“GA?”
“Yes, we call Greenfield Academy, GA, simply a shorter way to say it. You’ll be saying it soon, too.
“Okay, thanks for letting me know,” I say looking around at the other students for her friends. “I don’t want to keep you from catching up with your old friends.”
“The only friend I had at GA I moved away over the summer,” she says with a shrug. “I’ll show you where your classes are located. I remember what it was like to find your way around this place. I hope we have some of the same classes. Can I see your schedule?”
“Sure,” I say happy to have a new friend.
I pull it out of my backpack and hand it over to her. There was no time for me to get a tour of the school before the year started. So, I am grateful for the help. I was going to find my way around on my own without having to ask for anyone’s directions. I from New York City. If I can make my way around there I can surely find my way this place.
“What a pretty name, Aleta, Aleta Saunders,” she says smiling. “What does Aleta mean?”
My mother said she named me after a Greek goddess, Aleta. She remembers reading about her in school in a book. She says it means the spirit of truth.”
“So, you’ll always tell me the truth, huh?” she asks
“You got it,” I say pointing at her.
“Even when I’m having a bad hair day?”
“How could you with a bob like yours?” I ask
“It could happen, you never know,” she says with a giggle. “Say, ‘Katelyn, please go brush your hair’, okay.”
“Got it, Katelyn.”
“Yes, Katelyn McNeil, your new friend. Come on, let’s go find all of your classes.”
She shows me where all of my classes are located. We even have two of the same classes, included our first block, so I am happy about that. I hope we can sit together.
My senior year won’t be so bad if I have to spend it here with my new friend, Katelyn.
We make our way back to where our first class is located as the morning bell rings out. The wide hallway becomes filled with more upperclassmen talking and laughing among each other. These rich kids don’t seem so bad to me now that I have a friend among them. Maybe, my grandmother was right, I can make my mark here.
The hallway chatter dies down as five boys enter the crowd from a doorway. Everyone stands off to the sides of the hallway as if making a new hallway for their group to walk inside that belongs to only them.
They are all tall, good looking young guys, that looked they stepped off the pages of a Calvin Klein ad.
Katelyn grabs my arm and pulls me back to the wall with her. I turn and look at her with an incredulous stare, but she doesn’t see me, she’s looking at this group of handsome boys.
Okay, I understand they are nice to look at but do we all have to stop what we’re doing and give them our full attention.
“Do you like them?” I whisper to her.
“Like them?” she asks returning the whisper. “You do not like them, you avoid them if you can at all costs and hope they like you enough to ignore you.”
“They can ignore me, that is fine with me,” I whisper back.
I am not looking to be well known by everyone in this place. I never needed a lot of attention or a lot of friends in my life.
I try to pull away from the wall to keep walking to our class, but Katelyn yanks me back.
“What are you doing?” I ask her in a louder voice.
“No, hold on, let them go by first,” she pleads with me.
“Stop, girl,” I giggle. “Who are they some kind of royalty or celebrities?”
“The tallest one is Lowell Bartlett and his friends. You follow their rules or else you are going to pay. I didn’t have time to tell you about them,” she whispers.
I turn my gaze back towards them to study this little group. They are the best looking group of boys I think I have ever seen in my short life. It seems as if they are strolling in slow motion with the hushed tones of the other students as their runway music. They look good and they know it.
The tallest guy leads them our way laughing as he turns his head in my direction. I think my eyes are going to stop blinking when his eyes meet mine. I have never seen such deep electric blue eyes as his. They don’t look real. They look like they were made by hand to fit perfectly in his beautiful face. H
His white polo reveals a tanned chest and I can see the outline of a chiseled chest underneath as the shirt struggles to hold in his pecks. His hair is darker than mine with touseled waves on top and buzzed sides. His features are rugged with a slight bit of unshaven stubble on his chin giving him a harder edge than these other clean shaven guys.
We continue to stare at each other and I feel like my head may start spinning at any moment. He slows down his pace to a standstill a few yards from me. His laughing stops, but he keeps smiling.
Is he smiling at me?
“Oh no, Aleta,” whispers Katelyn. “Let’s try to get to class.”
She grabs my wrist and pulls me behind other students to inch our way down the long hallway.
“I thought we had to wait for them to go in front of us,” I whisper back to her.
“You don’t want Lowell Bartlett looking at you like that,” she says.
“Why not?”
“They don’t call him ‘Low’ for nothing and you don’t want to find out how low he can go. He is a Bartlett and they are part of the family of industries that run this
