“Mom! I’m ready to go!” I shouted. (She was in the other room.) “Wait right there Shelly! I have to take first day of school pictures of you, Lydia, and Tony!” She replied from her room. Tony is my little brother. He’s starting first grade this year. And he’s super smug about it too. It’s truly obnoxious. At least he won’t be going to the same school as me. Lydia is going into fourth grade. She’s pretty happy about it. Not annoyingly happy though, which is nice. But of course, she still speaks in third person a lot. She’s going to speech therapy to help with that, which costs a lot of money because it’s outside of school. The other kids, I don’t know how Lydia is able to understand what some of those kids are saying, because they speak like very small children. I guess that’s why they’re in a fancy private school speech class. Anyway, we took our first day of school pictures just in time for me to get to the bus. I get on the bus and look for a seat. I see a girl that looks about my age, so I go and sit next to her. “Hi. My name is Shelly!” I say. The girl looks up. “Oh. Hi. My name’s Daisy.” She says it a little uncertainly, like I might make fun of her if she says the wrong thing. “I love the name Daisy!” I sighed dreamily. “Huh? Really?” Daisy seems confused that I would so love her name. “You have a beautiful name. I really like it. Are you in band?” I asked. “Thank you. Nobody has ever said that to me before. And yes, I am in band. I play alto sax.” She responded. “OMG I’m in band too! I play tenor sax!” I said eagerly. “What’s your first class?” I asked. “Mine is algebra 1.” Daisy said. “Mine is algebra 2,” I said, disappointed. “When’s your band period?” Daisy dug around in her backpack for a minute. When she responded, she had a paper in her hands. “I am… Let’s see… 3rd period band.” “Me too!” I said excitedly. Daisy’s face lit up. “Really! Awesome!” For a while we chatted about how nervous we were about starting high school and what courses we were taking- that kind of stuff. Before we knew it, it was time to get off the bus… and onto the path of high school, however twisty and spinny it may be.