Chapter 5 Hayden
CHAPTER FIVE
hayden
AUGUST, FRESHMAN YEAR
In a town like Goldfinch, the first day of freshman year was just like any other first day of school, especially when grades seven and eight attended in the same building.
Although the school was decently sized in terms of small towns (the population of Goldfinch was around thirty thousand, but the university made up a significant percentage with nearly ten thousand students), you knew everyone.
At least, you knew everyone in your graduating class.
Goldfinch only had one middle-slash-high school—with a student body population of around a thousand students—and one elementary school, so I grew up alongside all of the kids in my class.
Being the new kid at a school where everyone played in diapers together was like the equivalent of supergluing a neon sign to yourself, so it didn’t come as a shock when all eyes were glued to the unfamiliar blonde who stepped on the bus that first day.
She kept her head down, little tendrils of her hair falling into her face to nearly cover it, but every time she passed by a row of seats, her head would tilt up slightly.
She wore long sleeves despite it being the middle of August, and they were pulled down to her knuckles, her thumbs hooked in the cuffs.
Her steps were slow and cautious. Like if she made a wrong move, something would go terribly wrong.
Keenan nudged me with his elbow, breaking my attention away from the new girl. “Are you listening to me, Hayden?”
“Huh?” My eyes flicked back toward the aisle.
She was only a few rows in front of our seats in the middle of the bus; we weren’t quite cool enough to be at the very back of the bus like the sophomores.
“Sorry, what were you saying?”
“I was asking if you saw the new video game that GearWorx came out with. It looks sick, dude.” He waved his arms around wildly as he started describing what the game was about. Something about monster mutations, super soldiers, and a post-apocalyptic world.
I had completely tuned him out when the girl reached our row, going as far as to turn my head the opposite direction of Keenan to look at her.
Sad, emerald-colored eyes locked onto mine.
“Hey.” I raised a hand in a wave.
She flinched—the tiniest little movement; if I’d blinked, I would have missed it—those eyes darting to my open hand, but she quickly recovered, mumbling a timid, “Hi,” as her face flushed bright pink.
Before I could say anything else, she brushed past me, finding a seat a few rows back.
When I looked at her over my shoulder, I caught her looking at me, though.
“Hayden!” Keenan whined, grabbing my sleeve. “You’re not listening to me.”
“Sorry, sorry. Start over. I’m listening now, I promise.”
But I wasn’t, not really. Because my mind was glued to the new girl with the sad eyes sitting just a few rows behind us.
By some stroke of fate, the new girl was placed in the same homeroom class as me and Keenan.
Most of the desks were already taken by the time she walked in, everyone choosing to sit in the little groups they’d formed since elementary school. My eyes tracked her as she found a spot near the back corner of the room—the opposite corner from where I sat.
The classroom buzzed with conversation about summer break and what everyone did.
“Dude, my parents took me to Deadwood this summer, and it was so cool,” Keenan blabbed to his other friends, Jack and Andrew, as he tapped his pencil against the wood top of his desk.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I gently grabbed the end of the pencil near the eraser, stopping him from hitting it against the desk.
“Whoops, sorry, Hayden,” he apologized, but five minutes later he was tapping the pencil again.
“What did you do over the summer, Hayden?” Andrew asked.
I shrugged. “Not a whole lot, honestly. Dad was working a lot this summer, so we—”
“We got to ride in the cop car with them that one time!” Keenan cut me off. “We didn’t get to catch any bad guys, but they let us turn on the lights and the sirens.”
I chuckled, adding to his outburst. “We did. That was really cool.”
“All right, settle down, class.” Our teacher, Mrs. Gibbs, clapped her hands at the front of the classroom to get everyone’s attention.
The chatter dwindled to just a few hushed whispers.
“We’ve got a new student joining us today!” Mrs. Gibbs exclaimed, gesturing toward the new girl, whose face was now bright red. “Why don’t you stand up and introduce yourself? Don’t be shy, honey.”
All of my classmates—myself included—turned around in our seats, which I’m sure didn’t help ease her nerves. I didn’t like getting called on in class for normal things like answering a math question, much less having to introduce myself to people I didn’t know.
The girl looked like she would have rather swallowed a mug full of nails as she reluctantly stood. Her eyes bounced around the room before they finally landed on me and stayed there. I offered her a small smile, and it seemed as though her shoulders relaxed.
“Um…” Her voice was soft but sweet, if not a bit timid. “I’m Sierra.” She swallowed, her fingers fiddling with the right-hand cuff of her long sleeve, rubbing back and forth, back and forth like a bow on the strings of a violin. “Sierra Bayley.”
Bayley. Bayley. Bayley.
I swore I’d heard that name from somewhere, but I couldn’t place it.
“Where did you move here from, Sierra?” Mrs. Gibbs prompted her to continue, even though Sierra had already started to sit.
She cleared her throat, straightening her posture again. “Ponderosa Valley. Can I sit now, please?” As she waited for a response, she pulled her lip between her teeth, shrinking her body like she wanted to disappear.
“Of course. Everyone, make Sierra feel welcome here.”
A chorus of, “Yes, Mrs. Gibbs,” rose from the classroom. Everyone else had faced forward in their seats again, but I was still looking over my shoulder at Sierra.
She must have noticed I was staring, because her lips twitched up in a tiny smile. And for the first time today, her eyes didn’t look as sad.