A loud horn made Chenoa’s head snap to the side to see her school bus barreling down the road. Pushing herself to her feet, Chenoa brushed offer her pants and winced as the dirt pulled at the scraps on her palms.   Before the bus had even come to a complete stop, the driver swung the doors open.

“What you doing on the ground, kid?” Denny the bus driver asked.

Denny’s voice, rough from two packs a day, always made Chenoa think of her grandfather, who had smoked a pipe his whole life.  With her grandfather gone, Chenoa liked hearing Denny talk, even though she’d never tell him. Denny liked to act like he couldn’t give two cents about the kids on his bus.

“I…” Chenoa looked around again for the dog.  “I just tripped.”

“Well, hurry up.  We ain’t got all day.”

Forcing a smile, Chenoa climbed up the bus stairs, glancing back for the dog again. Nothing.  With a lurch, the bus started moving. Reaching out to catch herself from falling in the aisle, Chenoa squinted against the sun’s reflection on the bus door.  For a fraction of a second, she would have sworn that the sun cast a shadow in the shape of a dog despite the fact that there was no dog standing at the bus stop. Rubbing her eyes, Chenoa told herself that she needed to get more sleep.  Her eyes were playing tricks on her.

Shaking her head, Chenoa turned towards the aisle and started trudging down the row of seats. Just as Chenoa turned, a man appeared at her bus stop in the blink of an eye.  He watched the bus drive away, his burning blue eyes flashing.  Next to him came a low growl as the smoky dog appeared once again, its teeth bared. Sneering, the man merely waved his hand and the smoky dog’s form instantly broke apart and disappeared.  Smugly, the man watched Chenoa’s bus briefly before he himself vanished into thin air.

On the bus, Chenoa steadied herself as she searched for a familiar face.  Well, rather a friendly face, because she knew everyone on the bus.  She had gone to school with most of them for as long as she could remember. As her eyes followed the line of seats back, she held back her grimace at the sight of the usual suspects- Nick Lasso, Chris Downy, Leon Croon, Pam Richardson, Lindsey Lambert and Rebecca Smith.  The “popular” kids from her grade.  Chenoa couldn’t wait until the next year when they would get their licenses and drive themselves to school. She already knew they would because it was all they ever talked about.

Chenoa and her best friend, Gabriella Garcia, had bets on what type of cars the popular kids’ parents would buy them next year and, of course, who would wreck his/her car first.  Admittedly, these nasty thoughts were partly the result of Chenoa’s jealously that they would be getting a car long before she ever would.  It was a fact that Chenoa would only ever confess to Gabriella.

To Chenoa’s relief, a friendly face was hidden behind the plastic smiles in the form of her best friend. Gabriella waved frantically to get Chenoa’s attention.  Making her way down the swaying bus aisle, Chenoa barely paid attention to where she was walking. Suddenly her foot snagged on something and the bus floor met her face.  Her already scrapped palms broke her fall, barely protecting her face as she cursed in pain.

“And I thought Indies were supposed to be light on their feet,” a voice jeered above her.

Grinding her teeth, Chenoa tried to ignore the derogatory term for her indigenous heritage as she looked up and saw Chris Downy, in all his traditional handsomeness, looking down at her.  It felt as if Chris was always looking down on Chenoa, literally and figuratively. Despite the fact that Chris was sitting, Chenoa knew he was around five feet eleven inches, making him at least six inches taller than her. He possessed wavy milk chocolate brown hair and hazel eyes, which were framed by long, full eyelashes.  Chris had a traditional Anglo-Saxon face with a strong jaw and square nose that somehow fit his face. For the past year, Chris and Chenoa had been in a constant struggle with each other, for a reason that Chenoa could not understand.  It just seemed that one day she woke up and Chris decided to make it his mission to torture her. 

“Be nice, Chris,” Nick Lasso, Chris’s best friend, mock scolded as he helped Chenoa up. 

Nick wasn’t that bad of a guy, though he never intervened when Chris was on a mess-with-Chenoa kick.  Like Chris, Nick was traditionally attractive with blonde hair he kept short and farm boy blue eyes.  He stood at six feet even and seemed to look good in everything.  His father owned a large farm, which he helped work during the summer with the other paid laborers.  Nick’s father felt it built good character. 

“You okay?” Nick asked.

Chenoa rubbed her now scratched and bruised palms against her pants.

“Yeah, fine…whatever,” Chenoa mumbled.

Chenoa made sure not to look at Chris, who was watching her closely. 

“Don’t waste your time being so nice, Nick,” Pam Richardson said matter of factly. “It was her own fault for not looking where she was going.”

Chenoa shot Pam a sharp look that caused the girl to shut her mouth immediately. Chenoa had always had a powerful “shut your trap” look.  Straightening her backpack, Chenoa kept walking even though she could feel Chris’s eyes drilling into her back.

“Chenoa, are you okay?  I saw Chris do that! He totally pushed his bag out in front of you right as you were passing by!  What a creep! What is his issue?” Gabriella said at her usual fast speed.

Smiling softly, Chenoa sat next to Gabriella and tried to relax.  Her temper was flaring inside of her and she didn’t want to do anything stupid.  Chenoa tended to lose her temper and make things worse.  She didn’t want to count the number of times Papa Bear had been called this last year by the principal because Chenoa had shoved Chris back. For some reason, she was always the one caught, never Chris. Chenoa looked at the back of Chris’s head as he talked with his friends.  Despite her best efforts to keep her temper in check, Chenoa’s mind wished horrible things on him. 

“Let him ruin that perfect little smile of his.  Let his backpack get ruined and all his homework destroyed.  Let him embarrass himself so he can know what it feels like,” Chenoa thought venomously. 

“Chenoa, you have your cursing-Chris-out-in-your-mind look again,” Gabriella interrupted Chenoa’s thoughts.

Turning to look at Gabriella, Chenoa blushed.  Gabriella knew her too well.  Gabriella Garcia had been Chenoa’s best friend since fourth grade.  Gabriella, or Gabby as Chenoa called her, had just moved to town when Chenoa bumped into her at the local rec center.  From the beginning, Gabby had been a fast-talking, energetic girl who blew Chenoa away with her optimism and humor.  Everyone loved Gabby, for varying reasons.  She had been one of the first girls to develop in their school and stood at barely five feet three inches with a large chest and hips. 

“Sorry, Gabby,” Chenoa grinned, blushing pink. “I can’t help it.  He just makes me so mad.”

“Well, you are doing better.  You didn’t deck him this time.”

“I only decked him once…”

“Four times, not that he didn’t deserve it, but you can’t get in trouble for that anymore.  Not that you get in that much trouble somehow, but still.”

“I know.  I just don’t get what his problem is.”

“He’s a jerk.  That’s what his problem is.”

“You never said truer words.”

They laughed together and started catching up.  Gabby had been out of town visiting her father the past weekend and she had only just gotten back. When Gabby was in the sixth grade, her father had come out of the closet, leaving Gabby’s mother for one of his coworkers.  Yet having a gay father never bothered Gabby, because she said it didn’t feel any different than before, just that her parents were both happier.

Gabby quickly told Chenoa about her weekend and her father’s life partner, Hector, who had recently started going through a midlife crisis. As they talked, neither girl noticed Chris watching Chenoa out of the corner of his eye. Nick, however, did and elbowed his friend hard in the ribs.

“Can’t you just leave her alone?” Nick groaned softly, so only Chris could hear.

“I wasn’t doing anything,” Chris snapped.

“You were watching her again.”

“No, I wasn’t.  Maybe you are the one watching her.”

Rolling his eyes, Nick focused on whatever Lindsey had been talking about.  Slouching in his seat, Chris also tried to focus on Lindsey too, but his skin itched as if something was going to happen.

The bus ride lasted only twenty minutes before they reached school.  Chenoa and Gabby exited the bus with everyone else, still talking about the nonsense that fifteen-year-old girls love to talk about. As Chenoa exited the bus, she looked around and saw a strange-looking man standing among the crowd of the usual faces.  His face was anything but usual. He had high cheek bones and a stubborn jaw, accented by his earth-red skin.  Electric blue eyes were framed by long black hair that flowed down his back and around his shoulders like rivers of night. What appeared to be electric blue tattoos, the same intimidating color as his eyes, flowed and wrapped around his visible body, appearing to start and end on his face.  The tattoos seemed to flow and fly across him as if they were the wind caught in ink.  The tattoo ends on his face seemed to frame and point to his powerful eyes.

In a strange way, he was beautiful and frightening at the same time.  His eyes were locked on Chenoa in a serious manner.  While he did not look much older than twenty-one, his eyes seemed to be from a much older man.  Even stranger than his appearance was the way the crowd seemed to move around him as if he were not even there. 

“Gabby,” Chenoa gasped.

She grasped her friend’s arm. Gabby turned quickly, startled by her friend’s strong grip.

“What?” Gabby asked.

Gabby immediately looked in the same direction as Chenoa’s gaze.

“Do you see that guy?” Chenoa asked, glancing at her friend.

“What guy?”

Turning around, Chenoa saw that the man was gone.  She stammered, confused by his sudden disappearance.  Chenoa knew she didn’t imagine him because she didn’t think her imagination was that creative.  What was going on?  First the smoke dog at the bus stop and now that strange man.  Gabby tugged on her arm to free it from Chenoa, drawing Chenoa’s attention to the fact that they had to get moving.  They joined the swarm of students heading into the school, Gabby talking again as Chenoa searched for the man.  Maybe he was a new student or maybe a parent or something.

            Yet Chenoa could not find him.  Trying to refocus, Chenoa found her mind stuck on his electric blue eyes and tattoos.  They had seemed to glow with light and life.  But how could tattoos glow with light?  They were just ink on skin.   His image in her mind was haunting. 

            Shaking her head, Chenoa took a deep breath and pushed forward through the crowd.  Reaching her locker, Chenoa ignored Chris, whose locker, for some unexplainable reason, was next to hers.  As she reached for her locker, an electric blue symbol glowed on its door.  It was a spiral enclosed in a box, yet the spiral appeared to be moving, never-ending.  Startled, Chenoa stopped for a minute to stare at the symbol before she blinked, and it disappeared.

            “You are running slow even for you,” Chris interjected. “Too much peyote?”

            “That’s not even from our country, you idiot,” Chenoa snapped.

Quickly, she shoved her things into her locker and grabbed what she needed for first period.

            “Sure, Slower-Than-Shit,” Chris smirked before heading to his own first period. 

            Glowering, Chenoa slammed her locker shut and turned away just as there was a loud crashing sound.  Spinning around, Chenoa saw Chris lying flat on his face.  He had apparently slipped on a random puddle of water in the hall and blood was spilling out of his mouth.  Several people ran to help him as his flock of female admirers squealed in despair.  Though she should have felt sorry for the guy, Chenoa couldn’t help but smile and walk away.  Maybe today would be a good day for a Monday.