Read Toast Page 4


  Chapter 4

  Cool hair spells out cool person.

  BEEP. BEEP. Aghr! Why does it go off so early? Oh yeah, today is a school day. I need to get ready for school; otherwise I'll miss the bus! It's Wednesday, the second day of term two of school eight. I want it to be Saturday already!!

  I get dressed into my uniform, same as yesterday, but I do my hair differently today. I tie as much hair as possible into a ponytail. Then I walk into the kitchen, put an apple into a brown paper bag and put it into my shoulder bag. I walk into the lounge room and pull the Foo Fighters CD out of the CD rack and I put it into the CD player. Mitch should wake up very soon. I chose the song Pretender.

  I run to the bus stop and I get there five minutes before the bus pulls up. I climb onto the bus. I'm heading towards the seat I was in yesterday, but someone yells out my name. I look up the aisle of the bus and I see Nathan waving me over. Today there are four people sitting up the back. I walk up the aisle trying not to lose my confidence. I am Kaila, and I do not get afraid. I can tell the other girls are watching because they have suddenly gone quiet.

  "Kaila! It's nice to see you!" Nathan says as I reach them.

  They make me sit in the middle with Nathan and Josh on my left and Ash and the other guy on my right.

  The other guy who I didn't know introduces himself as Sam. Sam has blond surfy hair. Apparently he still uses the surfers’ look in winter.

  The whole time we're on the bus Josh doesn't say a thing. He acts as if I'm not sitting with them. Nathan is chatting away and he's really nice and very friendly, the total opposite to his friend.

  Nathan leans over and whispers in my ear "He doesn't like taking the bus. He prefers to drive his car." I nod as if that explains everything. "I don't know if you have noticed, but Josh is a bit shy." I raise an eyebrow. Now that's a pretty interesting piece of information. I glance across at Josh. He does look pretty uncomfortable. I turn around to ask Ash about Josh, she's pulling out her iPod and I momentarily forget what I want to ask her.

  "What music do you listen to, Ash?" I really want to know. Most people think I'm insane for listening to all that rock music.

  "I like Match Box 20, Linkin Park, Foo Fighters, Green Day and sometimes Eskimo Joe. What are you into?" Ash says nodding her head to the music.

  "The same actually, Eskimo Joe is awesome. Occasionally I listen to AC/DC and INXS gets mixed up in my choices!" I say grinning at her. We smile at each other. How toast is this!

  We get off the bus and walk through the park together. As we're going through the gates, Ash pulls me towards the girls’ bathroom. As soon as we're through the door, she pulls my hair tie out, and puts some gel through it. It's really toast. In the end I have spikes, curls and flicks. It hasn't looked this good since I got it cut.

  Then she pulls a pair of black, white and light pink skater shoes out of her bag. I put them on and then I untuck my shirt like hers. When she's all done, I look in the mirror. I have blue eyeliner on and it looks great. When I walk out of the bathroom I feel like another person.

  We walk across the courtyard towards our group. Nathan sees us coming and walks towards us. He gives me the look up and down and nods. He turns to face Ash.

  "Nice job, Ash. She looks great!"

  We walk over to the rest of the group and they make me turn around so that they can see my hair. They all say I look really pretty.

  Ash waves Josh over. We're all smiling at each other so much that it feels like a smiling competition.

  "So, Josh, what do you think of Kaila? Isn't she cute?" I can tell this is going to end badly just by the choice of words. I feel myself starting to blush.

  He winks at me and turns to Ash. He says to her, "You've overdone it a bit." Oh, he's in for it now; Ash is going to kill him. Even if I don't really know Ash that well it is girl vitality, that if a girl asks you what you think of her creation, you smile and nod your head and say "it looks good".

  Ash looks at Josh, and splutters angrily. "I've over done it a bit? I've over done it a bit? She looks hot and all you can say is I've overdone it?" I know I shouldn't laugh, but this is way too funny. She looks at me angrily and then she starts laughing too.

  With these guys life seems to be more fun than I ever thought it could be, I look at Ash and realise she's probably the coolest person I've ever met.