A Fresh Start

Chapter 15-January 2013

TK

Madame Louis, my French teacher likes to speak French whenever she can. Especially if the students around her don't understand what she's saying. She does it for her students like me that are surprisingly good at the language of love.

"Un autre examen parfait. vous êtes assez bon en français," she says with a smile to me as she hands out our last exam.

Jamie's next to me. It's thanks to French that she and I became friends. "What'd she say to you?" She asks as she looks at her test, "C+ what did you get?"

"100%" is what I want to say, but I shake my head and answer politely. "I did ok."

Jamie's faster than me and snatches the test from me. I blame decades of Ryan stealing her stuff. her eyes go wide in shock and annoyance. "How? How are you this good? Are you cheating?"

"il n'a pas à tromper pour cela. peut-être devriez-vous essayer plus fort," says Madame Louis and I can't help but stifle a laugh and get a dirty look from Jamie.

"What'd she say?" She asks quietly.

I check that the coast is clear. "She said. I don't have to cheat to be that good," I say quickly, but I still get punched.

Jamie rolls her eyes, "that's rude. Help me study this weekend. Please TK. Ryan said he was hanging out with you anyways. We can all study."

"Ummm, maybe. I need to talk to Ryan. I don't know what the plan was, just that we would hang out," I say, but I think to myself, "we were planning on just making out a lot and pretending to work."

"Ok, cool. Then we should be good. I'll text the group. We haven't all hung out in a bit. I miss us," she says with a dreamy look.

My first hockey game was the same night as Ryan's. Sarah came to mine, and Jamie went to his in castle rock. Trevor was grounded for backing his mom's car into the garage door.

I nod, "it's been a minute for sure."

"Based on Ryan's snap chats, you two are together all the time," she says. I can't tell if she is digging for something or just jealous.

"I guess. We have similar schedules and stuff. So it helps us hang out," I say with a shrug.

It's also true. Sarah's in the school play, so she isn't done until 7ish. Trevor has wrestling at school. Jamie's in Model UN now that cheerleading is over. Ryan and I have hockey practice at a sports complex close to school. Four rinks, all used by the four high schools in our district. More often than not, he and I finish at the same time.

Sometimes I get a ride home with him and every time that ride home involves a make-out session in the back seat. It's a perfect system.

It's a perfect system until our friends want to hang out and ruin it.

"We can figure it out," I say as the bell rings. "Let's get food."

The plus of the new semester is that I get to have lunch with Jamie and Sarah. Trevor's in a gym class that switched to the second lunch block, so he's alone. However, his Snapchat stories show that the wrestling team has a large force during that period. He isn't as lonely as Jamie would like him to be.

I grab my lunch from the line and pay for it. It's nice being able to actually eat.

Everything Dan and Mandy do for me just shows how little my Dad cared for me. I had chores, and I got an allowance, but if I didn't do a chore to his standard, I didn't money for that day. My allowance was what I used to buy lunch at school.

It wasn't a problem when Lizzie lived here. She would cut her sandwich in half and give it to me, so I had something. After she left, it was harder. The lunch lady took pity on me when I tried to buy a Twinkie with the loose change I had saved from previous lunches. She knew my Dad was a cop and did what she could to help me without drawing attention to the problem.