stuck in a moment [evelyn]

[mikayla leigh james]

Kayla reapplied her lipgloss as she headed towards her next lesson, the highly anticipated ICT. She wrinkled her nose up at the thought. It wasn’t the worst lesson Kayla supposed, it all just seemed a little pointless. These were kids who had been brought up in the computer generation being taught things they already knew by an old teacher who seemed to need more help with technology than they did. Still, this did mean that he tended to leave them to it and the class would just chat with each other whilst fiddling around on the internet. Mr Stone had grown tired of trying to remove people from facebook and just now tended to turn a blind eye, leaving the class to teach themselves from the instructions on the board and generally keep each other amused for the duration of the hour.

Having seemingly walked too slowly, Kayla arrived at the lesson after most of the class were already settling down into their seats. She looked around from her position in the doorway at the spare seats, weighing up her options. There was one seat at the end of the row of jocks, which would probably mean sitting through relentless boyish banter and tedious suggestive jokes. Or there was a seat next to one of the chavvy girls, which would most likely result in a good few dirty looks in Kayla’s direction from a girl who was almost terracotta coloured and wore heavy eye makeup and even heavier earrings. Neither of these seemed ideal, Kayla thought, eventually eyeing a seat next to a blonde girl she didn’t really know. She recognised the girl was fairly new and could remember seeing her in a few lessons before but she’d never spoken to her or really even acknowledged her name. Kayla headed over regardless. She may not know the girl, but she certainly seemed a lot less threatening than the other two options.

”Hi, is anyone sitting here?” Kayla asked politely as she made her way over, gesturing to the empty chair. It didn’t look like anybody was but sitting down in someone’s seat and being asked to move was a situation which Kayla would find highly embarrassing, and so she was keen to avoid it. She smiled, desperately trying to wrack her brains for this girl’s name but failing.

[evelyn]

if there was anything evelyn dreaded, it was math or technology classes. ever since she was a little girl, evelyn had failed in the world of anything biology, chemistry, and computer classes. evelyn knew how to work a computer, but she hated things having to be done a certain way. sometimes evelyn did horrible in a class because she was just blunt at following directions. it also didn't help that evelyn was comng from a performing arts school in london, to a normal school in america. from the moment she arrived, people wanted to know about her. she wasn't sure if it was because she was new, or where she came from. it was a big step for evelyn to move from london, a well known city, to a small town. however, in some ways she really liked it here. most of the people she met where nice, though there were some snobby ones, but there were people like that in every town.

evelyn made her way into the room, a bit early. she sat down at a computer, and turned it on, setting her bag down on the floor beside her. it was just the beginning of the school day, yet evelyn was already ready to go home. there was so much stuff that she needed to get done. there was still packing left to do, and there was a huge homework assignment due tomorrow that she barely started. leave it up to evelyn to be a procrastinator. she had been spending her days writing songs and getting to know people here. evelyn looked up at the teacher who was sitting there drinking coffee. from what she observed, he was an older man who just didn't care anymore. his students did what they wanted, and he had to get used to that.

after watching loads of people pile in, evelyn looked around, noticing that no one was beside her yet. she wasn't sure if this was a good, or bad thing. after getting onto her email to see if she had any messages from her mom, she saw a girl walk into the room, considering her options on where to sit. the girl made her way over to evelyn, asking her if the seat beside her was available. evelyn nodded slightly, "the seat is all yours," her thick english accent rolling off of her tongue. "i'm evelyn."

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[mikayla leigh james]

“Oh wow” Kayla said a little bit dimly, a look of impressed surprise on her face “You’re English?”. It was hardly the most intellectual of conversation starters, but at least it broke the ice. Kayla was surprised she hadn’t known about the new English girl sooner. Lipton was a fairly diverse town but there was hardly an abundance of Brits roaming about and the hype from the Americans about anybody from England would normally have got the news of a new arrival around sooner.

Kayla sat down on the empty chair next to Evelyn and placed her bag on the floor, turning to the girl and smiling. “It’s nice to meet you Evelyn” she replied genuinely in her soft and polite voice, looking at her for a few moments and wondering how she hadn’t acknowledged Evelyn’s presence around school before. “I’m Kayla” It wasn’t technically her name but only very rarely did anyone actually call her by her full name. ‘Mikayla’ seemed to be saved for use by her parents or during serious or emotional conversations. She didn’t particularly dislike the name, just found that people generally shortened it out of convenience. She was so used to being Kayla now that adding on the extra syllable almost sounded a little strange.

”I haven’t seen you around much before” Kayla admitted as she switched on her computer and began to sort out her desk, leaning down and pulling the essentials of phone and lipgloss from her bag and placing them next to her in a neat arrangement. ”How long have you been here?” Kayla turned back towards the girl whilst her desktop loaded, curious about this new face who had arrived from so far away. Having lived here her whole life, Kayla was never quite sure what attracted people to Lipton. It was a small place with really no distinguishing features to set it apart from any other American town and yet people would still move from out of state or even, like Evelyn, from abroad to live here. If she’d had the choice of anywhere to live in the US, Kayla doubted her first choice would have been Lipton, but she guessed everybody must have their reasons for setting up their new lives here.

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[evelyn]

evelyn chuckled a small laugh when the girl asked if she was english. "yeah, i just moved here a few weeks ago." she smiled to the girl. evelyn was quite glad that the girl began talking, because frankly evelyn could not start conversations with people she didn't know too well. she watched as the teacher coughed a bit in his seat, peering out at the kids he was supposed to be teaching. evelyn wondered if they'd ever do anything in the class. mostly evelyn worked on homework.

"nice to meet you too, kayla. most of my friends call me evie, but you can call me whatever you'd like." the nickname had began when she was about twelve, when it was cool to have a nickname in middle school. after all of her friends began to have a nickname, evelyn wanted one as well, so she started having her friends call her evie, and it just stuck. now evelyn didn't really care what people called her, unless it was a rude and profuse name. her parents called her by evelyn most of the time. evelyn looked at her computer, and typed in facebook in the url. when she was here she worked on homework, or she talked to her friends back in england. facebook made it easy for her to keep touch with them all, it was much easier than email, and it cost way too much to call them.

evelyn looked over at the girl when she pulled things out of her big bag. "about three weeks, not too long," she smiled. a lot of people had asked evelyn why she had moved to a small town, instead of london, but she guessed she just wanted to relax from it all for awhile. and her aunt lived in america, which evelyn had always wanted to go to, so this was the perfect opportunity. and ever since evelyn had been here, she really liked it. people actually noticed her here, in london there were always tourists and people around, it was so crowded. there was no time for her to socialize. "it's nice and small here."

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[mikayla leigh james]

”That’s awesome” Kayla smiled, genuinely pleased for a new and friendly face around school. There seemed far too many bitchy girls and bullies here sometimes that it was good to add some positive energy into school life. Kayla was never really quite sure where she fitted into life at Lipton High. There was the sporty girls, the popular girls, the geeky girls and the emo girls but Kayla didn’t particularly identify with any of them. She guessed she was probably a ‘girly girl’ if anything, but that identity didn’t exactly place her into a specific social group. Kayla studied Evelyn for a few moments, trying to work out where about she fitted in socially, deciding that the girl was probably similar to her, floating outside of a set label.

Acknowledging Evie’s words, Kayla gave a little nod. It was predictable that she would have some sort of given nickname, people seemed incapable of regularly using a name with more than two syllables for their friends after all. She smiled as she watched Evie reach the facebook homepage, the most visited site in ICT lessons. ”Yeah, I guess it is” Kayla pondered in reply to Evelyn’s opinion of the town. ”A bit too small sometimes though” she added, thinking about the general awkwardness surrounding small towns and the fact that people tended to end up with intertwined and complicated relationships, all dependant on one another.

As if on cue at the thought of complicated relationships, Kayla’s phone suddenly lit up and Teddy’s name flashed up brightly on the screen. Kayla reached for the phone automatically, holding it in her hand for a few seconds before doing something quite unlike her. Why was she always so desperate to reply to his texts and answer his calls? She felt like the whole time she was running around after him, desperately hoping to please him to make him love and appreciate her. Kayla put the phone down, letting his name slowly fade away as it reverted back to the black screensaver. “Sorry” Kayla said more absentmindedly to Evelyn, her mind now very much focused on other things. Teddy had such a hold on her it was scary. She loved him so much and yet he seemed to share none of her feelings. Right there was the issue in open and casual relationships, when one party wants something different to the other. ”I’m sorry” she repeated, pushing her phone away from her a little and turning to Evelyn, trying to pick up conversation from where she left it and coming to a bit of a blank, instead shooting her an apologetic look.

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