells back. Ethan walks up to Kai.

“Who is this, your girlfriend?” Ethan asks, referring to Maya.

“Nope,” Maya chimes in.

“Just friends,” Kai says. Kai and Ethan continue to walk and talk leaving Maya behind. Kai turns around to see if Maya was following them but just sees her turn around while looking angry. 

“What’s for lunch?” Kai asks Ethan as they get up to the lunch line. 

“Pizza,” says Ethan looking excited. After Kai and Ethan get their food they head to a table and start eating. Kai starts looking around for Maya.

“What ya looking for?” Ethan asks.

“Maya, she didn’t follow us and she looked really mad when she walked away,” Kai says.

“Don’t worry about her, she is just mad you made a new friend.”

“Yeah, but normally I eat lunch with her.”

“C’mon man don’t be boring, change it up a bit.”

“I guess I should.” Kai finishes eating and gets up to put his tray away.

“What class do you have next?” Ethan asks as he gets up with Kai.

“Math, you?” Kai asks.

“English, wanna skip with me?” “I went over to the gas station during the last block, so we could go back.”

“I’m not going to skip on the first day of school, I’ve already told you.”

“Alright have fun in boring math class.” 

“Ethan was right,” Kai mumbled to himself as he walked out of the math classroom. Kai went to look for Maya before she went home, but after looking for 5 minutes he couldn’t find her, but he found Ethan.

“Hey man school ended forever ago, what are you still doing here?” Ethan asked.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Kai responds.

“I just got back from the gas station, I almost got caught but I lied my way out of it.”

“That's why you don’t skip.”

“Too bad, now what are you doing here?”

“Don’t worry about it.” Ethan grabs Kai’s shoulder tightly.

“Just tell me,” Ethan says.

“Fine, I’m looking for Maya,” Kai says.

“Oh yeah, I just saw her leaving before I got in here, she was asking about you.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I told her that you didn’t want to talk to her, and that she just needs to leave you alone.”

  “Why did you tell her that!” Kai yells.

“Because why do you need to talk to some girl that you aren’t even going to ask out when you have me.” Kai rips Ethans hand off his shoulder and runs out of the building. When he gets out to the parking lot he sees his mom’s car with her sitting in it looking confused. 

“I was just about to call you to ask what was taking you so long,” his mom asks when he gets in the car. 

“Sorry, I was just talking to a friend,” Kai says, trying to not let his mom catch on. When Kai gets home he runs up to his room and calls Maya. It rings for a while but she doesn’t pick up. Kai tries to call her again but she doesn’t pick up, so he decides to text her instead. He sends her a text but she doesn’t even read it. Kai sets his phone down on his bed and goes to get his backpack. All of a sudden his phone rings, he runs to it expecting it to be Maya, but it is a random phone number. Kai checks the area code and it is not the same as his, but he decides to pick it up anyway.

“Hey,” says a familiar voice. It was Ethan

“How did you get my number?” Kai asked.

“Maya gave it to me.”

“Why, did you ask for it?”

“Yeah.” Kai and Ethan talked for a couple more minutes, and after they hung up Kai felt a lot more relaxed. Kai noticed how late it was and decided to get something to eat and do his homework. It was around 11 pm when Kai finished his homework so he went straight to bed.

The next day at school Kai decided to skip Biology with Ethan but refused to skip English.

“What do you want?” Maya said when Kai walked up to her.

“To apologize for what Ethan told you, I was looking for you when he came up to me and said he told you,” Kai explained.

“And you are still Ethan’s friend?” Maya asked, looking stunned.

“He’s not that bad.”

“Yes, he is.” 

“No he’s actually really nice.”

“Don’t tell me you actually did it with him.”

“Yeah, I did, and I regret not skipping with him yesterday.”

“You shouldn’t be doing that, he is going to get you into a lot of trouble.”

“No he won’t, he found a back door that is always unlocked, no teachers go near it either.”

“I’m going to talk to him during lunch.”

“Sorry, he is going to skip lunch too.” Maya looked too shocked to speak. After class ended Maya grabbed Kai’s arm and pulled him to show her where Ethan’s class was.

“Ow, it’s right over her… ow that hurt,” Kai cried.

“Shut up before I tell the teachers you have been skipping,” Maya threatened

“Yes ma'am.” Maya pulled him inside to see Ethan just about to walk through the door.

“Hey, can I help you?” Ethan asked, looking confused.

“Yes, you can, why is he skipping with you?” Maya says.

“Because school is boring.”

“You didn’t move here because of your dad did you.”

“Nope, I got kicked out of every school in Montana for being tardy to most of my classes.”

“That’s why you moved to Idaho.”

“Yep, you’re smart aren’t you.”

“Leave Kai alone, he doesn’t need to get into any kind of trouble because of you.”

“I don’t think I will.” After Ethan said this, the teacher walked into the doorway.

“Alright, no more arguing, you all must just be hungry, let’s go to lunch.” the teacher said. The teacher pushed Maya and Ethan out of the doorway and toward the lunch room. 

“Let’s meet out back after school so you can tell me why I should stop asking Kai to skip with me,” Ethan said.

“Fine,” Maya said. Kai found the rest of the day boring, but he couldn’t skip because Maya tracked his location with her phone to make sure he didn’t sneak out. 

After school let out Kai couldn’t find Ethan or Maya so he decided to head home. The next day at school Maya came in with a black eye.

“What happened!” Kai asked.

“Me and Ethan got into a big fight and he ended up punching me, but you should see him, I knocked him out!” Maya said. 

“Geez.”

“I also told the principal he was skipping, and convincing other people to skip and he got expelled.”

“But, Maya.”

“Don’t but me, I got you out of detention.”

“Fine, thank you.”

“No problem, now get to class.”

“Okay.”

After a very long and boring school day Kai went home, and the moment he laid down on his bed, his phone rang. Kai answered it and heard a familiar voice.

“Hey, buddy,” Ethan said.

“Hey, I heard you got expelled,” Kai replied.

“Yeah, it's not that bad, I get to do whatever I want.”

“I heard that Maya screwed you up.”

“Yeah, I just want to apologize for making you skip and everything.”

“No, it’s okay, I shouldn’t have went along with it.”

“Do you still want to be friends?”

“Yeah, just don’t tell Maya.”

“I already asked her, and she said it’s fine.”

“Okay then” Kai and Ethan talked for a couple more hours after finally deciding to go to bed.