Malia's Might

Chapter 1: Fated meetings.

                So all the stories say that the world is filled with whirl wind romances and fairy tale endings, it’s not.  I don’t want to sound like a jaded person who doesn’t believe in love, I really do believe.  I just haven’t fallen for the whole love at first sight and then the birds will sing a melody kind of thing.  I feel like it just isn’t that simple, and maybe it’s just me, but I feel that the world is really something quite different.  The world is more like an endless blooper real filled with snippets of happiness and people bumbling about trying to right their selves after life slaps them down.  I don’t want to get brutal, I just want to keep my eyes on the reality of the situation, and try to avoid the biggest smack downs out there if you know what I mean.  Life can be a heck of a slugger if you aren’t ready to dodge some major curve balls.  At least that is how it has been in my experience, but I guess I should probably explain why I feel that way.  I wouldn’t want you to think I was some jaded heartbroken dream killer now.

                Before I try to explain why I feel the way I do about love let me introduce myself.  My name is Malia.  I have lived most of my life in the same town that is up until my senior year when we had to move for my dad’s job.  I know moving your senior year is normally a big deal but for me that little relocation caused a whole lot of commotion in my life, I’m talking huge!  Until then I was just the average high school student.  I did my schoolwork, participated in sports, got good grades and was basically a good kid.  I tried to stay out of trouble, being that I had a little sister who was your usual trend setter and part of the “it” crowd I just tried to stay out of her way.  I am by no means cut from the same cloth.  For starters she is blonde, courtesy of my stepmother and her regal wasp nation features, and I am so not.   My raven locks only accentuate my even paler skin and green eyes.  She is captain of the volleyball team and a member of the student council while I am your average girl or at least I thought I was.  Wait, I am getting too far ahead of myself, before I tell you about myself as I am now I really need to tell you about everything that brought me here.  In short, I need to tell you about back then.  Get your seat belts on because this is going to be one heck of a ride.

                Like I said, it was senior year, and I was officially the new girl.  I was starting over in a new town, new school and I had no friends for back-up.  Gosh just telling it now makes the goose bumps and dread come rushing back all over again.  I digress, let me try to start this over again, public speaking was never my strong suit.  Heck, other than math I never even knew I had a strong suit till everything changed.

                So it was a Monday and my first day.  I was looking frantically at this scrap of paper that was supposed to give me directions to my classes and locker but it all just looked like hieroglyphics to me.  I was beyond lost, I am serious, I think I ended up making the same wrong turn into the bathroom instead of the classroom three times before I had resigned myself to the fact that I was going to have to either plop a squat right there in the hallway wasting away until someone took pity on me and helped me find my way to the lunchroom for my lunch period, or suck it up and trudge back through the chaos of the hallway rush to the office and plead mercy to the stern old bat that was behind the counter.

                I was seriously thinking wasting away might be my better option.  If looks could kill that woman would have roasted me three times over again just for having asked her to explain this damn pictograph I was looking at now.  She literally looked at me like I was the worst thing to have crossed her path when I asked her to explain the little placard, and then in the same seething monotone she had given me the first time gave me the exact same directions again.  Because if you haven’t figured it out apparently getting the same nonsense repeated to you over again makes it no longer nonsense.  Gosh I can feel the headache already.  Maybe I could get dad to agree to online education, yeah right like the step monster would let that happen.  I could hear the screeching already, joy.

                I was in the middle of wallowing in my own self-pity and hunger when I noticed that two black boots were now firmly planted in my field of view, and they weren’t moving away.  I craned my head to look up at the figure in front of me, straining against the florescent assault of the overhead lighting, to see a boy about my age staring back.  He was looking at me as if he was expecting something and I was trying to wrack my brain to see if he had been speaking to me while I was in my own head.  Nope, no recognition there just more wallowing so I just stared back at him waiting for him to speak or do something other than stare.  Cue the awkward silence and three, two, one.

                Finally, he cleared his throat and I was prepared for him to ask me if I needed help.  “You are sitting in front of my locker.”  That was all he said as he pointed with one finger of the hand that was holding his backpack strap over his shoulder.  I looked in the direction he pointed to see that I was in fact leaning not up against a wall as I had thought, but right smack dab against the last locker in this row.  Great, the only person who has even said two words to me today and it is just to get me to move out of the way.  Really making a mark there Malia, way to go!

                “S..Sorry, I’ll just get out of your way now.”  I slid my body down the wall and off of his locker as he opened the door and began to put his stuff away and grab other stuff out.  I was thinking that he was just going to go on with the silence when he spoke to me.

                “You lost or something?”  He closed the locker and was looking at me as if he was trying to figure out why I was there.

                “Yeah actually, I can’t figure out this darn map thingy and I am supposed to be heading to lunch and then to Senior English, where ever that is.”  I waved the little useless plastic covered map in the air with my frustration and then turned back to the boy again.

                He had a small smirk on his face as if he didn’t smile often.  “Well, the lunchroom is down the hall that way and on the right.”  He pointed back down the hall behind me.

                I felt my frustration rise a little bit since I had already gone that way three times at least with no luck.  At this point I might as well send up an emergency flare, it was pointless.  Almost as if reading my face he cleared his throat to get my attention.  “If you want you can just follow me, I have lunch now and then Senior English after.”

                “Really, that would be great.  Thanks.”  I thanked him as he shrugged like it was no big deal.  When I had made it back to my feet I wiped the floor grime from my hand on my jeans and then extended my hand out to him.  “My name’s Malia by the way, nice to meet you.”

                He just stared at my hand before shrugging his shoulders again.  “Name’s Mason, it’s this way.”  Then he turned and headed down the hallway, people moving out of his way as he walked with what seemed like determined strides.  I raced behind him to catch up and not get lost again.

                I was thinking that my first day in a new school, and being my senior year, was going to be awful.  Now though, I had already met one person and was getting lead to the lunch room and then to my next class.  Things were finally starting to look up.  If only I had known that meeting Mason would change everything about my life, and everything about me.  I wonder if I had known what would happen, would I have just stayed sitting on that floor or would I still have let him lead me.  It is a question I still can’t answer, but I definitely know that staying on that floor would have been less painful.