Twenty-Five Pairs by Rachael Ross (Science Fiction, Romance, Erotica)

Twenty-Five Pairs - Chapter One

Harden, Utah 2010

Moving to Harden Utah was just about the weirdest thing that ever happened to me. The best too, I mean. We moved a lot anyway, since my dad worked for the government, so I was kinda used to being different by the time I turned thirteen, but still, taken all in all, it was pretty weird.

The first day of school is always the worst.

At least the kids were nice, most of them, not like when we moved to that place in Texas when I was eleven. I'd gotten beat up my first day there. At the school in Harden most of the other kids smiled and said hi to me, which was pretty much a relief. It was all one school too, which was a lot different than most places where they more or less separated elementary and middle school and high school, you know. This place it was all just one big school, kindergarten to twelfth grade, and I was in the seventh grade.

"Hey new girl," someone said and I'd just sat down in my first class which wasn't a class at all, but something they called homeroom.

"Hi." I turned to look, of course, and it was a boy and a lot older than me, like seventeen probably or maybe even eighteen.

"What's your name?" he asked and he was pretty cute.

Well, he was seriously cute. Kind of big, like a football player kinda, with brown eyes and kind of short brown hair. A handsome face, smiling too, and that made him look really nice.

"Jennifer Pinchbeck? Where are you dear?" the teacher interrupted us before I could answer. She was rather old with tortoise shell glasses and a bad perm like you can only get in a small town beauty parlor.

"Uh, here." I lifted my arm, but not too high.

"Jennifer?" the boy whispered with a smile and I think I blushed, just because everyone was looking at me. I never really liked that feeling very much.

"There you are. Come on up here and introduce yourself," the teacher said and I swallowed hard, but I'd been to a lot of new schools and this had happened to me before.

There were about two dozen kids there, older and younger than me, and homeroom was just for attendance and announcements and stuff like that before school really started. They looked at me, some of them, some of them didn't care, you know. Kids are kids mostly.

I'd worn a new dress anyway, a nice baby blue one with small white daisies on it and a white sash around my thin waist, and my mom had done up my hair. She was always excited about my first day at a new school, because she knew it was sort of hard and felt a little bad about it, I think. She'd wanted to come with me, but I pleaded with her not to. That would have been really bad, as any thirteen year old can tell you.

So I had my longish blonde hair in ringlets, pinned up so they hung down behind my head almost from ear to ear, and it was cute. I liked it and so did my mom. She'd taken a picture of me. She took a lot of pictures of me and all the time too. My mom was weird that way. She liked to tell me I was beautiful, but I didn't know for sure. Maybe I was, but mostly I just felt like…me, you know? And besides, nobody can be beautiful at thirteen anyway, just pretty, so that's what I really was.

"Hi." I licked my lips and kind of rocked on my heels, in my new black Betsy's which all the girls had worn down in Atlanta, but not here I guess.

"Go ahead, dear. Introduce yourself," the teacher said with a smile.

"I'm Jennifer, uh, Jenny or Jen, I guess. Most everybody calls me Jen."

"Hi Jen," half the class said on a cue from the teacher and I always hated that part the most.

"Um, hi, and well, we just moved here from Georgia." I let that sink in, but only because I wasn't sure what else to say. "I have a pet ferret, his name is Slinky and um, I like to read and hang out and stuff," I shrugged. "My favorite TV show is House."

"Good." The teacher was still smiling. "Tell us about your parents. What does your fat

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