As the heavy door eased shut, the yearbook office lapsed back into its usual oasis of silence. The rowdy halls of Milton High School were drown out by the steady tapping of the keyboard and occasional rustle of paper. My footsteps seemed to echo as I moved towards the far corner of the room. I positioned myself in front of Mrs. Kennison’s desk, and waited for an acknowledgement.
“Hello, Delia,” she said with a brief smile.
I smiled back, and slid a stapled report onto her cluttered desk.“I finished it,” I announced. My lip grew sore as I gnawed on it, waiting for her to finish skimming over the neat type. “Destined for Something More- How Kelly Elroy ’08 Launched her Art Career” extended across the first page, followed by a sea of quotes and commas.
“Wow,” Mrs. Kennison muttered, still glancing at the last paragraphs, “This is impressive. You sure you’re only a sophomore?”
I sighed, as relief seeped into my tense muscles. “So it can go in the paper?”
“Definitely. Start thinking about what you’re going to write for next month’s issue.”
I was still grinning as I re-entered the hall. In the midst of trying to orient myself in the general direction of my next math class, a bobbing brown ponytail distracted me.
“Chelsea!” The ponytail whipped around, revealing a pale face pierced with dark brown eyes. She waved, sending bracelets jingling. I hurried to catch up.
Warm skin brushed my upper arm. I yelped melodramatically, as my shoulder made contact with a locker, sending streamers and flyers scattering across the floor. A few people laughed openly, while the guy who had bumped into me shouted a hurried apology over his shoulder. I rolled my eyes, and bent down to retrieve a “Good Luck Matt!” poster from its position on the linoleum floor. Chelsea reached for a streamer inches away.
“Way to go, Delia,” she teased, “Not only do you slam into a locker, you slam into the hot-shot quarterback’s locker.”
“Yeah, that’s pure skill right there.” We hastily tacked the papers back onto the locker, leaving it looking more like Mrs. Kennison’s desk than the shrine it had been earlier.
“Matt’s such a moron anyway,” Chelsea began, her eyes sparkling mischievously, “Ok, you know how he’s in my U.S History class? Well, the bonus question on a test was something like ‘who was the first president of the United States?’”
My mouth dropped. “I want to be in your class!”
“Yeah, I know, it was a total gimme question. Matt said that it was George Bush.”
I bent over laughing, as my backpack slid off my shaking shoulder.
“Yeah, he’s like ‘I got confused!’ He’s so stupid.” Now Chelsea was laughing just as hard as I was. Somewhere in the adjoining math wing, I caught my breath again, and the laughing fit subsided.
“So is he really that dumb? I thought you had to have a C average or something like that to be on a sports team.” I asked, more to break the silence that we had fallen into.
“Beats me,” she said with a shrug, “He must have OK grades.” She waved, as I swerved into room 102.
“Delia,” I jumped. “You did very well on your test,” my teacher exclaimed, handing me a sheet adorned with a big red A.
“Thanks,” I said slowly, glancing over the test. Three questions were flawed with red x’s, and I had still gotten an A. I vaguely wondered if Matt’s tests resembled this. As I sank into a desk, I pulled out a sheet of notebook paper. An article was in the making.
