The Start of the Game
It was the hair.
The first time I saw him was when I was walking through the hall early in the morning with my friend Ash. I only saw the back of him and he was walking with another boy. The school year hadn’t officially started, so seeing a new kid wasn’t unusual at this time of year.
“Look. Its another new kid.” She whispered to me while eyeing him up and down. I looked up and I saw him. From the back all I could tell was that he was quite cute, but this was all due to his figure, his face was concealed from view. His bag hung on one shoulder and he walked with an air of coolness. He looked like he had already been accepted into this school with open arms from the ‘other’ group of people. When I say ‘other’ I mean the people who aren’t exactly my friends.
In my grade the people are separated into three groups, and it isn’t like an actual group separation, but instead a type of student separation depending on personalities likes, and dislikes, and also obviously the type of person you are. My group of friends were just normal people, if you could call us that. We stuck to the safe side of life and weren’t into the whole drugs, smoking, and sex thing which surrounded one of the three groups of people in our grade. We consisted of a large variety of people, artists, sport-aholics, nerds (not the type of nerds who wear glasses, have braces, and the freckles. I mean ‘nerd’ as in just really smart), plain people, and then crazy, but safe in some aspects, people. Sort of like me. If you’re imagining something like the set up of ‘Mean Girls’ with Lindsey Lohan and some actors who I don’t care to know the name of, its not like that. The differences in people are much more subtle and less expressed.
“Who is it?” I asked.
“Dunno.” She said. “but I think he has already made himself friends with Toni. Too late for us I guess.” She laughed. Toni was a particular type of person with a very loud mouth and whose loyalty only lies with those who could familiarize with his crude humor and explicit ways. In other words he was a self-conceited snob and an annoying crap head. My friends and I nicknamed him ‘road kill’ because he looked like he was run over by a bull dozer, he was the skinniest kid in our grade. His face could almost be considered flat, his arms were as thin as a six-year-olds. Ironically, he is the oldest kid in our grade. I think he flunked two grades or something, because he’s already eighteen, but only a freshman.
“Ah what a shame.” I grinned.
That was two hours ago. This is now.
We were in IT class and our teacher, Mr. Brandt, was assigning us places for he said we all chattered too much. He put us all against the wall and one by one called out our names. Then he walked into the class.
I never imagined that someone’s hair could possibly put me into such a trance. I never usually start drooling over a guy according to his looks. My motto was ‘personality before features’. But at this moment I didn’t know how I could resist. My past boyfriends had never been much to look at, but they had been amazing people nonetheless. That was what had confused me. Why had I changed my opinions so suddenly? It wasn’t like me. I had never thought like this before. Why now?
It wasn’t until Ash gently shoved me that I realized that I had been staring at him the whole time while my mind was reeling with thoughts.
“Dude what are you staring at?” She muttered.
“Look!” I said pointing at the new kid. She turned her head in the direction I was pointing at and her mouth opened in gaped silence. “Do you see his hair?"
“Damn.” She whispered. I looked at him again, but this time I looked at his face. He had a perfect tan and small light freckles dotted his face. His eyes were deep and he was just so god damn good looking.
“What a waste!” I said to her remembering who he had been with this morning.
“I agree.” He had to be the cutest boy in the school. Later after the class had finished I found out that his name was Matt. He was half Malaysian and half Canadian. His Malaysian side was of the origninal Malaysians or something. A tribal part which is almost lost and gone. He was fifteen years old and the most amazing thing that I found out was that his birthday was a day before mine. It was on October 8th. I took this as a sign of good luck.
I dropped my bag on the floor of my room and plopped unto my bed and crisscrossed my fingers behind my head.
Sigh.
Would it really even be possible to get a guy like that?
Me?
Well there is no hurt in trying.
But I could just end up getting hurt. I’m sick of getting hurt.
Then don’t get too attached.
But I don’t even know him.
I have the rest of the year to find out.
What if he’s just like all the other people who are jerks and personality-less?
Well then I could just quit going after him if I think so.
Hmmm.
I sat up in my bed.
“Kris, stop being such a wuss!” I said out loud to myself.
It’s year 10, it’s a year to be bold.
Other than that, this chapter is good enough! Now, to comment on #1.
Haha you got it quite right this time. I think you can just say "half Malay and half Canadian" Malays aren't really in tribes anymore. Glad you took the effort to do a wee bit of research. For no reason this is rather amusing! Hahahaha.. Keep it up! I agree with Meep, though, that the words like "jock" and "preps" make the narrator sound immature and it is cliche. It turns certain readers away. I think you should change that. 
Avoid lengthy explanations. In short, you can also say cliques instead of saying this group of people the type of personality etc. You also said there are 3 distinct groups but you never mentioned them. Probably you could write like this: The cliques in my grade are more subtle and less expressed than you would imagine from such movies like Mean Girls. My friends consisted of many different types of people; from sports to nerds. However, some people could only care less about making friends with just about anyone.
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