I'm Still Here (Chapter 1)

-Woodward Middle School-

/4th Period\

~11:32 AM~ 

"Ship me and Andrew red. Don't even know what that means. How stupid."

Oh geeze. Here he goes again. 

Complaining and mumbling under his breath, acting like he thinks nobody can hear him. When really, the entire reason he's mumbling in the first place is just to piss me off, all because me and Autumn were making fun of him and that buddy Andrew of his, calling out, "I ship it red!", when the teacher made a comment about them "flirting" in the first place!

Just take a deep breath, Carsi. Focus on your paragraphs, and maybe he'll stop eventually. 

I kept my head down looking at my Ipad, trying to block out his comments. Which was near impossible when he's sitting directly next to you, so close your desks are touching! Honestly, the more he talked, the more I wanted to shut him up myself. My fingers danced across the Ipad keyboard, words spitting onto the screen sentence after sentence. I had to get the final draft done by tonight, and I was almost done! Just maybe if he would shut up, I'd be able to!

"Well, you wanna know something? I ship YOU and AUTUMN Red!" My brains attention snapped from my draft to him as my eyes darted to look at him with a confused and annoyed expression etched in my face.

"I thought you said you didn't even know what that meant, genius!" 

I protested against the dark haired male as I put part of my attention on him. Seeing that smug look in his eyes made me want to slap him the more I looked at him.

"It doesn't matter! It's a stupid saying anyway!" 

Wow, was he serious? You know, for a seventh grader, he was the most immature person I've ever met in my entire time I've been here at Woodward. I groaned inwardly to myself as I rolled my eyes and returned to my Ipad, hoping that was the end of that.

NOPE!

"Homestuck is nothing but a stupid, ridiculous, fake and made up internet site!" 

I growled almost audibly as I tried to hide my face in my long brown hair, praying he would shut up before I got up in the middle of my whole class working and punched the kid in the gut.

"And whoever is into the junk is a retarded person who has no life." 

Okay. I'm sorry but that was it. I obviously wasn't going to punch the guy, but at least get my point across.

I lost all interest in my work and snapped my head to the young, glass-wearing male beside me and stared him down. I raised my hands up in gestures, something that I do when I don't even know it.

"Just shut up! I don't want to hear your voice! I don't want to hear your voice, I don't want to hear your voice!" 

The chatter of the class room hid my voice from others, but my friends in front of me heard every word of what was going on. I was indeed raising my voice in the middle of class, but honestly, I didn't care!

"Alright, Carsi, Calm down. And Josh, can't you see that she just want's to be left alone? So shut up!" 

I glanced at my red-headed friend Alexis, who had turned around in her chair and stared at us due to our bickering. She glared at Josh, earning a mouth shut from him as he finally returned to his work. She glanced at me with her green eyes and gave me a sympathetic look. I stared at her silently for a second until I sighed half out loud and half to myself and glued my eyes back to my work on my final paragraph, wishing this day would end already.

-After School-

~3:30 PM~

After I heard the final bell ring, I stood up and dashed out of my last period class, my purple backpack already zipped, packed and ready to go. It took me roughly five minutes to turn in my Ipad and afterwards, swinging my Ipad case back and forth in my hand, I walked to the front of the school, phone in hand, calling my mom's cell phone. After a short fifteen second conversation, consisting of me telling her I'm on my way home from school, I hung up my phone and slipped it back into my pocket, beginning my twenty minute ascend to my "house".

It wasn't even a house. We didn't own a house. Not anymore. We've been living in a hotel for the past two months or so, because we moved out of our apartment for reasons I really didn't want to get into at the moment. We lived in a relatively small city town, where everything is generally within walking distance. There were houses on either side of the street and when you continued walking away from the school, you would stumble upon Main and Mill Street, filled with a bunch of stores, restaurants and businesses, both family owned and local.

I was already down the street away from the school grounds only a few minutes after I got off the phone with my mom. I was pretty fast, probably from two years worth of walking nearly a mile a day to and from school.

There were no kids anywhere behind me or in front of me. It was normally like this, just a lone seventh grader on her way home from school. The only company that I felt I had on these trips were the cars either speeding by to pick their kids up from school, or the ones in a line of traffic, struggling to get back home with their children.

I sighed to myself as I then slipped my phone back out of my pocket and went onto my Rocket Player app and began playing Jailhouse Rock by Elvis Presley. I put it to a decent volume and put it close to my ear. Not having earphones can be a pain. It was normally around this time that I begin to review the day's events.

I continued walking for about another minute, when my thoughts went from my music, to the sound of rustling leaves behind me. I kept my head forward though, not looking just yet. 

If there were somebody behind me, wouldn't I have heard them coming a mile away, especially with all the leaves strewn all throughout the ground? 

I continued to listen, when I noticed something pretty spooky. I would hear the leaves moving and crunching for roughly ten seconds, then it would just, stop.

The first time it happened, I stopped in my tracks and snapped my head behind me, to see who exactly was trying to mess with me.

Not a soul in sight.

I couldn't help but stand there for a few moments, and stare at the exact spot where I heard, or thought I heard, someone walking behind me. I studied the leaves. None of them seemed disturbed expect for the frequent wind gusts that would make them stir, making an entirely different sound.

Eventually, I huffed, fixed my black glasses on my face, and turned on my heels and shrugged it off like it was nothing. I continued my walk to the hotel, occasionally glancing behind me making sure no one was trying to sneak up on me. I picked up my speed a little and didn't slack, but only until I reached the top of a huge hill that over looked Main Street did I begin to slow down. I began to breathe a bit heavily but eventually calmed down when I began to walk a bit slower. I kept a steady pace the whole time I walked down Main and turned onto Mill Street. Halfway there, I took a side street, and at the end of the small road, was the large hotel me and my parents were staying at. I sighed a bit to myself as I prepared myself for what was to come of tonight in my "household".

My name is Carsi Freeman, I'm thirteen years old, and this is my life as a kid.