Practice Flipbook

​Laughter/Giggling*

“I know, right?”

“And when he dodged the ball, another one hit right smack on his forehead.”

“He wasn’t even hurt, all he said was, ‘Hey, that’s foul play!’”

Those are my friends, Scarlett and Violet. I had just moved and attended this all year round
school. Just in case you didn’t know, an all year round school is a school that goes all year
round, you know, exactly what the name means. I know, you’re all thinking, ‘How can you
go to school all year long! Wouldn’t you just die from boredom?’ Well guess what, we have,
like, a month off after every semester, I think. Whatever. Where was I? Oh yeah! Anyway,
my friends here were talking about my classmate, Gray. His real name is Grayson, but he
doesn’t like that name so he shortened it to Gray. Seriously, he hates that name, if you even
start saying it, he will run to you, from where ever he is, and say, ‘Hey, I thought I heard my
name.’ with this murderous aura. IT IS SPINE-CHILLING. This is scary because he is a
cheerful and positive person, you know, unless you say his real name. So word of advice,
don’t EVER say his real name, EVER. He will warn you the first time if you say it, but you
won’t be safe for the second time. Now that I have explained all this to you, you probably
know what we were talking about. If you don’t, then you are so slow. Basically, we were in
PE playing Dodgeball and someone hit him in the head when he was dodging the other ball.
Then he said, ‘Hey, that’s foul play,’ blah blah blah. You know, the usual.

“Hey you haven't said anything in awhile, are you okay?”

This is my friend, Violet.

“Yeah, what's up with you? Usually, you wouldn’t last 5 seconds without talking.”

That is my other friend, Scarlett.

“Hey~ girls, what’cha doin’?”

And there is Gray.

“Hey~ Gra-” I was about to say Grayson until...
“Yeah~?” Gray was saying with this spine-chilling, murderous aura.
“I-i-it’s nothing.” No matter how many times I see this, it still scares me.
“Oh, did you see the new kid?” Gray asked.
“The one with the black hair, blue eyes, and tall? Uh, Yeah! He is so cool,” Violet said
dreamily.
“I didn’t even know we have a new kid in school. He is in this grade, right?” I asked.
“Yep. I think he comes from a rich family or something.” Scarlett stated.
“Oh~. No wonder. This morning, I saw him get out of this really fancy car and he had
bodyguards to escort him to school,” Gray responded.
“Wait a minute. How did I not know about that?” I complained.
“That’s because you were late. Remember, you made it just before the clock struck 8.”
Scarlett reminded me.
“Oh, right. I totally forgot. That aside, what is this new rich kid’s name anyway?” I
questioned.
“I think his name is Adrien,” Gray started to say, but he got cut off by the homeroom
teacher.
“Attention class. Today we have a new student. Introduce yourself.”
“My name is Adrien,” Adrien said plainly.

Chapter 2
Chatter, Chatter

“He is so cool,” one girl said.
“And tall,” said the other.
“Wow, he’s a lot more good-looking than I expected.” Scarlett stated.
“He is? Isn’t he average? I mean, I’m better looking, right?” Gray complained.
“Well…” Scarlett, Violet, and I said.

Chatter, Chatter
“Quiet down class. Adrien, you sit in the back corner next to the window,” said the teacher.
“He sits right next to you, Charlotte.. I’m so jealous,” Violet said jealously.
“He also sits behind me. I wonder what kind of person he is.” Gray stated.
“Well, he looks like a loner and anti-social,” Scarlett observed.
“I’m gonna talk to him.” Gray said while getting up and walking towards Adrien.
“Wait, I’m going too~!” She said, jogging up to Gray.
“If you’re going then I’m going too,” Scarlett informed.
“I’m just gonna go back to my seat,” I said.
“Hello”, Gray exclaimed, about to introduce himself, “I’m Gray. Welcome to East
Pennsboro!”
Adrien looked up from the book he was reading. “Hello”, he responded plainly. He stared at
the girls behind him. Gray notices his quizzical look, he started introducing them too. “Oh,
the girls behind me are Scarlett and -”
“Hi, I’m Violet. How are you doing? Do you like this school?” Violet said, bombarding the
new kid with questions.
“Violet,” Scarlett started, “You are talking too much.” I stared at the book he was reading. It

was the ‘The Missing’ series, the series I’m currently reading.

“Um,” I started, Ding dong~.

However, I was interrupted by the bell. Adrien got up and left to go to his first class. Fast
and efficiently. Not doing anything unnecessary. Wow, he’s fast. Throughout the day, I saw
him in most of my classes. Because our seats were arranged alphabetically, I sat next to him
in all of those classes. We didn’t speak to each other. Not one word. Girls were gawking at
him, guys wanted to be him. He was so cool, but he was always alone. To be honest, he was
like the North Star. He was alone, but alone he shined brightly. People tried to talk to him,
but he only greeted them with a plain hello. It had been like that for about two weeks. And
for those two weeks, I realized that we lived near each other! But he always had his head
down reading a book. He seemed a little gloomy? But whenever he looked up, he would
look like the cool new kid that appeared in front of the school on the first day. This caused
most of the girls to look forward to seeing his face in those rare times when he actually
looked up. To be honest, they were kind of like stalkers. He was also very quiet and kept to
himself.

However, today we have gym class and we are supposed to find a partner to compete in the
volleyball tournament we have at the beginning of every semester. I know, usually for a
school competition, you have like what, 9-12 people for each team? Well, in this school, we
do 2 vs 2 competitions. It usually took a few classes to finish the tournament. I love
volleyball so I always try to find a tall and coordinated person to team with. However, all of
my go-to partners are already taken. In the end, Adrien turns out to be my volleyball
partner because we were the only two left without one.

Chapter 3

“Hey Adrien. Guess we’re teammates.” I awkwardly greeted.

“Yeah.” he plainly responded. It was so awkward. Everyone else is talking to each other and
we are just silently sitting next to each other.

“Okay guys and girls. Let’s start with some warm-up exercise before we begin the
tournament,” the gym teacher instructed. Okay, for warm-up exercises we go on opposite
sides of the net and one person practice the receives, which are bumps and sets, while the
other person practices the different type of serves. You know, the two birds and one stone
kind of thing. And the gym teacher let’s up practice our spikes if we feel up to it. Warm-ups

are around 5 minutes. After warm-ups were over, the gym teacher yelled, “Listen up, I will
assign you your opposing team. The winners will get the trophy.” Okay, the trophy is just,
you know, a plain trophy. You get to keep it for the semester. Back to the game, our
opponents were, coincidentally, Violet and Scarlett.

While we were walking to the net, I asked, “Do you want to cover the back or the front.” He
shrugged. “Okay, then I’ll cover the back and you the front of the court.”

“Yeah,” he said plainly.

Tweet, tweet

The whistle blew signaling the start of the game. Scarlett was serving the ball. It was an
underhanded serve. With that, I scooted to the edge of the court. I play volleyball against
her all the time. Whenever she does that, the volleyball will reach to the edge of the court,
but it would still be in. I lost to that, a bunch of times. However, this time was different. I
was ready to receive the ball when BAM. The ball hit the court in one swift motion. A
shadow fell down, landing quietly.

Chapter 4

Tweet, tweet

“Point one for Adrien’s team,” the coach announced. An uproar of chattering and
whispering has started. It took me a few second to take in what had happened.

Guy #1: Did you see that? He was moving so fast!

Guy #2: And he’s got the advantage on height.

Girl #1: If this keeps up, Scarlett will lose for sure.

Chatter, Chatter

Not long after, we won 2 out of 3 games with 20 to 12 in the 1st one and 18 to 10 in the 2nd
one.

Chatter, Chatter

After the game was over, so was the class. I walked up to him impressed by his
performance. “Hey, you were awesome out there. We’re totally going to win this
tournament!”

Silence

He didn’t respond. “Hey, are you listening?” He nodded. Me, being frustrated over why he
would ignore me, I sort of scolded him? “Hey, you should look at the person talking to you.”
But I think I upset him because he just ditched me and walked ahead to the guy’s locker
room. I shouldn’t have yelled at him.

Chapter 5

I felt bad, so I waited at his locker to apologize. When he saw me there, he just
looked at me and ignored me. “Hey, I’m sorry about what I said earlier,” I tried to say, “as
compensation, I can treat you to ice cream.”

“Ice cream…” he muttered.

“Huh?”

“I could go for ice cream,” he said, finally with some emotion.

“Okay,” I said a little shocked, “we just have to stop by the convenience store.”

He nodded. We walked to the store with an awkward tension. When we reached the store, I
asked, “What kind of ice cream would you like?”

“Anything in fine,” he replied. I grabbed two small cups of chocolate ice cream and quickly
paid. As I walked out, I gave him the ice cream and questioned, “What’s your deal?”

“Excuse me?” he responded a little offended.

“I mean, you don’t talk much and you always have your head down like you’re sad or
something. But you also neglect others and you have no reason to be alone when you are
athletic, smart, and have a fair appearance.”

“But I’m rich and that just destroyed all of the good things I have.”

“How so?” I asked with the most confused look on my face.

“The previous ‘friends’ I made were all after my family’s money instead of being actual
friends with me. After I found out my friends were using me, I ditched them. But they kept
coming back and threatening me to give them money and ‘borrow’ thing when I know they
would return them. And all of my previous girlfriends were after my status and money.
They weren’t even looking at me. So in the end, I moved here and decided not to make any
friends because I know that they will betray me.”

“Why didn’t you just pretend not to be rich?”

“My last name would just give it away. Plus, I have to ride a fancy car to school everyday
with bodyguards with me. I don’t think I can pretend not to be rich.”

“Then why are you here with me now? I could be a terrible person and trick you into
buying me things instead of the other way around.”

“But you didn’t. You were the one of very few that would scold me like that in front of
everyone. To be honest, I was shocked. No one had done something like that in years. Plus,
if you did make me pay, I would quit the tournament and we will automatically be
disqualified. It is one thing to lose a game, but it is another to lose the tournament.”

“Well played. Wait, we are walking home together, joking around with each other, and I
bought you ice cream. Doesn’t this mean that you made an actual friend?”

“What are you talking about?” he scoffed.

“Well I do this with my friends so you are technically my friend right now.”

“Seriously? I’ve never thought it would be this easy.”

“Depends on the people. You should join our little group.”

“Group?”

“The people who greeted you on the first day of school and bombarded you with millions of
questions.” I said.

“Oh yeah, those people. That’s an odd combination of people.”

“Well yeah. Scarlett is like the genius of the group, Violet is the flirty one, Gray is the scary
one.” I said with a question mark when saying Grays aspect of the group.

“Scary, I don’t know, he seems like a nice and cheerful guy.”
“Yeah, but when you say his full first name, he will have this murderous aura.”

“Okay, what’s his first name then?”

“I see what you’re doing. I’m not falling for that.”

“Ah, and I was found out so quickly,” he sighed.

“Whatever, but he will show up in like 5 seconds.”

“Wha-?”

“His actual name is Grays-”

“Hey~ Charlotte,” Gray said, standing behind us with the murderous, spine-chilling aura.
“Oh, looks like Adrien’s with you. On a date perhaps?”

“No, we are not,” I sternly said, “I was just treating him to ice cream because I said
something terribly rude.”

“Right~,” he said not convinced. “Adrien, you might have forgotten already, but my name
is-”

“Gray. You were the cheerful guy who introduced me to Scarlett and Violet,” Adrien
acknowledged.

“So you remember. Scarlett and Violet are down the road. Let’s study together!”

“Study?” Adrien and I exclaimed at the same time.

Gray seemed astonished, but explained, “Yeah, we’re studying for the very important
beginning of the school exam, we have every year.”

“Right, that. I forgot about that. But seriously, we have to study?”

“Yeah. Scarlett and Violet are buying snacks right now at the convenience store.”

“Snacks! You should have said so earlier,” I exclaimed in excitement.

“Glad you’re excited about studying. We are studying in you house.”
“‘Kay. Wait, what? You were planning to study at my house before you asked.”

“I was going to tell you when we got there,” Gray protested.

Pfft, ahahahah!

Adrien laughed. This was the first time I saw him laugh. Well, the first time anyone saw him
laugh so happily.

“What are you laughing about?” Gray asked bewildered.

“It’s nothing,” Adrien said, getting himself together.

“Weird,” Gray stated, “Whatever, let’s go.”

“Where?” Adrien questioned.

“The convenience store, of course. Knowing Scarlett and Violet, they’re probably buying
everything in the store,” Gray exaggerated.

“You’re right. We have to stop them!” I panicked, “Come on, let’s go Adrien!”

As we were close to the convenience store, we saw the two Shopaholics with 4 big bags of
snacks. “Dang it. We were too late!”

“Hey~!” Violet greeted, “Help us carry this.”

“Okay, okay.” Gray said tiredly.

“Oh, hey Adrien!” Violet said, dropping her bags, “What a surprise! Are you going to study
with us?”

“Sure.” He said, finally smiling