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Chapter Two

The bell rang and the classes emptied into the over-crowded hallways of Woodbury High. Originally built just after World War II, the school had been designed to accommodate roughly one quarter the number of students currently attending. Consequently, navigating the halls was something akin to sardines trying to rearrange themselves inside a sealed tin.

Clutching her books to her diminutive chest (Kimmie had rather small breasts, which was yet another aspect of her appearance that the other female students teased her about), Kimmie was continually buffeted, battered, and bumped into as she wended her way through the throng of students to her locker. Kimmie exited the lane of people like a car peeling off the highway on an exit ramp. She instinctively compressed herself into the narrow, foot-and-a-half-wide space in front of the lockers that the students of Woodbury High had trained themselves to leave open from the hall traffic. As she reached up to dial her combination, she caught sight of Kevin down the hallway. He was in front of the gym, milling around with the other jocks, cheerleaders, and assorted other popular kids. Kimmie froze-up again, transfixed by Kevin's smiling, laughing face as he conversed easily with his friends down the hall. Her arm still holding her books began to slacken and drift down from her chest as she stood there mesmerized.

WHAM!

Kimmie lurched forward and her books tumbled out of her arm as she was rocked from behind by an unusually forceful blow from the passing crowd.

"Watch where you're going, dork!" a pretty girl in a cheerleader's outfit with pale skin and fiery red hair shouted back at Kimmie. She and the pack of other cheerleaders she was with departed the transiting students at the gym and began simpering around the football players; particularly Kevin.

Kimmie knelt down and began collecting her belongings. "Don't pay any attention to Taylor," a kind, soft girl's voice said as she knelt down and began helping Kimmie pick up her things. "She just picks on you to make herself feel better, because all she has is looks, while you're smart, nice, and pretty," Molly smiled at her. Molly was Kevin's twin sister, and like her brother, she was uncommonly kind for a popular, athletic kid. Her locker happened to be right next to Kimmie's.

"Well... that and she has a latent lesbian attraction to me that confuses and frightens her," Kimmie stated so matter-of-factly that Molly snorted with a burst of laughter. Kimmie froze-up yet again, her eyes going wide, and she looked up at Molly. "Did I just say that out loud?"

"Yes!" Molly laughed. Upon seeing Kimmie's shocked expression, she added, "Oh my God, were you serious?"

Kimmie glanced around, but no one seemed to be paying attention to them. Molly had always been someone Kimmie could confide in; she had known about Kimmie's crush on her brother for years, but at Kimmie's insistence, had never told him. Kimmie dropped her voice to a low whisper and explained her history with the redheaded cheerleader. "Up until highschool, Taylor and I were good friends. The summer before our freshman year, she was over at my house and we were swimming. We got out of the pool, and were just sitting around talking, and out of the blue, she leaned in and kissed me!

"I... I didn't know what to do," Kimmie stammered. "I had never even been kissed by a guy before, and I... I just kind of..."

"Froze-up?" Molly cocked an eyebrow knowingly.

Kimmie blushed and nodded. "I guess my reaction hurt her feelings, because she ran home and I didn't hear from her for the rest of the summer. When school started, she was trying-out for the cheerleaders and trying to be popular. She distanced herself from me."

"What a back-stabbing bitch!" Molly exclaimed, clearly more affronted than Kimmie had ever felt.

Kimmie shrugged, "I'm used to people treating me like that," she said, grabbing up a few pencils and pens that had fallen out of her pencil bag and rolled away.

Molly had picked up the last of Kimmie's notebooks. It was her math notebook, and had happened to have fallen open to the page with Kimmie's drawing of herself and Kevin on it. "You got it bad, girl," Molly said sympathetically, surveying the drawing. "You sure you don't want me to put a good word in for you with him? He's not seeing anyone right now."

Kimmie snatched the notebook back and quickly opened her locker and shoved it inside with the rest of her belongings. "N...N...No!" she stuttered. "Thank you," she added quickly smiling at Molly. "H...H...He w...wouldn't want s...someone like me," she said, looking down at her feet.

"If that's the way you want to keep things," Molly sighed. She had tried to persuade Kimmie several times to reveal her feelings for Kevin, but Kimmie was always too scared. "But you'd be surprised at the kind of girls my brother goes for. And, I can tell you this," she added leaning in to whisper in Kimmie's ear as she continued to stare at the floor, "It's not Taylor and her pack of hyenas." Leaving it at that, Molly headed on down the hall.

Kimmie wrung her hands nervously as she continued to stand in front of her locker, contemplating what Molly said. The crowds in the hall were thinning out now as students were either headed home or towards extra-curricular activities. Kimmie stole another furtive glance up at Kevin just in time to see him heading into the gym. Taylor and her pack of cheerleaders trailed sycophantically in his wake. Kimmie sighed heavily and headed for the girls' locker room to change for cross-country practice.