I slammed my hand on my alarm clock next to my bed. Like most of my age, I hated waking up to that loud, bleeping noise every morning. Some people had the nice alarm clocks that woke you up with the colors of the sunset and birds chirping, or even the radio! Nope. not mine, because life hated me, or I was being over dramatic, probably the second reason speaking truthfully. A tired groan escaped my mouth and I laid my head back down on my soft and welcoming pillow which was basically screaming 'Go back to sleep! The sun isn't even awake yet!'. Did school have to start so darn early? Wasn't anyone concerned about sleep deprived students wandering the halls of the school?! Apparently not or we wouldn't be having this issue.

I balanced up on my feet and stumbled to my dresser, still half asleep, on the other side of my bedroom. Lazily, I dug through the drawers and picked out a pair of jeans and a black sweatshirt. I quickly got changed and rushed to the bathroom to brush out my hair.

I rarely put my hair up on normal occasions. Unless it was really hot out and I would die otherwise or I had soccer or horse back riding, my hair was always down.

My stomach growled and I finished up to go eat breakfast. The sweet aroma of food cooking in the kitchen woke me up a bit more. I turned the corner and saw my mom at the stove cooking some pancakes. most days I didn't really eat breakfast unless I was starving or there was something good for breakfast, the weird thing was that I wouldn't really starve at school, so it was a time saver, I guess.

"Good morning mom," I yawned and sat at the island in the kitchen.

"Good morning dear, hungry?" My mom asked and turned to look at me.

"Starving," I replied with a yawn and stubbed my toe on the corner of the counter and my mom laughed.

A frown crossed my lips and was directed at her. She turned back to cooking and I looked out the window at the few cars that drove by. The sun was rising up over the houses across the street and the colors were beautiful. The fog clung to the little dips at the farm and some of the trees stood out like islands at sea.

One major life changing thing I had a problem with was that my seventh grade grade brother, Luke, got to sleep in until 6:30. 6:30! I had to wake up at 5:30 every weekday! Plus, us growing teenagers needed our rest. In 7th grade, you didn't have as much homework or responsibility as a kid my age would have! Sure, you still had a decent amount of work but not overkill like the stuff I got. It seems like no matter how old you got, the work ratio between you and the kids younger than you, by a year or more, always had less crap to take care of.

My mom slid a plate across the island with three pancakes on it and it landed right in front of me. The steam was rising off and hitting my face, it was warm and smelled so good!

"Thanks! These look delicious," I thanked her.

"No problem, eat quickly though, it's almost 6:30," My mom said and went to cleaning the dishes.

6:30 is usually when I would leave to walk to school. In theory, I could take the bus, but my parents said I was old enough to walk and that it wasn't worth paying for the bus. Even though Luke gets to take the bus. You know what!? I'm not even going down that rabbit hole.

I wolfed down my pancakes, not using the fork or knife given (I mean who eats pancakes with utensils anyways!?) and grabbed my backpack from the mud room. It was small room painted a tan brown with a dusty carpet that was filled with stains and dirt from people constantly coming in and out of the house year round, snow or sand, this carpet saw it all. We would eventually replace it with tile so it'd be easier to clean. I slung my back pack over my shoulders and opened the door.

"Have a good day at school!" My mom called from the kitchen.

"I'll try!" I replied before shutting the door and starting to walk down the side-walk.

I took in a deep breath of the fresh, cool air, exhaled slowly, and looked at the different houses as I walked down the road. There was a good variety, some were tall and huge while others were small and humble. The cars rushed by me. For some reason, all the drivers seemed to fly down my road, well, that reasoning could be used on any main road really. When you get old enough to drive, it seems like everyone else sucks at driving, even though, in reality, you are probably worse. I couldn't wait to start driving! If I didn't have something done, my mom would usually say 'if you don't do this I wont drive you to horse back riding', well OK then, i'll just drive myself then goodbye!

I walked for a while, sometimes taking out my phone and texting my friends or playing a few rounds of one of the video games on my phone.

I glanced up from my phone and saw the school a little bit more up ahead. Two kids rushed by on bikes and sped down the hill laughing and howling the whole way down. Freshmans. I never rode my bike to school, I was scared it would get stolen again like my bike back in 8th grade.

I strolled into the school and went straight to my locker, like every morning. My fingers fiddled with the old and rusted lock as I put the combination in. The dial turned and my locker popped open. A hand was placed on my shoulder (which sort of scared me half to death). I turned my head to see one of my best friends, Hallie smiling.

I had known Hallie since 1st grade and we were best friends ever since. We were in almost all the same classes since then, we trusted each other completely, which, in high school, is probably a good thing. She had long brown hair, like me, and stormy gray eyes. Unlike me who had deep brown eyes. Today, she was wearing some jeans and a maroon t-shirt with a silver heart necklace dangling around her neck.

"Hey hall!" I greeted and tossed my back pack in my locker, I wasn't the neatest person if you couldn't already tell, sure it looked messy but I knew where everything was, unlike my parents who complained they couldn't find anything.

They would need a good reason to come into my room.

"How you doing!?" Hallie smiled.

She already had her materials for first period cradled in her arms. Which we unfortunately didn't share first class. I had history, one of my favorite subjects, while she had biology. My hand reached into my locker as I grabbed my notebook, text book, and pencil case. I stacked them like a tower in my arms, careful so they wouldn't topple onto the ground and scatter like when you run at a flock of birds.

I heard the bell ring and students started to flood the halls, like a swarm of kids going in every direction.

"See you at second period!" Hallie yelled to me as I was swept away by the rush and mass of the crowd.

When walking to class, I would usually stick to the wall so I was not in the eye of the storm. People say the eye is the calmest, ha! It's the opposite of that here!

I was about to place my hand on the door handle when the door opened and I was shoved backwards onto the floor. My hands flew behind me to catch me as I landed and I had dropped my three materials necessary for this class and they were right by my feet.

"Oh my gosh are you OK!? I am so sorry," I heard someone say and the next thing I knew I was being pulled off the floor.

I recognized that voice. I looked up and saw Max Wells. Not Maxwell, but Max Wells, at first that's what everyone thought his name was but apparently not. I was one of those kids, me and about seventy percent of the grade. His eyes were showing signs of guilt as I got back onto my feet, which was a lot out of the ordinary.

"I am so sorry, I didn't see you there and-"

I put out my hand and interrupted him, mainly because I didn't want to hear him blabber on about it, " It's fine Max."

In all honesty, I couldn't have cared lass. Max shut his mouth and ran his hand through his dark brown hair. I smiled, waved, opened the door, and left him standing there. I'd probably have to talk to him in my next class, the only other class besides Spanish I didn't have with Hallie. Sad right? It was a cruel world.

As I sat down in class, the history teacher, Mr.Allen, had started his daily lecture. I would usually pay attention, but now, I had one thing on my mind, why would Max show that much concern? Sure, we had been in the same class a few times over the years and I had talked to him a few times, but we weren't the closest of friends. Should I be scared or just shrug it off as just him being nice, he has changed over the past year or so. Especially to me, offering me favors and helping me, it could get a little annoying. Some people would love to have that, but me, not so much.

I didn't want to overthink it so I started to doodle in my notebook, half-listening to Mr.Allen. I traced the outline of a circle lightly with my mechanical pencil and sighed quietly.

Today's lesson was about World War II, a topic I found interesting at first but once you had a lot of consecutive classes about the same thing, it starts to get a little boring. For those who don't know what it was, a little g war fought between basically the whole world, pretty self explanatory.

"Does anyone remember which Japanese city was hit with the atomic bomb?" Mr. Allen asked the class in his raspy yet strong voice.

I raised my hand with a bored expression pressed on my face.

Mr.Allen smiled and pointed to me, "Yes Katie."

"Hiroshima," I responded, the name had been drilled into my brain over the past week.

"Very good! Now let us continue," I internally sighed as Mr. Allen started the lesson again in his now bland voice.

I glanced at the clock, only one more minute, but then, i'd have to sit through math. Mental sigh.

At least in Math, if you sat in the back, you could play games or draw with the people around you while Mrs.West taught the lesson. If it was something new you would listen, if it was review, you zoned out. The teacher wouldn't even notice you! While history was my favorite subject, Math and Spanish were my favorite classes. Math you could do whatever and Spanish was fun.

"Have a nice day class," I heard our class get dismissed and I scooped up my books and walked to math.

Mr. Allen always let our class out early, this was great for me, I could get the best seats in Math which was a few classrooms away.

I dropped my books on one of the trapezoid shaped tables in the back of the math room and slumped down in my chair.

Usually I would sit with one of my other close child-hood friends, Casey, but this time, someone else sat in her spot. Me being me didn't really care so I didn't look right away to see who it was. I framed my neck and saw max put his books down.

"Can I sit here?" He asked with caution as if I was about to jump out of my seat and snap his neck in half.

"Sure," I shrugged and looked back at the chalkboard at the front of the room.

"I really am sorry about earlier," Max said in a softer voice.

I placed my hand on his shoulder and faced him, "As I said before Max, it's fine, accidents will happen. You just overreacted ."

He gave a soft laugh, "Ok."

I heard a squeal and saw Casey staring at us with a huge smile on her face. Oh no, I would never hear the end of this. I shot her a glance as she walked over and put her books down on the desk in front of us. She sat in her chair facing me, with her arms resting on the back of the chair and her head resting on her arm.

"So, I was wondering, if you, um, would like to meet up somewhere after school maybe?" Max asked and rubbed the back of his head with his hand.

What should I say?! I sit want to be mean and seem like a jerk and say no! Plus, max was alright, I'm sure it would be fine. After I convinced myself, I turned to him.

I smiled, not trying to, "I would love to."

Casey probably heard this because I saw her smirk when I turned to face the front of the class. Her dark brown, almost black, hair was behind her ears, resting on her back and her eyes were mischievous.

"Oh shut up," I teased her.

"I didn't say a word," Casey's smirk didn't for a second drop and she turned her head back forward.

Max gave a short laugh beside me and I lightly hit is shoulder with my elbow.

More students started to fill in the empty seats and Mrs.West walked in the class. Some of my fellow class mates gave me odd glances but I looked back and they quickly turned their head as if they were never looking.

Mrs.West was a good teacher, she wasn't ancient like Mrs.Snow and she wasn't an inexperienced younger teacher like Mr.Oliver. She was one of my favorites.

The class went by pretty quickly. I had talked quietly with Max and Casey most of the time. Only stopping when Mrs. West would occasionally look around the class to see which students had fallen asleep, or who was doing their homework ahead of time.

The rest of my classes went by pretty quickly and it was time for one of my favorite classes of the day, Spanish.

Spanish is an optional class, I chose to do it this year because it was one of the foreign languages classes. I took french in 8th grade and my freshman year then it got to boring and I am switching this year, that is what most people did. I mean, Spanish wasn't an option for any students in town until your sophomore year, at least in our school system. Some other schools switched french and Spanish around and you start Spanish in 6th grade! That is what my cousin said.

This was my 6th Spanish class of the year, it was only the first week of school.

"¡Hola señor West!" I greeted my Spanish teacher.

"¡Hola Katie! ¿Como estas?" Mr. West asked.

"Bueno, tú?" I replied as I sat down, I was the first in class, as usual, I took pride in being on time, which now that I think about it is a little weird.

"Múy bìen, gracias," Mr. West nodded and sat in is chair in front of the large white projector screen.

"De nada," I finished and sat down.

Mr. West was also a great teacher, like Mrs. West who was his wife. He made Spanish easier to learn for kids like me, and basically the rest of my grade who hadn't took Spanish class before. Also, most of the kids the kids in my grade were morons anyways. I know I shouldn't say that, but hey, the truth can be harsh.

Once the rest of the kids had filed in, the lesson started.

In today's class we learned likes and dislikes. For example, if you wanted to say 'I like ice cream', you would say me gusta helado. It wasn't that hard, but it was fun to learn.

It was finally time to go home. I stopped by my locker and grabbed my backpack. My phone, which was in my pocket, was now in my hands and I plugged in my headphones. The volume bar raised as I played bleeding out by imagine dragons. The lyrics and steady beat calmed me and all the stress from school slowly drifted away from my mind.

I started for home and let the music take over my mind as I left one world and entered a new one, with no rules, freedom, my own world. Here, I found serenity.

The breeze played with my hair and pulled it out of my face. I looked around my surroundings at the cars, houses, other people walking down the sidewalk, and my neighbor, a kind lady, who was watering her garden of roses and tulips.

The sight of my house was welcoming and I walked through the door. My bag landed on the small chair in the mudroom and I jogged up the stairs to my room. I let myself crash onto my bed and I looked at the ceiling. The light coming from my lamp was reflecting off the glossy stained desk next to my bed. The sound of Owl City blaring calmly in my ears.

I laid down and closed my eyes with relief. But, I couldn't sleep, not now. I had plans with Max in an hour. Could my life be any better?