Thursday, September 22, 2011

A page from Nina's diary: September 13th

Disclaimer:
this is a work in progress and a result of a continuous stream of consciousness. Whatever version appears in the final draft will be a lot shorter than this. In the book, it takes place at the beginning of Chapter 3, the evening of Nina's first day of school where she bumps into Jonas at lunch and is unexpectedly rendered blind and unconscious for several hours after the fact

September 13th

As far as first days of school goes, today was anything but ordinary. I never expected to make friends on the first day. All of them were amazingly beautiful girls so when they invited me into their group, I couldn't believe it. It seemed too good to be true, but all of them were genuinely nice. Although Mai, the designated leader, seems a little conceited or at least seems to think she knows everything about everyone in the school. I really don't want to turn down easy friends in a brand new place, so I'll see how that goes.
From the looks of it, I could be a cheerleader. They invited me to try out with them and think I have the right build for it. Sure, I'm not the athletic type and I'm not into sports all that much, but anything's worth a try. Gymnastics was a lot of fun and I'm going to miss it among a lot of other things back home. But this is my home now and I'm more than willing to make the best of it.
I promised myself I'd get to see the forest in my backyard up close after school. Heck, I promised my new friends that I'd meet them after school so we could compare notes before the try-outs next month.
I never got around to doing any of that. I barely made it halfway through the day before the extraordinary happened. Well, extraordinarily annoying for a number of reasons. But it turned out for the best for the most part. One second I'm rushing over to Mai's lunch table and the next, I bump into somebody and everything went black. I couldn't see anything but shadows and I couldn't even stand on my feet. The boy I bumped into was extremely gracious about it and strangely enough, he was more upset than I was that I was in such bad shape. He immediately carried me off to the nurse's office, stayed with me for a minute or two and that was it. I woke up in my own bed some five hours later, my sight back and my balance restored. He was even kind enough to make sure I got whatever little homework I had. Luckily it was only a few geometry problems and a couple reading assignments. After the half a day I had, I'm not sure how much I can handle. I feel fine now, but there's no telling if something else won't happen.
I should be upset or embarassed to go through this on my first day, but I'm neither of those things. In fact when the boy was with me at the nurse, I wished I had my sight just long enough to see his face, to see if there was any way I could thank him for helping me or even apologize for him having to go through all this trouble to make up for my clumsiness. There was regret in his voice that told me he didn't want to leave me as much as I didn't want him to leave. He had a way of keeping me calm and relaxed. I'm looking back now and finding myself so grateful for all that. I wouldn't be able to live this down otherwise. In a touching and unexpected gesture, he massaged my forehead and kissed before he left. He refused to give me his name, but I overheard the nurse call him Jonas.
Jonas... now that's an extraordinary name.

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