Brown Girl

Change of Seasons.

Alisha took a deep breath in as she stared at the school in front of her. She was currently sitting inside her car, in the parking lot, waiting for all the students to be dispersed for their first period. 

She was nervous and exhausted. Last night was horrible. She couldn't get any sleep even though her bed had the softest mattress. Her father had already fitted a GPS in her car to be able to navigate throughout the town. Plus, her morning sucked because she couldn't get any caffeine in her system thanks to her over-bearing mother, nor could she eat anything due to her racking nerves. But at least her endeavour to avoid her next door neighbour succeeded.

The bell rang, pulling Alisha out of her thoughts, and all of a sudden the students dispersed. Alisha reluctantly got out of the car and tried to locate the main office.

"Hi, I'm Alisha Roy." She went up to the receptionist.

"Oh, you must be the new student! Principal Rimkus has asked me to give you your schedule. Here you go!" The receptionist handed her a slip which had her time table for the week. Alisha saw that she had Homeroom now.

"What's Homeroom?" She asked curiously.

"Excuse me? Oh, right! You're from India. Correct, correct." She murmured. "Well, Homeroom is really just a period where the teachers take attendance, make announcements and you get to mingle with your other batch mates. Your Homeroom number would be 109. I'll show you there." She offered and Alisha absorbed this information while following her.

They headed down the corridor to reach a room with 109 printed on its door. The receptionist led her inside and went to speak with the teacher for a moment while Alisha stood there awkwardly, trying to avoid the stares coming her way.

"Thank you." Alisha said to the receptionist as she was leaving.

"Well, class, settle down. Today we have a new student among us." The teacher, dressed in brown slacks and white shirt gestured to Alisha, "Please welcome Alisha Roy to our class."

The class just gave her blank stares and she stared back.

"Take a seat." He told Alisha and her eyes wandered to a seat in the top most corner which was the only seat left empty. She scurried quickly, dodging the murmurs, and took her seat.

"Hi, I'm Mira." A girl with long auburn hair tied back in a bun and wide green eyes, sitting beside her, introduced herself to Alisha.

"Hi. Alisha." She smiled.

"So, you nervous?" She asked.

"A bit." Alisha admitted.

"Don't be. Everyone at Orshore High is really welcoming. Apart from their staring and whispers, they're fine." She said sarcastically.

"Can I ask you something?" Alisha began, smiling. "Why is your town named Ortown?"

"Well, legend has it that years and years ago...," Mira began dramatically, leaning forward. "One day a group of tribals came to our town to suppress and dominate over us and the mayor that time, Mr.Zibenski, who's dead now of course, wanted the dominants to know that this was 'Our Town' and they couldn't snatch it away from us and so after a historic battle of five full hours between the citizens and tribals, the citizens won and the mayor renamed the town as 'our town' but to be original, it was named as 'Ortown'." She whispered and leaned back. "Tough s**t, ain't it?"

Alisha burst out laughing. "That is epic, but I am sure completely untrue."

"Ehhh....it's not true but no one really knows why Mr.Zibenski named it 'Ortown', so we make up shit." Mira smiled sheepishly. "Anyway, what do you have next?"

"Um, English Lit.?" She scanned her schedule.

"Ohhh!" Mira cheered, peeping at Alisha's schedule. "We both have English Lit., Economics and Physics together!"

"That's...nice." Alisha chuckled, a bit taken aback at all the clapping and cheering. Suddenly, she was reminded of her friend Maya, back in India. Maya was always the happy-go-lucky one. Never sad, always smiling and behaving like a kid with a squeaky voice.

The Homeroom period flew by as Mira explained to her the norms and cliques of the school. Interesting, Alisha thought. Her school didn't have cliques, or Homeroom period or anything like a grade system. She was going to take time to get used to this.

~

He was sitting right there, with a big fat smirk on his face. His legs up on the bench and hands behind his head, just looking at her curiously as she entered the Maths class. She rolled her eyes at all the whispers and bold stares coming her way.

She scanned the entire class and scowled when spotted an empty seat because it was the seat right beside him.

She passed a group of jocks sitting on the benches as she made her way towards him. They smirked at her and waggled their eyebrows.

"Wanna a tour of the town tonight, babe? I could be your own personal tour guide." The boy with the obnoxious muscles and blond hair (whose name was Brian something, Alex guessed) winked.

"Don't waste my time, punk." She growled and as he scowled she slumped on the chair beside him.

"Feisty." Alex commented.

"Annoying." She commented back.

He smiled. "I'm sorry about yesterday. I was a bit rude."

She rolled her eyes sarcastically. "You think?"

"Sarcastic." He commented slyly. And even when she tried so hard not to, her lips twitched a bit making him grin.

~

The bell rang, signalling the end of Alisha's Chemistry period. Their academic system was different from hers. It was way easier.

Mira kept asking Alisha weird questions about India like 'what was the cow population there?' 'do you worship cows everyday?' to which Alisha answered wondering where these questions were popping into her head, as they walked towards lunch.

They had to take their lunch in trays from the counter which Alisha found weird because back home they would all just sit on one table and have lunch. That's it.

As Mira squealed about her introducing Alisha to her group, they passed the same groups of jocks and Alisha noticed one of them had his hand out, as if he was going to slap her ass. She smirked devilishly.

And so before he could slap her ass, she caught his hand with ease and twisted it, making him scream in pain and slump his face on the table while she tightened her grip on his hand, twisting it harder.

She placed her tray on the table, never letting go of his hand.

"Don't even try, punk. Tere jaise kai tharkiyon ko theek kiya hain maine, (I've beaten up too many flirts like you), so chill." She threatened and took the bottle of soda beside him and drowned it over his face.

Before he could react, she left his hand, took her tray and turned to look at the whole cafeteria looking at the scene with wide eyes and open-mouths. Mira looked equally shocked. Alisha ignored it and pulled Mira with her and soon enough, everyone got back to talking about what had just happened.

Mira squealed and commended Alisha as she led her to her group of friends.

"Hey, guys." Mira said, drawing the attention of the four people sitting on the table. "This is Alisha."

Alisha raised a hand in acknowledgement and noticed that Alex was on the same table smirking at her. Oh, fun.

"Alisha this is.."Mira began the introductions.

"Joey." The boy with black hair and brown eyes looked and smiled slowly and seductively at her. 

"Colt." The boy with brown hair and blue eyes nodded.

"Christina." The girl with jet black hair and grey eyes nodded.

"And Alex."

"Yeah, we've met." Alex said with a grin.

They all had confused looks. "I am his neighbour." Alisha cleared it up.

"Oh, that's so nice!" Mira chirped as they took the empty seats.

"Attention seeker." Alex smirked as Alisha sat down beside him, referring to the scene before.

"Jerk." She acknowledged back making him give a half smile.

"I must say Alisha, that back there was gutsy. No one has done that to Ben ever." Colt commented.

"His name was Ben?" Alisha asked.

"Yeah, they're this group of jocks who play on the soccer team, with Ben and Brian as their leaders. A bunch of jerks, really." Mira informed.

Alisha nodded as she took in this information. She didn't care who they were. She's dealt with punks like them a lot.

"Where did you learn how to do that?" Joey asked.

"I have dealt with flirts like him before. It is a daily occurrence for us in India." She admitted.

"But that was so freakin' cool how you just like banged his head on the table and poured soda all over his head." Mira gushed.

"Yeah, I guess." Alisha murmured half-heartedly.

"Remind me to keep away from her." Joey said sarcastically as he hogged on his pizza.

"Don't worry, I'll do that everyday for you." Alex rolled his eyes.

"How do you like our town so far?" Mira interrupted.

"There's nothing to like here." Christina grimaced.

"Oh, c'mon, Chris. You love it here and you know it." Colt sang making Christina throw a chip at him whilst smiling.

"I haven't got a chance to see it, yet." Alisha admitted.

"Would you like us to show you around?" Mira chirped.

"No, I think what she would like for you to do is to shut up." Christina smirked.

"How about a date tonight, eh?" Joey winked at her.

"I thought you were keeping away from her?" Alex smirked.

"How do you resist a cracker like her?" Joey said.

"Joey! Do not objectify women." Christina scolded.

"Oh, and you can objectify men?" Colt shot back.

"We do not!" Mira protested.

"What about that day when you called me a man-w***e?" Joey shot back.

"That is not objectifying, Joe!" Christina rolled her eyes. "Also, she was just stating the fact. You are a man-whore."

"How about you get a piece of this man-w***e and see how good I am." Joey winked at Christina.

"Please, give your piece to someone else." She huffed.

Joey looked at Mira, Alisha and Alex who gave them their worse death glares that said 'don't even think about it'.

So he finally looked at Colt.

"Loverrrr." He sang and jumped on Colt across the table, spilling all the food in the process, straddling Colt.

"Joey!" Everyone groaned looking at food all around them.

"Get off of me, f**k-face." Colt growled and proceeded to try and miserably fail to get Joey off of him.

Alisha stared at all them with amusement.

"Don't worry, it gets worse." Alex chuckled to Alisha.

"I sure hope so." She comments with a smile.

She could get used to this.

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