Taking Chances Read Free Page A

and continued towards the office. At least I had made a friend. Maybe that would make my day easier.
    “Hello. You must be Miss Baker,” the secretary said at the front desk. She was a short woman with short brown hair and a skinny figure. Her nameplate said Mrs. Hillman.
    “Here is your map, and it’s labeled pretty well, I believe. Your first class is Biology, so you’ll need to turn left after you exit the office, and the lab is the room at the very end of the hallway on your left,” she said.
    “Thank you,” I said to her, taking the map and leaving the office. As Spencer said, it wasn’t hard to find my way around. I didn’t even need the map as I headed down the hall to the science lab.
    I sat down in the Biology lab at an empty blacktop table in the back of the room, and began reading one of my Nicholas Sparks books before the bell rang.
    “Good morning, students.” The older teacher, Mr. Jansen, spoke as class started. “I have text books for you right here and…” He put his hand on a large stack of books. “Martinson?”
    A skinny girl with dingy blond hair doodling on her notebook looked up.
    “Help me pass these out,” he instructed. She stood up shyly, and began to distribute the old, worn textbooks.
    My second class of the day was Calculus. I took a lot of notes, expecting to have trouble paying attention. I’d never found math classes particularly interesting. P.E. came along, and we played basketball, which was never my best sport. Spencer was in my class, and he tried to include me in the game by passing the ball to me occasionally, but when I missed the pass, it embarrassed me even more. Two girls chuckled when I messed up, but Spencer just smiled and said, “Nice try.”
    At the end of class, we all went into the locker rooms to change and then came back out and stood in the hallway until the bell rang. When Spencer came out of the guy’s locker room, he came and stood next to me.
    “You did good today,” he commented. I looked down at my feet and said, “I’m terrible at basketball.”
    Spencer laughed softly. “Not everyone is good at everything, “ he said. “You’ll get better. I’ll help you out.”
    I looked up at him and he was smiling.
    When lunch came around, I stood in line behind a group of freshman girls, including Lillian, who were chatting about the cute guys they’d seen in their classes. It was nice to see that Lillian had made some friends. When it was my turn to pick up my lunch, I realized that there wasn’t a choice of what you ate. It was just the one tray of food. They were serving hot dogs and French fries with ice cream that day, and everyone had the exact same thing. That was another thing I wasn’t used to. At my old school, everything was a la carte.
    When I looked awkwardly for a place to sit in the small lunchroom, I saw Spencer waving at me from the back table. He smiled, and motioned for me to sit with him and his group of friends. I sighed and slowly walked over nervously. His friends seemed engaged in their own conversations, and I didn’t really want to intrude. When I sat down next to Spencer, I realized that the blond-haired boy I’d seen with him in the parking lot was sitting there, too.
    “Hey Sydney.” Spencer said with a smile as I sat down. “Hey guys,” he turned towards his friends and they all looked at him. “This is Sydney Baker. She just moved here from Chicago.”
    “Hey Sydney.” The boy from the parking lot said.
    “Sydney, this is Dean Wickstrom,” Spencer said.
    “Hi, Dean,” I said.
    “This is my twin brother, Michael.” Dean gestured to a boy who looked exactly like him. I knew by his nice smile that Michael would be much nicer than my stepdad, Michael.
    “And that’s Michael’s girlfriend, Annie Fredricks.” She was a pretty girl with honey blond hair and blue eyes.
    “And, this is Jeremy Hall, and his girlfriend, Jacqueline Tyler.” Jeremy was a tall, muscular boy with short, curly, brown hair.