Chapter 2: Getting Settled

Tuesday 30-Jan 2007

Lisa's family had gone to New Zealand, and it had been a few months since Chris had last seen her. In that time, she'd been completely transformed.

Lisa Taylor had always been really outgoing and friendly, and she'd pretty much run the social calendar for the class. She'd been class captain each year. The class picked their own class captains, a boy and a girl, and she'd been a pretty unanimous choice ever since the first week of high school, since the same class had pretty much stayed together as the years rolled by. She was just a cool person.

But Lisa hadn't been sporty. She did as little as possible in PE, and nothing active at all during lunchtimes, and she liked her food, so she'd always been a little overweight. Not too much, and still pretty curvy and definitely attractive. Quite a few of the guys thought she was at the top of the Most Wanted List of the girls in the class, but she wasn't at the top of Chris's list. At least she hadn't been.

Now she was lithe and hard, and she didn't walk so much as bounce through the corridor to the homeroom; she was crackling with energy. Chris certainly wasn't the only one in the class to notice; everyone did. So while they were waiting for Mr Hanson to get his lazy butt into the home room to start the year, she explained her big change in a loud voice for everyone's benefit. Her family had moved to a place on the beach near Auckland, and the kids next door had been triathlon freaks. She'd fallen in with them, and with not much else to do, she'd started training with them. To her surprise she enjoyed it, one thing led to another, and here she was, triathlon fit, and did anyone want to go in the next Gatorade Triathlon with her? Since she blushed when Jenna asked her whether one of the neighbours was a hunk, it appeared that she'd had a bit of a romance in the game as well — Chris couldn't imagine Lisa getting so fit just for fun. And, wow, did she look good.

By the end of the day, he was lost. He knew that he was head over heels in love with the new Lisa. But he also knew that he wasn't the only one. While he'd be perfectly willing to kiss the ground in front of her, he knew that he'd only look silly, so he chose to hold it inside and not to let anyone know, since he'd already seen one of the other boys get gently turned away when he blurted his interest out. Lisa had class, and if he wanted to get anywhere with her, he'd have to bide his time and play it cool.

It was a pretty easy day. The only thing he really worked on was his cricket skills. A bunch of boys stayed back after school and worked out in the nets. Chris concentrated on his bowling, getting back into the rhythm so that he could land the ball on the same spot every time. Trials for the school cricket teams would be after school Thursday, which was the next day — school had started on a Wednesday.

The next morning, the class was waiting in the home room for Butthead Hanson to turn up for announcements. When he showed, he came with the new girl. "Good morning everyone, this is our new class member, Shahia Esfahani-Baracat. She's come to join us from St Joseph's."

The new girl was definitely middle-eastern, but Chris couldn't pick her race. She looked a bit Lebanese, but she was too dark, and a little pointed in her features for a true Lebanese girl. Her name didn't help either — he couldn't place it, hadn't heard anything like it around before. Her face seemed reasonably attractive, though she didn't seem to have gone to any effort, and her hair was roughly tied back in a simple ponytail, with some of it just hanging loose. Shahia didn't seem at all comfortable standing out in front of the classroom with everyone staring at her. Her uniform was faded and frayed, and didn't fit her at all well; it was too big, and you couldn't really see her body shape well, even though it was the standard school summer dress, which was generally pretty revealing. She'd obviously bought it at the second-hand uniform shop, which was odd as St Joseph's was a private school a few suburbs over, and it was pretty expensive — you had to be real rich to go there. In fact, it was strongly associated with rich, arrogant snobs who thought that they were better than the kids who went to Chris's school, and there was nothing Chris and his mates liked more than bringing some St Joseph's pricks down, either by beating them in some sport, or making fun of them on the train or in the mall.

Shahia's attitude seemed to go with her clothes. She seemed real shy. Lisa stood up to welcome her to the class, but she stumbled a little over the first name, so Shahia corrected her. "Shahia, like as in Shania Twain." Shahia sounded quite nervous, her voice quavered a little and she sounded like a little girl. In fact, Shahia looked a little young for their year, and Chris guessed her age at fifteen. As soon as she could, she came to the back of the room where there was an empty desk, and sat down next to him, staring at the floor.

After Butthead had done the announcements for the day, the class trooped off to their various subjects. When they stood up, he smiled at Shahia. "Hi, welcome to class." She glanced at him and then turned her back on him and walked away. Bitch! Apparently she really was a snob then.

The tryouts for the First Eleven cricket team were that afternoon. There were fewer guys there than Chris expected, and he had a good run with the bat — he just seemed to be middling the ball well, hitting it really sweetly, and he did all right when he was bowling, bowling a consistent line and length, well enough to get into the First Eleven squad as an all-rounder. Not in the team yet, but well on the way to attaining his first resolution. About a third of the rest of the squad were year elevens like Chris, from the team he was in the year before, and they agreed that they'd stay behind after school on Mondays through to Thursdays doing their own training, whether the team had training or not. A few of them, including Chris, agreed to get together before school to go for a run in the morning. The PE teacher would open the showers just before school and just before the end of lunch to encourage people to exercise, and they wanted to take advantage of that.

All that effort was worth it; he sat out the first game on the sidelines as twelfth man, but for the second game he made the team, batting at number seven and bowling at first change, which went well. He only got the one wicket, but it was an important one, bowling out their number three batter with a beautiful inswinger that beat him all ends up, just as he was really starting to open up and spread the ball all over the park.

The really nice thing was that when he turned to watch the crowd cheering him for taking such a big wicket, he spotted Lisa cheering as well. He was surprised — he couldn't think why Lisa had given up part of her Saturday to come and watch an inter-school cricket match. It was nice of her to come and watch him, maybe he had more of a chance than he thought. But when he looked her way a few overs later, she was gone. And she didn't say anything to him about it on Monday, either.

Maybe, Chris hoped, this was because Butthead Hanson announced that the swimming carnival was on in a week's time, and everyone was focused on that. The swimming carnival was a free day, really, which is why the school tried to get it out of the way as early as possible. In the junior years, they really pushed for everyone to enter in some event, but for the two senior years you only had to enter if you wanted, and everyone else pretty much got to bum around for the day. Chris had placed okay in a couple of the backstroke events last year, so he thought he'd have a go again. The class focus was on the girls' freestyle events. Jane, a girl from another class in year eleven, had won the four hundred and eight hundred metre freestyle races consistently over the last few years, but this time Lisa was all talk about she was going to win them off her. The class figured that this would give them a chance of winning the year eleven class championship in the overall points standings.

The day of the swimming carnival was fine and hot, with a forecast of high thirties and hot northerly winds. Since the pool was outdoors, there would be a few extra late entrants in the races just to give people a chance to get in the water more often. Chris approved of the hot weather: it would increase the length of time that the girls would wear just their bathers. And some of them were hot. None more so than Lisa. She was wearing a simple bikini that was modelled after a triathlon bikini. Maybe it was the cut, or maybe it was just because she was such a babe, but Chris hadn't seen anyone look quite so sexy in a triathlon bikini before. And she liked it; she stripped down to the bikini as soon as they got to the pool, and stayed that way for the whole day.

Chris's races were early in the morning, not long after the buses dropped them off, and he placed okay, a third in the one hundred metres and a second in the two hundred metres. He was reasonably happy with that performance — swimming wasn't really his thing. Everyone's focus was on the girls' four hundred metre freestyle race, since Jane and Lisa had been making so much noise about the outcome; they were both acting like guys. Chris had jokingly asked Lisa if she was taking testosterone, but that hadn't gone down well.

The big race was the first after lunch, so during lunch there was a sweep, a dollar coin to enter, on the winning swimmer and margin. They just had to be careful that the teachers didn't catch them. Chris bet on Lisa to win by five seconds. No one really had any idea what the outcome was going to be, since the girls had never swum against each other, and there were no heats since generally only those with a chance to place in the final entered anyway.

A sudden hush fell over everyone when the teacher called for the race after lunch. Seven girls walked to the start. As expected, they had placed Jane and Lisa in lanes four and five. Chris knew most of the other girls, though not well, except for the one in lane seven.

He was caught by surprise: Shahia was swimming? Shahia had never begun to fit in at all, she hadn't even tried. She would sit in the back of every subject she shared with Chris, saying as little as she possibly could, not talking to anyone. She didn't speak to anyone, let alone have any friends or belong to a group. And she was the perfect target for teasing, since she'd just look back with a stony face and say nothing. He watched her, wondering what she was doing, when she reached down and lifted her t-shirt. It was a revelation. Shahia was wearing a bikini that looked quite a lot like Lisa's. And she looked pretty good in it. In fact, placed next to Lisa, Shahia would stand up pretty well. She was a little slimmer, but about equally stacked up top, and she had pretty good legs, athlete's legs, that he hadn't really noticed before. The St Joseph's name on her bikini top rather ruined the effect, though. Still, she looked the part when she started swinging her arms to loosen her shoulders.

Chapter 3 »