Things couldn’t get any worse. It was impossible. But they did.

I woke up a half hour late; six thrity. Disregarding the fact that I was supposed to leave on the bus at seven, I had my mom drive me to school and by the time I was there, I had missed a quarter of first peiod. Thankfully, it was Science and it was a review day, but I still got a tardy on my gradebook. I have never gotten a tardy in my life except for once, when I had to get my cavities filled. Even then, it was excused! I’m a very organized person and never like to miss a day of school unless it was for a very special occasion. My room was all organized in shelves, drawers, and boxes. Everything had a place. But somehow, this morning my alarm clock wasn’t in its usual place; next to my bed on my nightstand.

When I walked into class, my science teacher, Mrs. Crawford smiled at me, baring her shiny white teeth, and told me to sit down at my desk. I did as told. I slipped into my seat (that was right next to my boyfriend.) and put my books underneath my chair. I smiled a gleaming smile at him and he grinned his grin at me. But this time, it was different. he had his bad news face on.

“What’s wrong, Keith?” I asked.

He looked back at me. “I’ll tell you after class, Lindsey.”

I was worried. He’s never talked to me with such a serious voice. The time passed while we worked on our science packets, and Keith took my arm and led me outside.

“I, um, I don’t know how to say this, um,” Keith started. “I don’t know, Lindsey, maybe we should start seeing other people.”

I looked at him, with tears forming in my eyes. “What are you saying?” I said with a trembling voice.

“I’m, um, breaking up with you.” He said, clearing his throat.

I stared at him for a long time, then walked away without saying a word.

I couldn’t believe it. Sure, we were fighting at each other for a little while, but I didn’t see it as a reason fo him to break up with me. We had so many fun times together. He always stood up for me when someone was giving me a hard time at school. He was a shoulder for me to cry on. When I did cry, he let me cry. He let me bawl and be mad at life. But this now took away the shoulder that I cried on.

The day went by fast, and before I knew it, I was already home and crying on my white and floral pillow. My mom walked in and said she heard the news from my best friends, Christa Jacobson and Maya Lopez. She sat next to me, and hugged me for a long time. She let me cry on her shoulder and then it made me cry even more, reminding me of Keith.

About an hour before I went to sleep, I had found out that my brat sister, Brandi, had taken my alarm clock to wake up her imaginary friend, Lisa Ling the Panda for her job at “Sushi Yama Mama” (a sushi store that was in the cartoon, Lisa Ling the Panda, of which Brandi’s stuffed panda is based off.) Brandi asked for a bunch of Lisa Ling merchandise after she found out that there was going to be a huge animated movie called, “Lisa Ling and The Sushi King: Part One”. The thing that really startled me was when I read the part one. There were going to be more movies of that high-pitched, six-year-old-brain-washer in my life? One thing’s for sure, if I find out that Brandi takes my alarm away for any other stupid reason, I will tear apart every inch of fabric and cotton that Lisa Ling has in her stuffed body.

The next day, I woke up extra early to make sure I wasn’t struck with such an incident again. My eyes fluttered open at five forty-five, and I was done with face cleanser and hair mosturizer at five fifty. I took twenty minutes getting dressed, doing my hair and putting on makeup. By six thirty, I had everything under control and was sitting at the kitchen table, finishing up some of next week’s World History homework. I have to say, I was pretty proud of myself. I left my mom one less thing to worry about while she tried to tackle Brandi and make her put on her clothes to go to school.

I met Christa and Maya at the bus stop and I told them the entire story about what happened with Keith the other day. I had had only a couple of minutes to tell them that he broke up with me, as passing time was five minutes, and I had already wasted three minutes talking to Keith.

Christa pulled out her bedazzled compact mirror, her Triple Vanilla Berry Bean lipgloss and strted applying a layer across her pillowy lips. “One thing’s for sure, you are waaayy better off without Keith Kingsley,” Christa remarked. “He was just a big waste of your time.” I have to say, Christa is my most synchronized friend in fashion, beauty and love. She’s like, a mortal Aphrodite or something.

“Yeah. For sure! If he broke up with you, it was his loss and his fault. It’s not your fault that he broke up with you.” Maya said with a strong voice, while pulling up her golden-brown hair. Maya is the person you want to go to when you need some fighter’s eye in yourself. She plays so many sports, that it’s very obvious how she’s so competitive. She’s the daredevil of the group.

“Hmm, I guess you guys are right!” I said happily, brushing off a piece of lint from my H&M tunic.

By the time we were done chatting away, and complimenting each other’s outfits, the bus had arrived, then Maya, Christa and I took our usual seat; up in the front right behind the bus driver.

My first class was World History with Christa. Mr. Martin took roll and passed out some packets for us to work on for the test tomorrow. Since Christa and I sit in the back corner right next to each other, we can easily go with talking without getting in trouble. We were working with paartners anyways. Christa is also very serious about her schoolwork, so we weren’t in the back goofing off and texting on our iPhones.

Once the bell rang, we met up with Maya and went to our next class; English. Now, occasionally, Ms. Hardy was an OK teacher. But the times that she wasn’t was when she texted during class. Shouldn’t they make a rule for that with teachers, too? While Ms. Hardy was talking about our argumentative paper due soon, I was too busy writing the argumentative paper due soon. Usually, I do homework from another class during class, but this time was urgent. Christa wanted me and Maya over so we could discuss the Spring Dance that we were assigned for handling this year.

At the end of the day, Christa, Maya and I took our bookbags from our lockers and walked down the cascading marble stairs. I never really noticed how beautiful our school was. Hm. Funny how I go here almost every day, and I never just looked around and noticed.

At Christa’s house, we all sat around her room. Maya sat on the blue bean bag, I sat on her chair at her desk and Christa sat on the bed. I pulled out a notebook from Christa’s desk and threw it to her. She grabbed a pencil from her nightstand and started jotting down something.

“OK. We need ideas for what we want the theme to be.” Christa stated.

“Oooh! How about we do Under The Sea! We could have projections of sea water glimmering on the walls and have streamers with hanging ‘pufferfish’,” Maya said making quotation marks in the air. “And we make the pufferfish from huge pom-pom balls!”

Christa nodded and wrote down the idea.

“How about we do a GAG thing?” I said, with a little hope in her eyes.

Christa and Maya looked at her with questioning looks on their faces.

“What’s GAG?” Christa asked, looking a little dumb.

“It’s girls ask guys!”

“That would be so cool!”

“Yep! And we could also make it Under the Sea!”

“Yes! WooHoo!”

We all laughed so hard, our stomachs hurt. All of a sudden, we heard a phone buzz. I looked over at the desk and saw that it was my phone that buzzed.

“I got a text.” I said.

FROM: KEITH KINGSLEY:
we need to talk before science tomorrow. its URGENT!!!

I heard Maya let out a moan. I tapped “view later” and turned to my friends. “What do you think he’ll say?”

“I think he’s gonna want to come crawling back to you and then he’s gonna say some stupid sappy stuff like, I couldn’t live with myself, Lindsey! or You’re my everything, Lindsey! I’m sorry I ever let you go!” Maya said faking a Keith voice and rolling her eyes.

I looked at Christa and she was nodding her head. “Just see what he has to say. And play hard to get!”

I walked home texting Keith.
OK. Fine.

When I came home, I laid on my bed, staring at the wall for a long time. Slowly and slowly, the sandman went walking across my eyes and I drifted to sleep.