What Happened to Friends
A novel by Stacy Madl

Chapter 1: Typical

"Great it’s the first day of school all over again, same old bullshit. I don’t get why everyone is always so worked up about it. The only difference is the minor niners and the foreign exchange students. I don't see the big deal of why everyone has to either look like a stud or a slut. Fuck its like mating season for horny teens."

"Yea, I agree, its weird. " Mark said
"Well I’m off to English, I’ll see you at lunch." I said.
"Okay, see yea then." He said as I started walking away.
"Bye.” I said as I waved.
Mark is one of my best friends, he always has been. We met back in grade 6, first day of middle school. We were always the
odd ones; we never really fit in with anyone else. Anyways 4 years later were still close and going strong.
As I entered my first period class, English I sat down next to some kid who smelt funny and a girl who looked like she just had plastic surgery done on her breasts seeing as they were about as big as a fucking water melon. She glanced at me then flicked her hair as if I was some street rat.
"Typical" I murmured under my breath.

                     "Now class I will be handing out 3 different text books that we will be using throughout the year. After you receive them you will also receive 4 notebooks. The green one will be for notes, blue for homework, green for class work, and pink for projects."  The teacher said as if we were interested.

                      He mumbled on about work for about thirty minutes before he actually gave us any of it.
"Now class, I want you to go around and write down as many names as you can get and then sit down again when I call "time".

                      We all got up, as I ventured around the same old familiar setting I managed to get six names. I would have gotten more but he only gave us what seemed like thirty seconds. Two of then were girls who looked identical one was some emo looking kid and another was a jock. The others probably all looked the same.

“Now I am going to pick people at random, if you get picked you will read out one of the names and then point to the person who you think is named that. Marcy you may start first.”
“Jasmine.” She said as she pointed to some red haired and freckled kid. New I suppose, as she looked nervous.
“Ok, now Jasmine, your turn.” Mr Christopher said.
“ Umm…k.k…a…Kath….line.” She said stuttering uncontrollably.  The class started to snicker then her cheeks went red and she sat down in her seat somewhat lower then she was before.

After about 20 minutes of that the teacher handed out duo tangs and sheets and instructed that they were to be finished by tomorrow morning and on his desk other wise they would not be marked. Typical teacher. That’s another thing that bothers me, everything in school is so typical. The same old typical trends, statements, sayings, instructions, everything was overused and so cliché. Anyways as the class progressed we pretty much just talked about each other. Mr. Christopher got each of us to get up and go to the front of the room and say a little something about ourselves.  All I said was that I’m almost 15, my name is Zoë and I’m a drummer. After me some girl who was apparently named Julia went and half way through her boring talk about how she wanted to join NASA the bell rang. Everyone just get up and left. I would say they stopped listening and got up and left, but something told me they were never even paying attention.

As I was walking I saw the minor niners walked by look really confused. One nervously walked up to me.
“Ex…. ex…excuse me……….”
“ Yes?”
“ Um…could you erm…tell me where the grade 9 English room is?”
As I said before, everything is typical.
“ Your standing in front of it.” I said, then he turned around and walked in looking even more nervous then he did approaching me.

After that little encounter I found my way to my media class and sat down. We went through practically the same shit as English and then it was lunch.

“Hey, Zoë.” I herd Mark call from halfway across the lunchroom just was I was about to sit down.
“ Hey Mark, I saved you a seat come sit down.”
“Thanks, just let me grab some lunch quickly, I’ll be right over in a minute.” He said as he headed over to the café to grab something.

A few minutes he returned with something that looked like mash potatoes and cream corn with a few cookies that baking class had made that morning.
“So how was your first day of school?”
“Meh typical.” I said.
“Yeah, figured you’d say something like that.” Mark said as he laughed.
“What about yours?” I asked.
“ Everything was boring. Baking was okay but we didn’t really do anything. All we did was talk about pans and all the baking stuff we got to use this year. She gave us the whole lecture about how ovens get hot, like we didn’t already know that. Anyone with a nervous system would know that.” He said while laughing.
“ Yea I agree with that.” I said smiling.
“ Hey guess what.” Mark said with a surprising amount of energy in his tone.
“ What?” I asked.
“ My mom is pregnant!”
“Wow congratulations!”
“ How long until it’s born.”
“About another 6 months. Trust me they weren’t trying it just happened. She didn’t notice until her stomach started getting bigger so she went to a doctor to get checked out and when the test results came back they said she was pregnant.”
“ Aw, that’s great.”
“ Anyways how are you and Devin doing, you guys still together?” He asked.
“ Meh were good, he is still acting like a asshole but that’s him for you…again, typical Devin.
“ Anyways I got a spare after lunch so I think I am going to head home and chill out until last period.”
“ Okay I’ll see you later Zoë.”

After I got up I started walking to my locker when I saw a kid looking kind of confused and lost. Now normally I wouldn’t have cared and I would have just let him wander until he finally realized he was even more lost then he thought but this guy was cute. He had the bluest eyes I had ever seen and beautiful black hair.
“Um hi, did you need help finding your class or the lunch room or something?”
“Oh umm yea that would be awesome.” He said as he looked at me for the first time. The second our eyes connected we both smiled.
”So, what room were you looking for exactly?”
“ Well this is stupid of me but I’m kind of looking for my locker.” He said as his face went beat red.
“ Oh okay what number is it?”
“2641”
“ Oh that’s only a few lockers down from mine, come I was headed there anyways.”
We walked down a long hall up a flight of stairs and down two more halls until we got to my locker. I pointed down a few lockers and said that should be yours.
“ Oh thank-you so much.”
“Hey, want to come to my house for lunch? I only live 5 minutes from here.”
“Yea sure that would be awesome.” This time his cheeks went even redder then before.
“So tell me a little about yourself.” I said.
“Like what?”
“Well your name for started would be nice.”
“I’m Kurt. And your name is?”
“Zoë.”
“That’s a pretty name.”
“Naw not really.” I said laughing.” But thanks any ways.”
“So what grade are you in?”
“Twelve.”
“That’s cool. So was this your first day?”
“Yea I used to live in Hamilton and then I moved here to Toronto. Anyways what grade are you in?”
“Eleven.”
“Wow really? I thought you were in grade twelve, I would even have guessed thirteen but you don’t look like a person who would need to stay that long.” He said laughing then I started laughing too.
“Anyways come this way I live over here.”

After a few minutes of awkward yet somehow sweet silence we had arrived at my dumpy ugly house.
“Well this is it.” I said as I opened the door,
“I think is nice.” He said smiling at me.