Chapter 1
New Student
The day Elizabeth Annabel Worthington came into my life was the day I knew things for me would never be the same. Before Elizabeth (or Eliza as she preferred) my life was the normal boring drab you might expect from a eighteen year old normal guy. I was an average student, my friends were average students. I had a perfectly average life.
My name is Jason Stanson I live in a small county of Ventura, California which sat on the very northern tip of what could still be considered Los Angeles. I lived in a small house that sat just off the highway that led up to Lake Casitas. The house was tucked against the woodlands that began here and led up into Sequoia national forest much further northeast.
My father Sam, and I moved here about ten years ago just after my mother Emily passed away from breast cancer. I was only seven at the time and most of the things I know about her I had to learn second hand from my father. He started his own plumbing and carpentering business upon moving to Ventura and was well known by the locals. My father had always been good with his hands and was the only man I knew who enjoying working dirty. Personally I'll pass.
Ventura itself is a medium size town of at least 150,000. Yet despite the size it always had a kind of small town feel, everyone knew almost everyone. The town nestled against forest and led right out to the California coast, it added a diverse culture to the people here. One of my favorite things to do with my friends was to hang out down by the beach and watch the surf. I wasn't a surfer but my friends were, I usually just watched and waved at them when they caught a good swell.
Ventura High School held a whopping 689 students across five grades which meant a little over a hundred kids per grade and all of them spread out amongst themselves at lunch time. However the student body was still large enough that a new student wouldn't cause that much of a fuss, sometimes nobody even knew about a new kid until they showed up in class.
Eliza Worthington was not the case. She showed up on a Thursday which alone was odd, but the whole school was alive with chatter about this student. It was just two weeks before Christmas Vacation so she would be fresh for the second semester come January. Girls in the hall already talked about hating her for her looks. The jocks whispered about seeing the most beautiful girl they'd ever seen.
My best friend Tim Brand, we just called him TB to get a rise out of him, and I saw no sign of this girl except the impact and buzz she had started among the student body. That changed when we got to fifth period. Tim and I had the same math class for fifth period which we both hated equally. Not only was the class boring because our teacher looked a hundred years old but also acted like it, but he sat across the room from me so we couldn't even toss answers at each other or snicker behind the teachers back. Snickering was a past time of ours, like baseball.
Anyway I sat in class waiting for the bell to ring, doodling on a spare piece of notebook paper. I glanced up when the class suddenly went silent. There handing our teacher Mr. Hoover a registration note was the new girl, Elizabeth Worthington. My breath caught in my throat and I fought against myself to not stare but couldn't control myself. The entire class was doing the exact same thing.
When the murmurs in the hall said that this Elizabeth was gorgeous they had been grossly understated how truly magnificent she really looked. Her skin was a soft pale perfect, with a slight hint of rose in her cheeks. She had long wavy raven black hair that fell around her shoulders perfectly. Her body looked like it was carved from stone to be forever perfect, her every movement held an uncanny grace that only a ballet dance ever could hope to achieve. Yet her eyes are what called to me more than anything else, they were the most amazing color of brown I had ever seen. A brown that was almost a flat gold, they pulled me in like they fueled life itself.
I instantly was in love with her. I guess not true love, more like a crush, but still the fire for something more burned in my chest waiting for only a single spark of hope that she would acknowledge my existence to ignite it to a passion.
I watch as she got her slip signed by Mr. Hoover and tucked it into the pocket of the black book bag she had slung over her shoulder. She shifted the weight of the bag and straightened out the white blouse she was wearing. The color of her top brought out the rosy color in her cheeks even more, and her black skirt revealed flawless legs from blow mid-thigh.
Mr. Hoover pointed her to an empty seat and I inhaled sharply when I noticed it was right next to mine. I tried to watch her walk toward me without staring but I failed miserably. My eyes still hooked on hers as she walked down the row of seats toward her new desk. She held herself with confidence, seemingly unaware of all the eyes on her as she walked through the room.
Until her eyes met mine.
She stopped short when her gaze met mine and something crossed her thoughts that made my chest swell in happiness. I'm not sure if it was amazement or shock, but maybe it was a little of both, perhaps it was even interest. I had to force myself to look away, I didn't want to freak her out or appear like a tool bag. I poured fake interest in the chapter of the textbook we would be looking at today.
I remained aware of her gaze still on me as she slowly took her seat. It was a hard fight to not glance at her every five seconds throughout the class. I never concentrated on Mr. Hoovers lecture so hard in my life, but I did it. Elizabeth didn't seem to have that same fear of appearing foolish; I felt her eyes on me the entire lecture. Unsettling as it was, it didn't completely bother me. It built my confidence, I would ask to sit with her at lunch after this period ended and guessing by how she never took her eyes off me she had to be interested.
The bell finally rang and I turned to ask Elizabeth to hang out at lunch. When I turned in my seat to look at her, she was already gone. I looked around, catching a glimpse of her just as she left the room. How had she gotten there so fast? I frowned and stuffed my books into my backpack and left class.
Tim was waiting for me in the hall as usual with a dumb grin on his face. He fell into step beside me as we made our way to the cafeteria. The eleventh and twelfth grade students had a separate lunch period than the rest of the school to prevent over crowding at the lunch lines, so the halls weren't that crowded as we headed down to the lunch lines.
Tim was bursting with excitement. "Oh man. Can you believe her?" He asked me. "The hottest of all hotties in our class. I can't believe your luck, man. I mean she sits right next to you."
Tim was a great friend, the kind of guy that would always get your back no matter what the odds. He only had one flaw, a maturity of a ten year old, most of the time. Tim could be really deep and mature when he wanted too, but most of the time he was a joking big mouth that sometimes could rub you the wrong way if you didn't know him well enough. He was a tall guy, standing a good five inches over my five foot ten inch tall self. He had short dirty blonde hair that he kept spiked, and never wore anything other than surf T-shirts and blue jeans. Today his shirt was yellow with a picture of a large wave on it.
I shrugged. "I'm sure she'll enjoy being called a hottie." I said flatly.
"Of course." Tim said with a grin. "Chicks love compliments. Hey I saw her staring at you in class, did she talk to you at all?"
I shook my head. "She was staring at me?" I asked in ignorance.
