The next day, Serenia had to wake up early for the school bus. There was only four other kids on the bus, and she was already feeling nervous for school. She twisted her hair around her finger, a nervous habit that she had developed and hardly even noticed.

She sat in the very back of the bus, like all the new kids did at her old school. She felt like everyone was staring at her and snickering. Serenia's face was flushed with embarrassment as she stared out the window.

It only took five minutes to get to the school. She stepped off the bus, and the first thing she noticed was how small the school was. Now she knew that she was probably the talk of the whole school.

Serenia slowly walked to her locker. Someone tripped her, and her backpack fell to the floor, its contents all over the place. Serenia felt tears smarting her eyes as she slowly started picking up all her stuff. She did not want them to see her cry, but it was so hard being the new girl in a small town.

A hand joined hers in picking up her stuff, and she looked up, seeing the strange boy. It was not long before they got all of her school supplies in her backpack, "Thanks." she murmured, avoiding eye contact.

"My name is James, by the way." the boy said, not allowing her to make as quick of an escape as she wanted to. 

"Um....my name is Serenia." she said, studying him.

He seemed to be studying her also. Serenia could see through James' green eyes that he had seen too much. Serenia wanted to ask him what he had been through, but they had not known each other long enough for James to answer her prying questions.

Before they could talk further, the second bell rang and they headed to their class.

Serenia had a hard time paying attention to the teacher, who was speaking in a monotone. Apparently, she was bored with the topic as well.

Serenia found herself doodling James' name over and over again absent-minded. She lightly blushed as she hid the paper in her notebook and slammed it shut.

A few heads turned towards her to see what the noise was, but luckily, the teacher seemed to not hear the sound and continued with her monotonous lecture.

It seemed to take several years, rather than several seconds, for the bell to ring.

Serenia sighed deeply as she lifted her heavy backpack over her shoulder.

She walked out of the classroom last, because every single kid seemed to push her out of the way in their rush to get to the escape route. She nearly fell twice.

It took her a few minutes before she realized that James had been pushed to the back of the line, too.

They slowly walked to where the bus was, but an old pickup truck smashed into the curb, and a man was screaming out of the window, "Well, are you coming or not, lousy kid?" the guy was looking at her and James. 

She looked at James, who blushed and looked away. He ran to his truck without so much as a goodbye. Right before he got into the truck, Serenia could hear the man say, "Hurry up! We don't have all day!"