Lily, the Brave - By Katherine Hodges Page 0,25
if you need to come home because you’re too tired, just call me,” Jenny said as her forehead wrinkled in worry.
“I’ll be fine. I have Malaya to help me,” Lily assured her. As her aunt drove away, Lily limped toward the school, hoping she was ready to face high school again. As she came closer to the school, she noticed a faint buzzing sound. Looking around her there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Trying to ignore the annoying hum, she met up with Malaya at their normal “before-school” spot. Malaya was sitting alone on a brick wall near the entrance to the school popping grapes into her mouth.
“Hey, want one?”
“No thanks, I already ate.” Lily moved towards the wall about to sit down.
“No, wait, I’m finished. We need to get going anyway.” Malaya grabbed the heavy back pack Lily had somehow managed to haul from the parking lot. The two of them headed toward the lockers that had been assigned to them at the beginning of the year.
“I already cleaned out my temporary locker, but we’ll need to clean yours out later today. The janitor wants to clean them for a couple of new students,” Malaya said even more cheerfully than usual. She stuffed some loose papers into her locker and organized the books already in her backpack. “After school let’s meet in hall B, and I’ll help you clear it out. See you at lunch,” Malaya said as she walked away to her history class. Lily watched her make her way down the hallway leaving her alone. She wished they had more classes together, but she had registered too late, and didn’t have much choice. She rearranged the items in her backpack in an effort to make it lighter, but wasn’t very successful. She gave up and hoisted the pack on her back nearly dropping one of her crutches. Lily was surrounded by students of various ages and popularity rank and they all walked by hardly even acknowledging her existence. Not one stopped to help. She didn’t expect help, but it would have been nice. Then she heard a faint buzzing again. It became louder for a moment and then passed as the hallway cleared. Lily worked her way slowly to English class, and somehow made it to her seat just before the bell rang for the last time. English was probably her best subject. She had always loved to read and write stories. Over the years her teachers had told her she was good at writing, and her mother had always said she was a writer at heart. It was so easy to love something she was good at, which explained why she hated algebra.
After English, she went to her science class taught by one of the school coaches, Mr. Collins. For some reason, maybe because the teacher was a coach, Dean Brady and Nathan Montana were both in the same class. It was unusual for two of the Slade Gang to be in the same class. The school administrators made it a point to keep the troublemakers separated as much as possible, but apparently this time it was unavoidable. When Lily entered the science room, Dean and Montana were already throwing bits of paper at other students. Lily reluctantly took the last seat available in the room, right next to Dean Brady. She pulled out a pencil, notebook and an eraser from her backpack and set them on her desk.
“Ha, I’m gonna get her eraser. There’s no way that cripple can get it back.” Lily knew it was Dean in her head, and it was her eraser he was thinking about. She could have grabbed it before he snatched it away, but she didn’t want to antagonize him, so she simply ignored him. It didn’t matter that much to her; it was just an eraser. It wasn’t long before Dean had grabbed her eraser and began a game of keep away with Montana. She didn’t even try to get it back. She knew she couldn’t, and she knew if she tried, she would just fan the fire. Thankfully it didn’t last long before Mr. Collins walked in the room and confiscated the pink eraser flying through the air. The class was the same as it had been when she was there last. The class would go smoothly for a while, and then either Dean or Montana would make some remark, or cause some sort of trouble. Then Mr. Collins would lose his temper. With his face