When Night And Day Become One

|| Two ||

Summer quickly passed and the legendary first day of school was approaching.

To my complete amazement, my father had traded his former work to an office job in the town hall. We didn't have to keep moving anymore. In fact, we were staying indefinitely. I didn't know whether I was going to be happy, or not.

My door flung open, interrupting my thoughts. Chris walked in and threw me a set of papers. They were application papers.

"Mom wants you to fill them up," he said, walking over to my window. "She said we have to enroll ourselves before school starts." He pointed at the window across mine. "Does anybody live there?"

I shrugged and headed to my desk with the paper in my hands. In the two months that we've stayed, the room across mine had been empty and quiet.

"Hey," Chris said as I was jotting down my name. I ignored him like I usually do and continued what I was doing.

"Hey!" This time, he kicked the foot of my desk.

"What?" I asked in annoyance.

"Why are you so grumpy, miss smartypants?" He was grinning and I had a feeling our conversation was heading into unwanted territory.

"Because you're so immature," I said. "You're supposed to be the older sibling here."

"Psshh, only by two years. Anyway, my new friends were asking about my 'sister'. I'm wondering if I should let you meet them since you're always holed up in this stupid room of yours."

I raised an eyebrow at what he had just said. Did he just say that he was worried about me? And there I thought he was going to tease me again about the incident.

"I'm fine, okay?" I said, keeping my voice even. "Just go."

He shrugged. "Yeah, okay, that might not be the best idea, after all, since you have a thing of embarrassing yourself in front of people you just met and pushing them into the lake," he said, and then laughed.

My face flamed in embarrassment once again as the memory of that day returned. I immediately stood up and wrestled Chris out of my room. "That's it. You are banned from my room!" I shut the door on his face. I heard him snicker before going on his way.

I screamed my annoyance into my pillow. Chris was annoying as usual but it didn't help that the reason he was annoying me this time was because of something that I was responsible for.

But still, it had been two months. How could my brother not forget it just because he happened to witness it? Could it be possible that the residents of Fair View town also had not forgotten it?

Ever since that day, I had refused to get out of our house. I had probably used up all kinds of excuses in the Excuses Book just so I could save face. I had depended on the fact that we would be moving once again, only to find out that we were not. And now, I would have to go out, eventually, especially with the approaching first day of school. All of this worry just because of that sandwich thief!

When school started, I realized that I was overreacting. The town was particularly large and I had not bumped on a single familiar face who could have witnessed my slipping incident. Relieved, I had only one goal for the first day of school: maintain a low-profile and avoid trouble as much as possible.

My first classroom was already half full when I got there. Taking the back door, I headed straight toward the empty chair in the corner. Before I could reach my seat, the boy sitting beside it suddenly blocked my way with his foot. I couldn't see his face though because his head was buried in his arms on his desk.