Chapter One:

Daisy

 

This was it, another boring day in English class. I stared at the whiteboard as Mr. Lewis used a dry-erase marker and rambled on and on about subject-verb agreement. He was telling us way more than he needed to. He had worked at this school forever, I am surprised he hasn’t retired. He is at least eighty. 

Quite frankly, I always like writing. In eighth grade, I enjoyed my English teacher. She was sweet, and she let us write our own stories. I have written numerous stories myself, but I don’t have the courage to share them will others. Well, everyone except TJ. 

TJ is my best friend. I have known him since first grade. We met at lunch when he was a new student. TJ is much more of a social butterfly than I am. You could say he’s one of the ‘popular kids’ at school. Everyone likes him, no matter his personality, his knowledge, or his political pursuits. 

I am definitely not popular. Others classify me as ‘TJ’s friend’. It’s not the greatest nickname I could’ve asked for, but at least kids at my school know that I exist. Most of the time, people walk by me like I am invisible. 

“Okay, class,” Mr. Lewis said as he interrupts my boredom. “I have something else for us to talk about before the bell rings.”

Great, I think to myself. What could this be? How to write hyphens correctly?

I could answer my own question: there is no wrong way to write hyphens. You just draw a line. But, Mr. Lewis would find a way to lecture on it. 

Jess rose her hand from beside me. He calls on her, “Yes, Ms. Hamilton?”

She cleared her throat like the obnoxious girl she is. “What is this ‘something else’? Because I need to be at home. After all, being the descendant of Alexander Hamilton is a lot of work.”

Jess claims that she is the descendant of founding father, Alexander Hamilton. I knew it was all baloney, but, once more, I have no courage to unmask all of her lies. 

We used to be friends. Jess and I were inseparable in kindergarten. We would spend every Halloween, every weekend, every day together. But then, she surrounded herself with other friends in first grade, leaving me alone. 

She and those girls don’t act like I am invisible. Not in the best way, though. 

“Ms. Hamilton, I can assure you that this will not take long.” Jess scoffs and puts her head down on her desk. Mr. Lewis continues, “I will be taking this time to talk about the classic tale, Alice in Wonderland.”

This got my attention. 

I raised my hand. “May I ask why we’re talking about Alice in Wonderland?”

“Why, Ms. O’Connell, it’s an instant classic. Classic stories are something that every English class should share.”

Jess’s head perks up. “Yeah, Daisy. You should know that.” She said in an impolite manner. 

Secretly, I roll my eyes at her and throw my hood over my head. Sometimes, I wish I enjoyed being invisible. But, no one ever said life was easy for a sophomore in high school.

Mr. Lewis clears his throat. “Anyway, all of you are aware of what Alice in Wonderland is about, correct?”

The class nods their heads simultaneously. Behind me, I feel a tap on my shoulder. My head turns around and I see TJ handing me a piece of paper. Carefully, I grabbed it and read it underneath my desk. 

 

I heard basketball practice was canceled today.

 

Wanna play volleyball after school?

 

Very quietly, I took a pencil from my backpack and wrote on the back of the parchment. 

 

Sorry, can’t. I have to go to Da’vonne’s beauty pageant after school. 

 

Da’vonne is my older sister. My parents favored her more than me, though they never admitted it. But, their actions showed it greatly. Da’vonne has been in pageants since she was five years old. My mother was there with her every time there was a tiny snag in her dress when she had meltdowns about the next category, basically, they are with each other all the time.

TJ must’ve stolen the piece of paper from my hands because I looked behind me and he was writing. After five, worrisome seconds, he finally handed it back. It said two simple words that were impossible for me to do. 

 

Skip it. 

 

My head whipped around. “I can’t just ‘skip it’, TJ!” I hissed. 

“Why not?” He whispered. 

I cast him a glare. “You can’t be serious. My parents will kill me if I skip one of her pageants.”

“You just have to be sneaky about it.”

My eyes roll his way. “You don’t know me at all. If I try and do that, I will end up doing the opposite. On accident. That’s just my personality.”

TJ smiles. “Let me take care of it then. I’ll tell your folks that we have a huge test coming up and that you have to study at my place.”

I snort. “Tell me how that turns out. Now, if you don’t mind…”

As my head turns toward Mr. Lewis’ direction, I find him standing right beside my desk. He glared at me and TJ. His arms were crossed. “Am I interrupting your little gab session, Ms. O’Connell and Mr. Jones?”

I shake my head. “No, sir.”

TJ mutters. “On the bright side, now you don’t have to intentionally skip Da’vonne’s pageant because we’re probably going to get detention.”

A grin appears across my teacher’s face. “You got that right, Mr. Jones. The two of you are going to spend after school in this room for two hours.”

Two hours?! Gee, thanks TJ! Now my parents are going to murder me because I missed Da’vonne’s pageant and I got detention. 

Finally. After what seemed like an eternity, the bell rang and pierced my hearing. Everyone left the classroom except for the two of us. Before she left, Jess leaned against my desk and whispered in my ear, “Have fun in detention, Stinger.”

Stinger was the other nickname I had. Jess and her friends called me that because I am named after a flower. Daisy, like the plant where bees get their pollen from. And, because bees sting people, hence the nickname of mine: Stinger.

The pet name wasn’t hurtful at the start. I thought it was a friendly name because that’s what friends do to each other. But, they have called me that since third grade. I figured out then that it wasn’t their intention for it to be nice. 

Jess walked out of the classroom, bumping my desk to the side with the weight of her backpack. I didn’t bother to move it back into place, I was too distracted by the pit forming in my stomach to do anything. 

Detention lasted less than I expected. Probably because I was doing my homework the whole time. TJ, on the other hand, kept himself busy by blowing the curls in my hair. He’s not much of a worker, he likes to procrastinate. A lot. 

TJ says that he doesn’t have to do schoolwork. But, he ends up doing it anyway because he worries about what his mother will do to him if he doesn’t. His father left them a year ago, he’s now married and has three children with the other woman. That deeply hurt TJ, so he dreams of becoming the CEO of Apple and helping out his mom and brother. 

But, that is a hard wish to fulfill. Especially for TJ’s sake. 

Once Mr. Lewis said we could leave, I grabbed my backpack and joined TJ out in the parking lot. He offered to drive me home since the bus already left and…I don’t have a car. Or a driver’s license for that matter. 

TJ climbed in on the driver’s side, and I sat on the passenger side. He fiddled around in his backpack searching for his keys. At last, he found them and turned the car into the ignition. His foot slammed on the gas pedal and he zoomed out of the parking lot. 

I glanced at his speedometer. He was going seventy miles per hour! 

“TJ!” I yelled. “Slow down! You’re going to crash!”

He snorts. “Daisy, I do this all the time. It’s fine.”

“Yeah, but you could still get pulled over!”

He sighs and slowly releases his foot off the pedal. He doesn’t want to have to pay a speeding ticket. TJ glares in my direction. “Better?”

“Much,” I said with my arms crossed. “But, keep your eyes on the road too.”

Obediently, his eyes avert in front of him. He immediately changes the subject. “So, detention was fun, wasn’t it?”

I groaned. “I don’t want to be in there ever again.”

“None of that would have happened if you didn’t argue with me about skipping Da’s pageant.”

My eyes squint at him. “Did you seriously just call my sister, Da?”

“Fo’ shizzle, Daisy.”

I hated it when he talked in slang from the early 2000s. There is no reason someone should be talking like that in 2020. He knew it irritated me. He just knew me that well. 

After a couple of minutes of riding in the car in silence, TJ spoke up, “Why do you think he was really talking about that book?”

“You mean Alice in Wonderland?” I corrected him. 

“Whatever,” He said. “Lewis said he was sharing it because it’s a ‘classic’.”

I sigh. “TJ, it is a classic. It’s my favorite fairy tale, how did you forget?”

“Oh, I didn’t forget, Daisy. I just don’t believe a word he says. He’s so old he doesn’t know anything current.”

My eyes widen. “Wow, that’s actually…really smart, TJ.”

“You sound surprised.”

Jokingly, I replied, “I didn’t think you would say anything intelligent.”

“I’ll speed this car up to eighty.” TJ jokes back. 

At last, we made it to the driveway of my house. I saw no cars, which meant my parents and Da’vonne left for the pageant without me. Of course. 

TJ and I climbed out of his car and made our way toward my front door. I invited him inside and we each grabbed a banana from the fruit bowl on the dining room table. I sat on the carpet of the living room and began to start studying for my chemistry test coming up. TJ, on the other hand, turned on my TV and flipped through the channels until he stopped when he saw The Office was on. 

“Of course it’s the fire drill episode,” I mutter. 

He gasps. “Why do you hate this one? This is the funniest episode!”

“All of them are stupid.”

“That’s the point!” TJ remarks. 

I roll my eyes and continue reading the definition of ionization energy. I write down notes that will benefit when I take the test. On the TV, I hear Michael Scott talking as he’s coming out of his office. He’s probably saying something dumb as usual. 

Just then, I hear the front door open abruptly. My sister, Da’vonne, storms through the living room and stomps up the stairs to her bedroom. Her door slams in anger. My parents come through the door not long after. They glare at me with disappointment. 

“I’ll just…uh, let myself out,” TJ says as he scoots past my parents and exits. The engine of his car zooms off in a hurry, almost like what you would hear in a cartoon. 

 My mother speaks up, “We got a call from your principal during your sister’s pageant that you got detention.”

I bow my head. “Yes, it’s true.”

“Why did this happen?” My father asks in a frustrated tone. “O’Connell’s never got detention.”

I’m not like other O’Connell’s, I wanted to say. But, I was too nervous for any words to escape my mouth. Instead, I looked up at the two of them. Their expressions hadn’t changed since they came inside. 

“Ground me for as long as you want,” I whisper, trying to avoid Dad’s question. “I deserve every bit of punishment.”

He caught onto what I was doing. “Don’t dodge the situation, Daisy. Tell us why you got detention.”

I sighed. “TJ and I were passing notes in English class.”

Mom grunts. “Tobias John, I knew he was a bad influence on you. I was against the two of you hanging out from the very beginning.”

Dad places a hand on her shoulder and speaks again. “You are grounded for two weeks. No television, no using the landline, no…”

Yes, my family still used a phone with a landline. As in, the phone that is implanted in the wall with a curly cord attached to it.

Once he was finished, I solemnly walked up the stairs to my room and got dressed for bed. I never liked being punished. I was always a ‘goody two shoes’ according to TJ. He said he was bringing me out of my shell. But, that’s what I was afraid of. I liked the way I was, I didn’t want to change. 

I had thrown some shorts and a baggy sweatshirt on and began to type on my typewriter. I enjoyed writing like this more than on a laptop. Mostly because I didn’t have one. Or a phone. Well, that’s what my parents thought anyway. 

Last year, TJ had brought me a phone for Christmas. He used the money from his part-time job at Walmart. I felt bad he wasted his money for me on something like that, but I accepted it. It’s hard keeping this a secret from them. I’m not good at keeping secrets.

I grabbed the phone from underneath my bed where I hid it. When I turned it on, I had some messages from him. 

 

r u grounded?

 

im sorry if it was my fault

 

vball tmr after school?

 

I smiled at the text. Then, I replied saying:

 

Sounds good. I’m going to DEMOLISH you!

 

TJ typed back:

 

lol, yeah right

 

After that, I dropped my phone to the ground and climbed into bed. I flipped off the lightswitch and fell asleep. Hopefully, being grounded won’t be as bad as I think it’s going to be.