.Chapter One.

While walking along the beach, my dog ran rollickingly ahead of me. I stayed behind staring intently at the ground. Then all of a sudden, something emerged from the unlit dock. My dog started frantically barking. That’s when I heard the earsplitting scream.
* * * * * *
My life could not be any more boring than it already is. I go to school, eat, and sleep. No on really understands me. No matter how hard I try, I always fail miserably. The only thing I’m good at is poetry. It lets me express myself. I don’t have to impress anyone when I write. I try to talk to people, but they don’t listen. The only good conversations I have are with my trusty old mutt Toby. I really think he understands me.
It’s the first day of my high school career. My first class is freshman English. I walked in just as the bell rang. The teacher got up to give us the first of the year speech.
“ Welcome everyone to the freshman English class!” Mr. Jacobs said enthusiastically. “Please take your seats and say here when I call out your name.”
He started through the list. I felt like I was going to fall asleep. I didn’t realize we had so many in this class. Suddenly his voice stopped.
“Kris? Kris Taylor?” Mr. Jacobs said looking around irritably.
“Here,” I said, blushing with embarrassment.
Mr. Jacobs moved on down the list until we were all marked down. Then he did something I really hate.
“Now since you are freshman, I don’t know much about you. I would like you all to stand up one at a time and tell anything about you.”
How could he do this to me? That was the one thing I did not want to do! We aren’t in first grade! I guess it could be worse though. I was not the first nor the last person to go so maybe I could get courage and do it. People stood up one at a time telling pointless little facts
about themselves that would soon be forgotten right after they were told. To my despair, it was my turn. The teacher beckoned me to stand up, so I did.
“ I really like to write and read poetry.”
“ Oh that’s very interesting Kris,” Mr. Jacobs added smiling. “Would you like to share some poetry with us?”
“Yeah right,” I thought to myself. “ Like I would want to tell them my poetry even though I didn’t even want to stand up. Like that was going to happen...”
“Umm, no that’s ok, it’s not that good.”
“Oh I’m sure it is,” Mr. Jacobs said and nodded for the next person to stand up. The rest of the class stood up and told us very interesting facts (not) about themselves. There were two people I remember out of the whole class. The first one was named Jason. I remember him because for one, he did not look like a freshman at all. I’m guessing he was about six’ five” or so. Secondly, his interesting fact was that he liked to shoot guns. This intrigued me because he didn’t say what he liked to shoot. For all I know it could be people!
The other person I remembered was Landon Davis.