“I’m sorry if that sounded weird,” I apologized.
“Not at all. Your mom actually had a different bag picked out for you, and it was one of the weird brands,” he joked.
It didn’t surprise me. My mom was a first-class gold digger. She had always chased men with money so she wouldn’t have to work and could leisurely do whatever she wanted.
“I suggested to her that we get you something you’re comfortable with. I don’t want my baby unhappy on her first day of school.” Thomas reached over and patted my thigh.
“Thank you for the backpack,” I said. I hoped he would see that as the end of our conversation and would go.
“Open it. I put some things in to help you adjust to your new school and setting.”
Thomas nudged the backpack closer to me. I picked it up and set it on my lap, and I could tell there were multiple things shifting around in there. I unzipped the top portion and I couldn’t help but show my excitement. Eagerly, I pulled out the boxes to the MacBook Air, an iPad, and the brand-new iPhone.
“Oh my God!” I yelled, unsure of what to open first.
“I want my baby happy and up on the latest technology. All the kids will have these,” Thomas said as he reached for my current cell phone that was sitting on my genealogy notebook. “I’m not even sure what this brand is,” he mused and pulled off my silicone case to look at the back.
“I have no idea either. But it’s not an iPhone.” I laughed and started to open the new black iPhone. When I tipped it into my hand, I looked up at Thomas with a huge smile on my face. “This feels amazing!”
“There are a few cases in there for it too. You can change them out if you want. I figured you’d need the laptop for school assignments and the iPad for leisure stuff. Reading, social media, or whatever.”
“I wonder if I can get my genealogy app from my phone onto the iPad. That would be so cool, because right now I’m only using my phone for research. It’s a small screen. Actually, if I could even get the app on the iPhone that would be awesome. That screen is huge.”
Thomas held his hand out for the phone. I passed it to him, and he turned it on and started to mess with it.
“What is the genealogy app called?”
I showed him what it looked like on my current phone, and he was able to locate it and was in the process of downloading it. He showed me how to use the App Store and said he’d already had my account set up and that I could download whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted.
“You’ll be able to add the genealogy thing to your iPad and the MacBook. One of the nicest features is that apps will sync with one another on all three devices. So, say you’re doing something on the genealogy app during your lunch break, when you get home, all of the work will already be updated on your iPad and MacBook.”
“Oh my God! That is amazing! Thank you, Thomas!”
“You’re welcome, baby. Don’t stay up too late playing with that stuff,” Thomas said as he left the room.
Monday morning came in a flash, and I found myself up early because I was nervous about school. I put on a long-sleeved black t-shirt, a dark distressed pair of jeans, and my purple Converse. I put a new spiral notebook in my backpack with my purple pom-pom pen and headed downstairs to the kitchen.
My mom and Thomas were in there having coffee and moving around. While my mom was all dressed and ready to take me to school, Thomas was shirtless and in a pair of navy pajama pants. I tried to keep my eyes anywhere but below Thomas’s neck. He ended up having to take a phone call and started to wander around the kitchen and into the living room while I ate a granola bar and a fruit cup.
Though I was mostly successful at keeping my eyes off Thomas’s muscular body, once my mom announced that she was going to get her shoes and purse to take me to school, I allowed my eyes to gaze at him. I had no shame, and I stared at his bulge while he chatted on the phone. Selena would die for this visual.
I was seeing Thomas in a different light today. He seemed like a nice guy, and maybe I needed to give him a chance. The sight of his body was doing things to mine. I knew I would have a different image in my head tonight when I’d go to bed and let my fingers wander. I pretended to be messing with my phone as he walked around talking on his cell phone. With my finger hovering over the circle to take a pic, I waited for the perfect shot. I snapped a pic of him scratching his chest and sent it to Selena with a teasing text.
Salem: Check out what I got to stare at while eating my breakfast.
“Bye,” I said quietly and waved to him when my mom came back. Thomas pulled the phone away from his ear.
“Bye, baby. Have a good day at school.”
I was in a decent mood after my morning visual surprise. On the ride to my new school, Selena and I texted the entire way. We talked about Thomas’s bulge, which led to talking about boys at school. I told her that I’d fill her in tonight about the guys at Beverly Hills High. Who knows, maybe they’d have hot teachers. None of the teachers back at my old school did it for me.
As we drove through the parking lot, it wasn’t a surprise to me what the cars looked like. These weren’t just rich kids. These were ridiculously rich kids. I was sure the majority of them all had successful parents or celebrity families. I had a feeling this school was going to be very different than my high school in Chula Vista. My old school had minimal landscaping, and what was there wasn’t very inviting.
While we walked from the car to the walkway that would lead to the front office, I couldn’t help but feel like I was on the set of a fake high school. There was lush green grass and huge trees to shade benches strewn about. The exterior of the school was immaculate and clean. There weren’t blotches of mismatched paint to cover graffiti. Did they just repaint the whole school when graffiti showed up? Or was graffiti not a problem here?
I pulled open the door to the front office, and I noticed there weren’t scuff marks all over the bottom of the door. Were these kids capable of not putting their feet on the door to open it? I glanced around the office while we waited for what I assumed was a mother in front of us to finish with the office clerk.
None of the windows had bars on them.
