Damaged (Damaged Series Book 1)

by J. Benson

"Not a problem. We can find the keys when we get back from shopping."

  "Okay." I smiled.

  "Whenever you're ready, we can head over to the mall to do some shopping. We can pick up some groceries too. I don't know what you like to eat, but we can compromise and plan our meals accordingly."

  I nodded. "Sounds perfect, Grandma."

  Grandma clapped her hands together excitedly. "Oh, but before we go, let me show you your room. We can pick up anything you want for your room while we're out... You might need a bedding set, something more age appropriate for you."

  I smiled and nodded politely, letting Grandma eagerly lead me up the stairs to the second floor. There were three bedrooms and one bathroom. The first door to the left of the stairs was the bathroom. Directly beside it was my grandmother's bedroom. The bed was pristinely made with military corners and fluffy decorative pillows. The third door was her sewing room. I remembered my father telling me stories about how she ran her own dress shop and could have been a fantastic designer if she had tried. The last door at the end of a short hall was to be my room.

  Grandma pushed open the door. The room probably hadn't been used in decades, but it was perfectly neat and clean. This room had a double sized bed pushed up against the far wall, directly in front of the window. The bedding was a clean, crisp white. The pillows were fluffed and perfectly in place. The wall behind the bed was comprised entirely of built in book shelves. A few sewing books were housed there, but there was plenty of real-estate for my book collection, if I decided to start one up again. There was a rocking chair in the opposite corner, draped with a crochet blanket. A small wooden desk and chair occupied the other wall. I noticed at last that the walls were painted a pale, warm shade of green. The room was pretty.

  Grandma crossed the room and opened the closet, which was almost entirely empty with just a few dresses hanging from the bar, still in dry cleaning bags. On the back of the closet door there was a long, thin mirror. It wasn't nearly as big as my closet at home, but it would do.

  "I know it isn't much, it's nowhere near what you're used to at home..." Grandma said. "But it won't take long for me to clear my things out, and we can paint it or do whatever you want in here."

  I smiled. "It's perfect, Grandma. And green is one of my favorite colors." I crossed the room and hugged her tightly.

  Chapter 3:

  Starting Over

  I pulled my late grandfather's rusty Oldsmobile into the school parking lot first thing on Monday morning. I was early, but even so the school parking lot was buzzing. I half expected to see a lot more rusty trucks and rednecks standing around drinking moonshine in the school parking lot. But even that image didn't soothe my nerves. It seemed like my car was not the best looking vehicle in the parking lot. There were some sparkling, shiny sports vehicles that almost made me homesick for my old prep school in New York.

  But I loved my cherry-red boat of a vehicle. The red color hid any residual rust, which was starting to cancerously corrode parts of the car. My grandfather took excellent care of this car before he died, and it showed. The interior of the vehicle looked almost brand new. There wasn't a speck of dust or even a pebble in the floor mats.

  I loved the car the moment I saw it. The red reminded me of red lipstick on a vintage movie star. And it was the first tangible thing I ever owned that my parents hadn't provided for me. It was the only thing in the world that was truly mine. I loved absolutely everything about it.

  I chewed my lips anxiously as I found a parking space. I lifted my messenger bag from the passenger's seat and hit the lock button. I kept my head down as I crossed the parking lot, reminding myself that I didn't have to talk to anyone. I didn't have to even make friends. I was only here for a year until I could get my high school diploma and graduate. Then I could get out of here and be anyone I wanted and do anything that my heart desired. This was just a stepping stone to the rest of my life.

  I tried desperately to ignore the fact that my lips felt about ten times their normal size as I walked down the hall. The wind had been waging an assault on my unprotected lips since I'd arrived in town. It didn't help matters that I had been chewing nervously at them all morning.

  I opened the front doors to the school. Grandma and I had driven here, but we had been unable to go into the school. Now that I was here, I had no idea where I needed to go. And my first stop was supposed to be the office to pick up my class schedule and a map of the school.

  I awkwardly glanced left and right, looking for the office. I finally saw a sign for the guidance office, and started toward it. Once I was a little further down the hall, I found the office. I opened the door and stepped inside the warm, stuffy office. I leaned my arms on the bar-height desk and chewed my lips anxiously.

  "Hi sugar, can I help you?" The middle aged woman behind the counter drawled. Her accent was thick and distinctly southern.

  "Umm... I'm Emma Hatfield. It's my first day." I said awkwardly, brushing my curls out of my eyes.

  "Sure, let me just take a look here." She rummaged through the stack of papers on her desk.

  I pursed my lips and smoothed my dress over my hips. I had worn the same dress as I had arrived in Tulsa with. The same dress I'd worn to my father's funeral. It seemed appropriate. And in some ways, this felt like a funeral.

  "I have an Emmeline Hatfield." She held up a handful of papers.

  "That's me... But it's Emma." I insisted. "Please call me Emma."

  "Okay, well here's your locker number and your locker combination." She placed the first sheet of paper in front of me. "You're in the main hall. So if you go out this door, you can walk straight down this hall until you get to the seven hundred section." She said, pointing behind me.

  "Sure." I replied awkwardly.

  "And this is your schedule. You have English first. That's on the second floor. So once you go to your locker, keep going to the end of this hall, then walk up the flight of stairs. You can't miss it, its three doors down on the left."

  "Thank you." I replied. I wasn't entirely sure how much I'd understood. I hadn't really been listening.

  I took my papers and walked down the hall in the direction that the secretary had pointed. I counted the numbers on the front of the lockers found mine without difficulty. I miraculously managed to open it on the first try. I unzipped my messenger bag and neatly stacked the four binders I'd bought for school on the shelf inside. I picked out a plain black binder to be the one I used for my first class, and tucked it under my arm.

  I studied my map and my time table, trying to figure out where I was going. I needed to go upstairs to the second floor. Approximately halfway down the hall was my first class. It was English.

  In the time I had been examining my map and my class schedule, the hallways had begun to fill with students. There were students loitering and chatting, and milling about their lockers. I kept my head down and focused on my time table. I wanted to convey that I wasn't interested in conversation.

  I intentionally walked into class late, hoping I wouldn't be taking anyone else's seat. I hoped on the first day of classes, that the other students wouldn't have chosen their seats yet, but I knew that at my old school, some kids kept their seat from year to year depending on the classroom. I took the first seat available, sliding behind the desk without making eye contact with anyone else. Fortunately, I chose a seat near the window.

  I sat with my arms out straight on the empty desk, hoping that coming into a new school at the start of a new semester would keep me from standing out too much. The last thing I wanted to do was stand out. I didn't need anything else making this year worse for me.

  The sharp sound of the bell snapped me from my thoughts. Out of habit, I straightened, sitting rigidly in my seat with my arms still folded on the desk. I drew in a deep breath and prepared myself for a very different learning environment than I was used to.

  I was used to the often glamorous and exciting life of private education in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New Yor
k. My classes were filled with politician's kids and sometimes the occasional rock star offspring. The students at my old school drove fancy dark S.U.V.s and had only the nicest designer clothing, despite having to wear the school uniform.

  I knew this was going to be a very unenlightening experience. But here I could fade into the background just enough to get through one final year. Still, the differences surprised me. This school was on the four period semester system, where the other school I had attended was on six. They didn't even have homeroom here; it had been absorbed by the first class of the day. And not wearing my plaid school kilt and the sweater emblazoned with the school crest made me feel completely naked.

  I glanced at my schedule again, feeling slightly better about the fact that my first class was English. I liked English. I understood English. English was simple. And surely the curriculum here couldn't be any more difficult than what we had learned back in New York.

  I watched as a haggard and shabby looking woman came into the room and hastily dropped a second stack of dog-eared novels next to the first pile on her desk. I sat back casually; remembering that I was not wearing my usual school uniform to stiffen me into paying attention. I was desperately trying to look less nervous than I actually was. I chewed at my lips again.

  The teacher lifted her smudged glasses back onto the bridge of her long, angular nose and rummaged hastily through the papers in her bag. After searching frantically through these papers, she eventually found what was looking for and produced a crumpled page of paper. She attempted to smooth the creases from the paper on the front of her wrinkled faux-cashmere sweater.

  I watched in absolute confusion and disbelief. The teachers I was used to were well groomed and wore fancy suits. They carried expensive monogrammed leather briefcases. The women wore their hair back in tightly confined buns, and the men kept clean-shaven with neatly placed hair.

  My old teachers were the complete opposite of the woman standing before me. Her hair was loose, and hung around her face in thick sloppy waves that bowed out from her face in a triangle shape. Her bag was not leather, it was a faded yellow canvas. It had a button which advertised the Green Party and another that said 'Save the Whales'. Instead of a stuffy suit, she had on a pair of jeans and a baggy sweater. On her feet, she wore a pair of tattered flip-flops. She looked more like she belonged in a sixties documentary on Woodstock instead of teaching an English class.

  She examined her crumpled sheet of paper, and attempted to straighten it on the front of her sweater. Her glasses slipped down on her nose.

  "Okay," She spoke softly. "I guess attendance is the place to start..." She paused. "Oh! I almost forgot! Your syllabuses!"

  While she selected a member of the class to distribute a stack of papers, I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. How could an English Teacher not know that the plural form of syllabus was actually syllabi?

  I quickly came to the conclusion that this woman was clearly not very organized and probably not qualified to teach this class. I hoped this class would be an easy one. I didn't want or need the extra stress in my life.

  While the teacher painstakingly took attendance, I read over the first assignment. Or at least I tried to. I could only focus on the word 'partner' which thankfully came before the words 'chosen in alphabetical order'. I was relieved at this news. My goal for this semester was to pass my classes; not to make friends. And at least if someone was forced to be my partner, I wouldn't have to be nice to anyone. They wouldn't have a choice but to work with me.

  Someone would simply be forced to be partnered with me. At least I wouldn't have to bare the shame of being chosen last.

  I listened carefully for my name and quickly corrected her when she read my name as Emmeline Hatfield instead of Emma. I also simultaneously listened for the names before and after mine.

  I soon determined that for this assignment I was to be paired with either a girl named Taylor Green or a girl named Samantha Ian, who didn't appear to be present.

  I watched this teacher with fascination as she doled out the novels for us to read. I picked up my copy and flipped it over in my hands, with trepidation.

  It was a severely dated copy of Ernest Hemingway's 'The Sun Also Rises'. The copy with the watercolor sunset painted on the cover. I put the book down. I owned this book back home; I had read it many times. I didn't need to read it again.

  "Ah, Mr. Green!" The teacher spoke. "Glad you could finally grace us with your presence!" The note of sarcasm in her voice was not hidden well, and even the other students in the class noticed. They chuckled softy.

  I jerked my chin up to see the young man who sauntered casually into the room. I had been expecting Taylor Green to be a girl, but now I could clearly see that my rotten luck had struck again. His strides were wide and confident. He took a seat at the back of the class, never removing his aviator sunglasses. He slouched in his seat like he owned the classroom.

  I felt my spine straighten in defense.

  The features of his face were angular and handsome. I couldn't help but stare in his direction. He was wearing a pair of faded jeans with the left knee nearly torn out, and a blue checkered button down shirt, with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. The front of his shirt was unbuttoned and hung open at the neck. His sunglasses remained on despite the fact that there was no direct sunlight in the room.

  "I just know that you can't conduct class without me, Mrs. North." He replied, giving her a sly, cocky smirk.

  Two or three other males in the room snickered in response.

  I turned back to my desk, realizing that I was probably staring. Admittedly, he was very good looking. His blond hair framed his face in shaggy layers like a halo around his angular jaw; his lean body was flanked by taught sinewy muscles, which seemed to give him a cocky sureness that I knew couldn't be a good sign. I knew the fact that I had noticed him wasn't a good sign. I wasn't meant to develop crushes or friendships here. I was here simply to escape from the drama and the trouble of my life. And I knew just by the appearance of this man that he was trouble.

  Before long the teacher was back at the front of the classroom. She identified herself as Mrs. North at last, and gave a thorough explanation of the first assignment. I listened intently, taking short notes on my syllabus in black ink.

  "I've got the library booked for this class all week, so as soon as I tell you who your partner is, I'd like you to head down there."

  I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes tightly. I knew that with my rotten luck I would get stuck with the good looking blond boy. I knew that if my life were a horrible romance novel, I would end up with this boy, head over heels in love, and eventually we would ride off into the sunset and get married.

  But this wasn't fiction. I reminded myself. I didn't want love. Love always ends badly, and I didn't think I could handle another ounce of bad luck. I was supposed to be starting a new life. This was supposed to be my new beginning. This was my leave of absence from my old life back in New York.

  I remained there with my eyes closed tightly, silently begging the teacher to pair me with Samantha Ian and not Taylor Green. I didn't know who Samantha Ian was, but I knew she was less likely to get me into trouble than Taylor Green was.

  I nearly cried out in agony when Mrs. North informed me that I would be partnered with Taylor Green, and as the same select boys hooted in response; more for Taylor's benefit than mine I assumed, I rolled my eyes. Men could be childish; I knew that first-hand. Perhaps staying away from this boy was going to be easier than I thought. I chewed my lower lip.

  I stood up, grabbed my copy of the class novel and gathered my binder close to my chest. I hugged my books there tightly. I strode from the room with my chin an inch higher than usual. I could do this. It was easy. I just had to be the bigger person here and stick to my original plan. Just one more year here and I could take off. I could last a few more lonely months if it meant going off and living independently right after graduation.

  I chewed my lips anxi
ously as I followed the rest of the class toward the library.

  I knew that I could repel anyone if I put my mind to it. And if need be, I was prepared to be the biggest bitch humanly possible.

  Chapter 4:

  Funeral Dress

  To be honest, I had no idea where the library was. Instead of finding it for myself, or waiting to ask directions from the teacher, I followed a group of other students whom I recognized from the class. I stayed several feet behind so they wouldn't think I was following them and so they wouldn't stop to ask me any questions. I tried to make a mental note of my surroundings in case I ever needed to find the library again.

  The group ahead of me arrived at the library in mere minutes, and I realized that the school was much smaller than I had originally thought. My other schools had been entire city blocks, but this one was significantly more compact.

  The library was constructed on three levels. There was the main level which held the check-out counter, the photo copier and a handful of computers set up for students to use. I immediately recognized a reference section filled with encyclopaedias and dictionaries set off to one corner of the library. Along the far wall, there were several shallow rows of books, mostly fictional novels, and a sign indicating that there were more fiction books in the upper level.

  Walking a little further into the library, I could see that the main level was actually the second. There was a wide staircase which led to a small study area filled with tables and chairs for students to use for group work. I looked up to see that there was an entire open level above me which housed more books. I quickly realized that students from my class were filtering past me and heading down the stairs to the study area. This must have meant that was where I was supposed to go as well to work on our group project.

  I sucked in a deep breath and cascaded the staircase carefully. I took the steps slowly to hopefully avoid falling on my face in front of all of these other people. Clumsiness on my first day of school was not acceptable. And the last thing I needed was to attract unwanted attention and have everyone think of me as a clumsy oaf for the rest of my school year.