Chapter

(THERE IS A POST BELOW THIS ONE >>>>>>>> but read this one first...lol)

As some of may already know, I'm working on a fiction story.
Here's Chapter 1...tell me what you think. (I might post another Chapter from time to time)

CHAPTER I

My shoes made a rhythmic crunching sound as they cracked the small grains of dry soil I trod on. I fell into their even beats and slowly seeped into a trance. Between the summer heat, flesh eating insects, and salty drops of sweat pouring from my brow into the corners of my parched mouth, I found myself longing to be anywhere else than where I was at that tiring moment. There were no clouds, no shade, no breeze. Only the feeling of bitter exhaustion and light headed weariness. As I continued on, my thoughts drifted back to that one day...that one, cool, breezy spring morning when ‘She’ showed up. It was a pleasant, yet uncomfortable memory, and it seemed to be the only thing my mind would ponder as I walked. I remember everything...

          “Elizabeth!” The name sounded far away…So far that it could barely be caught. “Elizabeth!” The voice called again. It was nearer now but still in the distance of acknowledgment. “LIZZY!” This time it was heard; loud, clear, and obnoxious and Elizabeth Sheers slowly lifted her dreary head off her pillow only to wearily open her eyes and look up into the impatient face of her bossy, and constantly annoying little brother, Benjamin. Benjamin was an 11 year old mischief making boy with wild dreams, much like Elizabeth’s, only his involved being a millionaire race car driver and having an incredible if not impossible amount of chocolate cookie dough. Most of the time, he was nothing but an utter pest.  “Come on we’ll miss the bus!” Ben had obviously been attempting to wake his sister for quite some time for the angry expression was all but leaping off his freckled face.

          “I’m…awake” Elizabeth murmured. However her night time fantasies were still happily dancing around in her mind and visions of daisies and butterflies could be seen through her sleepy brown eyes. As she dragged her heavy feet out of bed and mechanically guided her brother, none too gently, with a finger out of her room, Elizabeth could still feel the breeze on her face from the river cruise she had been enjoying in the pleasant dream she had captured that night. Yet, the 13 year old girl soon met with reality and realized that the breeze was nothing more than an unprotected memory. It quietly slipped out of her grasp.

          Elizabeth somehow managed to complete her morning toilet and eventually came down the stairs from her room and sat down at the family breakfast table. But she soon noticed from the dirty dishes which were scattered around the kitchen that breakfast had already been eaten and that the clock was moving too fast for her liking.

          As she gathered her school belongings, Elizabeth suddenly heard the startling sound of tires on gravel. A bus horn followed and she found herself running down the family’s ‘much too long’ driveway toward the high-school bus.

          The weather was adequate, a gentle breeze traveled through the air and the birds sung joyfully as they made their way out of the trees, abandoning their nests for the time being and rushing forth in search of their morning meal.

          The vehicle slowly made its way down the road. So slowly in fact, that Elizabeth doubted the purpose of her rushing that morning. The sun’s rays shone through the trees in an orange radiance and the girl eventually fell into their peaceful reassurance. They never changed. Always shining in the morning and fading away into the evening. Nature had always comforted Elizabeth in her times of worry and distress. It calmed her mind and melted away her hate, when she had any…but that was rare... for Elizabeth was, most of the time, a very loving and caring girl of her age.

As she stared out the window, Elizabeth found her imagination beginning to act up and create unknown wonders and objects of great worth. However, her daydreams must have gotten the best of her for she suddenly jolted forward as the school bus unexpectedly skidded to a stop in the middle of the road.

          As Elizabeth gathered her fallen pencils which had been thrown at her feet from the force of the stop, she glanced out the window and saw a deer dart into the forest on the side of the road. “All that excitement over a deer” she thought, as the last of the animal’s tail disappeared from view behind a bush.

          The bus began to push on once more. The high-school students began their pointless chattering gossip again, the rhythm of the swerves and turns started to speed up, and Elizabeth slowly relaxed in her seat and let her head rest against the window pain as she had before the school bus had stopped.  

Just when Miss Sheers was about to seep back into her weightless imagination, it happened. They eyes…the look…Elizabeth saw the deer again on the other side of the road up ahead. It had to be the same deer…the expression on its face was exactly the same. 

“No way” Elizabeth rubbed her eyes and opened them again; the deer was gone. A sigh of relief escaped her “It was nothing. Just my imagination…or was it?”

The school was in view now, just ahead at the end of the road. It wasn’t very large, just big enough for Elizabeth’s likes… although she didn’t have many happy stories to tell about her experiences there. Let’s just say that Elizabeth Sheers wasn’t a very ‘popular’ student. She had gone to the school for a year now; it was the only school in the area her parents could find when they moved to Mambridge, the small town they lived in.

The bus, slowly and steadily this time, pulled to a stop in front of the ‘playground’…although it wasn’t much of a playground at all. There were no slides, nor a swing-set…only a few benches here and there that Elizabeth thought were the most hideous wooden contraptions ever to be built. However, the so called ‘playground’ was used for recess, and somehow the children, big and small, each found something to do to amuse themselves.

The younger students would mostly sit around in the dust with twigs, drawing pictures they themselves had thought up. The older ones would merely stand around talking, or bullying the littler students for fun or lunch money. Elizabeth always felt pity for those poor neglected children who became the victims of the class bullies; although she herself wasn’t much different from them when it came to be ‘unwanted’.

          How she found her way to her classroom Elizabeth didn’t know. The moving crowd of students was like a giant wave which pushed and shoved her into the wrong places and sometimes the last places she would ever want to be…such as, ‘The Corner’. This was the title everyone referred to when talking about the small corner by the entrance to the school. It was on the right hand side of the building and was so small that it was the perfect place for shoving the ‘poor wretched students’ who would there be forced to give up their favorite pen, or a key-chain they cherished. Elizabeth, luckily, never found herself in that corner, although she witnessed many a student being thrown into it by a boy or girl in a higher grade.

The crowd continued to press on. Yet, Elizabeth eventually sat down at her desk and found herself gazing into the cold eyes of their Math teacher, Mrs. Habbercorn.

       “Elizabeth Sheers!” The voice was as hard and as cold as rock; heartless and unconcerned about anyone’s welfare. “Write the answer to this equation!” A long stick rapped on the chalkboard pointing to the algebra problem written in stiff chalk lines. Elizabeth did her best… 3x-y+18 = 4 was not her favorite thing to figure in her mind, especially when she had only woken up half an hour ago. But something about the y caught her attention. It seemed to move…shaking from side to side as if to mock her.

          Elizabeth, thinking she had truly gone mad, pinched her arm so hard that she caused herself to yelp. The entire class broke out laughing in union.

          The laughter was like a thousand demons…cackling and calling her name. Elizabeth knew she wasn’t popular…and that was all right…but making a fool of herself wasn’t something she could exactly laugh about. Tears snuck into Elizabeth’s eyes and soon overflowed down her hot, blushing cheeks. This was too much. Elizabeth had been made fun of before but never by an entire class. It was all she could not to burst out crying in front of everyone. There was only one more option…an embarrassing option…one Elizabeth knew she would be put in detention and made fun of for later, but she did it nonetheless.

          Running full speed out of the classroom Elizabeth raced herself out of her ‘house of ill repute’ and down the road toward the woods…woods that didn’t look very friendly, but to Elizabeth, anywhere other than the ‘classroom of horror’ was good enough for her.

          The forest trees seemed to call her name as if to console her. “This way” they whispered with their waving branches which the soft wind urged gently back and forth “Over here…we’ll hide you”.