Infinite (Strange and Beautiful, Book 1)

by Brittney Musick

  Luckily, my best friend, Tegan, will be there with me. She’s one the few people that, despite knowing I’m a bit odd, really understands me. Having her by my side will help ease some of the first day jitters. I just hope I don’t get lost. Or, worse, stuffed in a locker.

  CHAPTER ONE

  My first day of high school began much in the same way as every other school morning; which is to say that it began with a lukewarm shower. This was not because I enjoyed less than warm water, but, rather, because Skylar and Luke were of the belief that, because they were older than me, they had seniority, and, as the youngest, I was to be last in line to the bathroom.

  Complaints were made, of course. Mom’s solution?

  “Take your shower in the evening. Then you’ll have all the hot water you like.” This was said, naturally, in her most sensible why-must-children-overcomplicate-things voice.

  This was a reasonable option, yes, but there was just one hitch: my chestnut brown hair—as Skylar once described it—usually lay flat and, let me just say it, lank, but after a night of sleep, my hair was a complete and utter mess. It stuck up every which way with knots and tangles; the words haystack, pigsty and bird’s nest were the most often used descriptions. There were even claims that if there was a contest for worst case of bed head, I would win, hands down.

  Even more embarrassing, I still had to use the same apple scented detangler Mom had been buying for me since I was little. At least it smelled good. So, while my hair refused to hold a curl on a good day—Mom once took me to get a perm and it only lasted, you guessed it, one day, which was probably for the best—it was a voluminous, unmanageable mess after a night of sleep.

  So, while a shower in the evening sounded completely practical, it was not. So, a lukewarm shower it was.

  After a less than soothing shower, that did at least manage to wake me up (because who wouldn’t be shocked into wakefulness by cool water?), I fumbled through dressing in the outfit I’d chosen the night before: dark washed Capri pants and a blue scoop neck t-shirt with a white tank underneath that peaked out at the top and bottom of my t-shirt. It was nothing special or fancy, but it was comfortable.

  Then I went downstairs where Mom was making “the most important meal of the day!” This was a point of contention between Mom and Skylar. While Mom was all about piling a stack of pancakes or scooping scrambled eggs and bacon onto a plate, Skylar typically pouted and complained, “I don’t like breakfast. Besides, it’s too fattening.”

  The thing about my sister was she was almost always on a diet. Her reasons were unfathomable to me. Maybe it was just an inferiority complex or maybe I was just biased, but Skylar was gorgeous. Long, chocolate instead of chestnut (or so she said) hair, pale skin and eyes so blue that strangers had been known to stop and compliment them. Also, she was already pretty slender. I mean, she wasn’t bone thin, but that wasn’t a bad thing. She was tall—or at least, taller than me—and just a bit curvy. I would have loved to have curves, and would have gladly traded with Skylar on many fronts, but, alas, that was not possible. Although, with all of the diets, I was half convinced that she was going to turn into a walking skeleton that I would eventually have to call Skeletor.

  Of course, I would have only called her that behind her back because, as demonstrated on the girl down the street that went after Skylar’s then boyfriend, my sister could throw a mean punch. I did not wish to be on the receiving end of one of her nose-breaking punches. Mom was so embarrassed by the incident while Dad was furious. Luke, like most boys, thought it was cool, and I just felt queasy after seeing the blood smeared across Skylar’s knuckles.

  So, while Skylar glared and picked at her biscuits and gravy, Luke and I were for once in agreement and tucked right in. Luke went back for seconds, but one plate was more than enough for me. Then, after collecting my messenger bag while Skylar and Luke got their things, we all toed on our shoes in the front foyer while Mom started giving out hugs and kisses and encouragements to “have a good day” and “behave” and to “learn something new” by way of goodbye.

  Skylar and Luke mostly shrugged her off, but I hugged Mom back happily. I liked hugs, and no one around our house liked to give them often. Perhaps that was why Skylar and Luke were resistant now; maybe they didn’t know what they were missing. They usually acted the same way when we went to visit our maternal grandparents, who were also huggers. I always looked forward to the abundance of affection and liked to think I stored it in my memories to carry me until the next familial gathering.

  Sometimes, though, if I really needed a hug, I’d ask my best friend, and Tegan would give me one without complaint because she was, after all, the best. She never seemed bothered in the least by the fact that most everyone else thought I was weird either.

  I met Tegan Tyler on the first day of elementary school. She was the only person in our kindergarten class who would talk to me. Not that I could necessarily blame the other kids because I tended to either talk a lot—either at them or to myself—or hardly at all. That was just normal for me, so I didn’t know that other people would consider it weird.

  Tegan, though, she was just really nice, and she let me tell her stories. She even laughed in all the right places. We found out at the end of the day that we rode the same bus, so we sat together. I think we became best friends that day. I knew it took most people a while before they became best friends, but Tegan was the sweetest person I ever met, and probably the first person that didn’t think I was annoying. I loved her instantly.

  Even though I was nervous about my first day as a high school student—and had lost sleep in favor of babbling in my newest private notebook because of said nerves—I was anxious to get to school and see Tegan. I knew if she was there then it couldn’t be all bad. Besides, her older sister, Tierney, would also be there. She and Luke were the same age and in the same class, though they didn’t travel in the same social circles. Tierney, like Tegan, was also incredibly nice. In fact, that was true of the whole Tyler clan.

  Besides Tierney, Tegan had two younger siblings, a brother and sister named Tanner and Tatum. Their parents, Trista and Travis, were, aside from an apparent fetish with the letter T, not only also extremely kind but also very cool. I asked them once if they would adopt me if I changed my name to something beginning with a T. I was thinking either Tessa or Topanga—the latter inspired by too many nights at the Tylers’ watching DVDs of Boy Meets World. I never got a definitive answer from them, but they did laugh. In the end, I decided it would probably hurt my parents’ feelings anyway if asked to change my name. After all, they must have named me Cecilia for a reason, and they probably wouldn’t give up their parental rights.

  After the hugs and kisses from Mom, I followed my brother and sister out to their cars. Skylar’s was a 2003 silver Ford Taurus that Mom and Dad helped her buy the previous year. She’d been saving for a car since she started working at sixteen. Skylar called it her baby and christened it Topper. Probably because it had a sunroof. Luke got Skylar’s old car, a blue 1999 Dodge Neon, that previously belonged to Mom. Skylar called it Trusty Rusty while Luke usually just called it “a piece of shit.”

  When they reached their respective cars, I just stood and watched. Neither of them had offered me a ride, but I was sure our parents assumed that one of them was going to drive me to school.

  I couldn’t wait until I got my license. Then I could just drive myself places and not be a burden on anyone else, but I still had over a year before I turned sixteen. Heck, I still had two months before I reached fifteen.

  Finally, Skylar rolled down her window and called with a huff, “Are you getting in or what?”

  She didn’t have to ask me twice. I scurried over to her car and jumped into the front seat. I buckled my seatbelt as Skylar backed out of the driveway. I always wore my seatbelt. I’d been scared not to ever since I saw those commercials with the crash test dummies whose slogan was “You Can Learn a lot From a Dummy.” I thought the slogan should have been “You Can
Get the Shit Scared Out of You by a Dummy.”

  The drive to school was quiet because the first time I started to open my mouth to ask Skylar a question, she glared at me as if she say, “Don’t talk to me.” She really was not a morning person, but then again she really wasn’t an afternoon or evening person either. If she weren’t a nighttime person, I wondered if she’d be a person at all. Despite being so pretty, she really was kind of scary looking sometimes. The last few years she’d been into this look that was something of a mixture of a punk rock Goth.

  Her taste in music was good, though, with exception for Fall Out Boy, who just annoyed me. Pete Wentz was kind of cute, and I did like the video for “Dance Dance,” but their songs were like a virus that infected your brain and refused to go away. Thankfully, they weren’t Skylar’s favorite band, and, hopefully, just a passing fancy. Skylar’s favorite band was, without a doubt, Green Day. I thought she was partially convinced that Billie Joe Armstrong was her soul mate. I thought they both just shared a passion for excessive eyeliner. Regardless of her beloved Billie Joe, Skylar dated—a lot.

  She didn’t date the same guy for very long. Luke called her a slut once, and Dad overheard. He grabbed Luke by the arm and got up in his face and told him never to say anything like that about Skylar—or me, for that matter—ever again. Skylar cried, which didn’t happen often, and even though she and Luke bickered almost daily about something but usually get over it pretty fast, Skylar didn’t speak to Luke for almost a month after that. That was an exceptionally tense and quiet month.

  I couldn’t blame Skylar for being upset. Luke was just being a jerk, and I was sure he didn’t mean it, but even if he did, I didn’t think Skylar was a slut. But that could just be because I snooped around her room once and found her diary. There was a lot about what she would and would not let the boyfriend of the moment do. Most of it was from the waist up, but I just skimmed because I didn’t want to read any of the details. I mean, c’mon, that’s just gross! I felt really bad after I read her diary, though. I could admit that I was a bit of a snoop, but I usually didn’t invade people’s privacy like that, so to make up for it, I was really nice to Skylar for a whole week, and I knew I deserved it when she was mean to me even if she didn’t know.

  Even though Skylar usually dithered between annoyance and indifference when it came to me, she was occasionally nice and would let me borrow her CDs. She had a great collection—30 Seconds To Mars, The All-American Rejects, Dashboard Confessional, The Arcade Fire, Radiohead, Foo Fighters, Nirvana, Linkin Park, Coheed and Cambria, and the list could go on forever. Looking through her collection was almost like going to a record store. Sadly, she’d only let me do that when she was in a good mood, so it was hard to tell when the chance would arise. Skylar was pretty moody.

  Luke also had good taste in music. He was more into the classics like The Beatles, Rolling Stones, The Eagles, The Who, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Terry Reid, and stuff like that. Since my brother thought I wasn’t trustworthy or was irresponsible or simply because he didn’t like me, he wouldn’t let me borrow his CDs. He acted as if I intended to break them or something if I were to get them out of his sight. I was fourteen—almost fifteen—not four, but that didn’t seem to matter. Luke could be such a jackass. Sometimes, I sat in the hallway and listened to the music coming from his room. I liked to read while I listened, but someone would usually come along and tell me to get out of the way.

  That was me. Always in the way.

  When we got to the school, Skylar met her friends in the parking lot and left me to walk inside alone. I wasn’t surprised. After all, I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone we were related. I didn’t know what her and Luke thought I was going to do when I got to school. Maybe shout from the rooftops that I was Skylar and Luke Granger’s weirdo little sister. Maybe I would have if I weren’t afraid of heights, but then again, maybe not. I was sure Skylar really would punch me if I did that. I didn’t know what Luke would do, though. Dad always told him never to hit a girl, so I doubted he’d hit me. Maybe he’d just be extra mean to me, or grumpier than usual, or give me a swirly. He tried to do that once after I ate his Easter candy. Luckily, Mom caught him before he actually got my head in the toilet. I felt a little uneasy about bathrooms in general now.

  I found my locker pretty easily, but probably only because I went to the school with Mom when she went to register us. I had this paralyzing fear after a traumatic experience in junior high that I would arrive at school the first day and wouldn’t be able to get my locker open. When I relayed this fear to Mom, she told me to just come with her. Once she had registered all three of us, she accompanied me to my locker and watched me practice on the combination until I was sure I’d be able to get it open without any problem. Though in the past combinations and I did not have the best relationship, after a little practice the numbers 12-24-18 and I came to an understanding at locker 312.

  If I hadn’t been so worried about opening the locker, I would have thought ahead to bring stuff to decorate it to make it look cozy and cool, but I hadn’t. Besides, I really wasn’t sure what to put in it other than a mirror, which I probably wouldn’t use. Not that I had anything against looking at myself, but I always knew my hair is flat, and I didn’t bother with mascara most of the time and eyeliner was completely out of the question, so it wasn’t like I had to fret over ending up with raccoon eyes by accident—or on purpose in Skylar’s case, and who really needed a mirror to apply lip gloss? It wasn’t brain surgery.

  So my locker was a blank canvas until I figured out how I wanted to decorate it. I thought maybe Tegan could help me. She was craftier than I. I was willing to bet she already had her locker decorated.

  Tegan found me as I was putting things away in my locker, which was probably a good thing because I had no idea where her locker was. I knew she’d have to show me because it had been determined that I was directionally challenged.

  “I just finished decorating my locker,” Tegan announced. Her long hair was the color of melted caramel, and it was parted down the middle and waved down to the center of her back. It looked as if she’d spent hours styling it, though I knew she had not. She was blessed with naturally wavy hair. “Tierney brought me extra early so I could get it done.” She smiled, which made her pale gray eyes sparkle.

  I considered it a pity I’d had no one to bet with. Of course, it usually required money to gamble, and, unfortunately, my funds were less than stellar. I decided I needed to talk to my parents about renegotiating my allowance.

  “You need to decorate your locker,” Tegan observed.

  “I know, but I need your help,” I answered. “I’m not good at this kind of thing.”

  “Well, you could start with a mirror,” she said.

  I then explained to her why I didn’t need a mirror to which she laughed and said, “Well, we’ll think of something, Silly.”

  Then we headed to our first classroom. Again, I had scoped out the locations ahead of time because I really didn’t want to get lost. For once the fates were on my side because Tegan and I wound up with the same class schedule.

  Each class was about an hour and a half long, which was a huge jump from taking seven forty-five minute classes a day. I had a feeling I was going to miss several things about junior high. For one, the school was a lot smaller, so I never got lost. For another thing, there wasn’t a lot of difference in the size of the kids in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade, which was a good thing in my case because tall I was most certainly not. I couldn’t even claim I was average height, really. I was vertically challenged, as I preferred to call it. When I complained about this fact last spring, Mom said I just hadn’t had another growth spurt yet, and Luke, being his usual jerk self, made the snide remark that it was because I hadn’t hit puberty yet, to which I replied, “I got my period last year, thank you very much.”

  That was more than enough to keep his mouth shut after that.

  I didn’t mention that God just forgot
to give me breasts. The Big Guy was such a joker. I considered stuffing my not-so-necessary bra, but I didn’t think I’d be able to get them to look the same every day.

  Mom said that I was just a late bloomer, and Tegan said that boobs were useless anyway. I guess she’d know better than me since she actually had boobs, but I suppose they’re both right. I didn’t get my period until I was thirteen, and I was just fine without it. Who needs cramps and zits anyway? And the only reason my lack of breasts concerned me was that I had a fear of being mistaken for a little boy. I made a vow never to cut my hair above my shoulders until I got breasts. By the looks of things, it was going to be a while, which was really just a shame because the woman at the salon said she thought my hair might’ve had more volume if it were shorter.

  But I digress. My breasts, or lack thereof, had nothing to do with going to class.

  Tegan and I sat in the middle of the classroom. We had a theory. The really smart kids always sat up front because they liked being close to the board and wanted to make sure the teacher could see them raising their hands, and the anti-social kids sat in the back because they didn’t want to answer questions, so, naturally, the teacher liked to call on them to put them on the spot. Therefore, if we sat in the middle, we were basically overlooked. All we had to do is sit there and look pretty. Well, not really. We hadn’t really considered looking pretty or not into the theory. We just decided that we had to look like we were listening even if we were totally zoned out or bored to tears.

  As it turned out, Algebra was basically the same thing as Pre-Algebra, which I took in eighth grade. It kind of felt like a waste of time, and Tegan agreed with me when I said so after class, but we agreed that at the very least we knew we’d do well in one class.

  Our teacher was Mr. Ludlow. He was a tall, plump guy with short black hair. I also recognized him, from when Luke still played football, as the high school football coach, and from what I’d heard Luke say in the past Mr. Ludlow really didn’t care much about teaching. He just liked coaching footfall. He kind of reminded me of Mr. Garrison from South Park. He said “mmmkay?” at the end of almost every sentence. It was kind of funny, and based on the random snickers from my classmates I wasn’t the only one who thought so, but it was also kind of annoying.