1 Chapter 1 - New Beginnings

"Asha Asha Asha get out of that bed and down here, don't make me come up there and pull you up cos you're not gonna be liking me anymore than you do now if I come up there. I mean it's literally your first day in yet another new school and I cannot deal with having to explain your late coming to the principal or go to my office late on a Monday so please come down NOW!!!", my mom screams from downstairs.

Oh wow I really must love my mom since I haven't killed her yet. I mean this woman lives for the joy of screaming at me and if you're wondering, yes I do love my mom and yes she really cares about me but also gets on my nerves like every second and I say that literally. "Mom I'm coming, just chill alright", I reply in the same high pitched voice she used on me. So now I do get up from my bed and head into the bathroom to take a nice but quick shower, brush my teeth and then wrap myself with my large red towel then move to the dressing table to dry my hair after which I apply oil and just comb it all out.

I've got to say I'm blessed when it comes to hair cos I've gat natural black hair that shines and is tangle free, main point being tangle free, that means I can sleep and not worry about waking up looking like I got hit by a tornado. Next, makeup, I apply mascara, eyeliner and since I'm an addict who can't do without lipsticks I use dark purple lipstick, no blush allowed. Next up wardrobe chaos, if there's one thing I do not take after my mom with it's the state of my wardrobe, it's an unholy sight (my excuse being I haven't had the time to really arrange my things) but I finally manage to get what to wear which is black ripped jeans, white crotchet crop top, and dark brown ankle boots. Finally I walk up to the large mirror in my room to check my complete look and what I see makes me smile. I look beautiful standing at five foot ten with blue eyes that can see right into your soul, set into a round face with hair darker than midnight, skin like olives and a slight hourglass shape. "Don't judge I work hard at the gym". All in all I'd say I'm ready for another ultimate first day.

With that settled, I grab my school bag and head downstairs only to meet my mom seething. 'Wow she must be pretty pissed', I think to myself. "So you finally decide to come down young woman" she says with anger rolling off of her in waves and I think to myself 'maybe, just maybe I pushed my luck today', but that doesn't mean I'm apologizing. "Asha I have told you that this is not gonna work this time around, I mean I've had to change your schools almost four times in the last year and I will not go through that whole process again. So please try not to do anything stupid this time please, okay?", my mom says with pleading eyes. She must really be having a hard time cos of me and I'm guessing the company might be doing the same with her but it's not completely my fault. "Okay mom, I'm sorry" wait I just apologized wow you cracked, Asha its game over. Yikes. "I knew my daughter was still in there", my mom smiles and grabs her keys off the table "well time to go, we're already late", she says as she pushes me out the door to her car.

I get in the car and put on my seat-belt, #safety-first. My mom enters the car and she drives me straight to the school all the while mumbling about how it's a good school and she's sure that if I can just stay cool and calm I'll be able to graduate and finish my senior year in one place without having to change schools yet again. Well it's not necessarily mumbling but I say that cos she's basically talking to herself and if not for my sharp hearing I wouldn't be able to make out anything she said and before long we are staring at the school building in all its vintage glory. The gates were made of iron and almost every building in sight was made with bricks and are huge and on the gate was written West-view high since 1990.

My mom drops me off at the parking lot and tries to give the good girl speech once again before I remind her that she's late for work already and that was the only motivation she needed to get her outta my hair. Finally alone, I give myself a minute to access my new environment and the place is beautiful if I'm being honest, with flowers surrounding most of the building and the architecture of the school as a whole is intriguing and it looks like I could lose my way without a proper map. I make a mental note to get one while in the administrative building.

I take a deep breath and start walking towards the building with the letters admin written by its entrance and that's when it dawns on me that a few of the students outside were staring at me and it doesn't shake me one bit, I mean by now I've adjusted to it. That can happen when you've been moved all over the state, changing schools like no man's business. So instead of walking on jelly legs due to the stares I was getting, I walked confidently to the admin building and luckily for me, I found the principal's office right away. I knocked on the door and a silky voice that was definitely feminine said "come in" which I did. Upon entering the office, I gotta say I was surprised, because after hearing her voice I was expecting to see a young woman maybe in her late twenties but definitely not the old lady seated in front of me. She was a beautiful woman with a little grey in her hair and that leaves me guessing her age to be early or late forties but definitely forties with wide rimmed glasses settled on the bridge of her nose and a warm smile on her face.

"Good morning mam", I say in greeting and she replies with a simple "good morning" moving on to say, "what can I do for you miss?" . "Uh yeah my name is Asha D. Carter, I just transferred here. My mo.." she interrupts me as realization dawns on her saying, "oh yes Mrs Carter sent your transcripts a while back. Just give me a second let me get your schedule and the school map". After saying this she reaches into one of the drawers by her table and is rummaging through some sheet of papers while I looked around the office. The place is big and for a school office it is clean. I mean the last school I went to they could barely find anything with the way papers were thrown everywhere but here everything is neatly arranged in files and placed on shelves in an order by the look of things. "Well here you go dear and I do hope you stay till graduation with us", she says with a smile handing me my schedule and a copy of the school map. As I'm about to leave though she stops me and says "Oh and lest I forget, you might wanna get a student to help you with that map so you don't get lost cos it's not as detailed as it should be due to changes that have been recently made to the school structures and not yet to the map". With that said she waved me out of her office with a smile all this while I'm thinking in my mind 'well she's okay, just a little off'.

"Well time for me to figure out the so called complicated map", I think to myself. You see I have this problem called over confidence plus self-dependence. I literally hate asking for help cos I've gotten accustomed to the fact that nobody really gives a damn and if they do its cos they want something in return, so I mean what's the point of asking for help when I'm pretty confident that no matter what happens today I'm gonna end up in at least one of my classes. It won't be such a bad idea to waste half the day looking for just one class now would it? I ask myself. Well to be honest that might not be the best plan for a first day and since I'm feeling so good right now, I decide to try the map first before falling to plan B.

I take a look at the map and I gotta be honest I'm grateful I didn't ask for help cos the map is literally self-explanatory if that is even possible. Since I'm able to figure out the map I decide to go to my locker first to dump my things and then check my schedule to know what I'm gonna need for classes till lunch. With all that in mind I follow the map taking the first right by the end of the admin building and a few turns later I'm staring at my locker, "this is so easy", I think to myself. I enter the code and then load my books into the locker. Now contrary to my wardrobe at home, my locker always and I mean always is arranged to a fault cos without that I'll easily get my things lost. I check my schedule and I discover I have calculus first period then English literature next and history before lunch, I gotta say they follow the right order. "Well time to get this hell started", I mutter to myself.