As she made her way through the school gates Meg peered with horrid anticipation at the students coming and going in the courtyard. So far, nobody seemed to pay her any mind and she let out a breath she felt she’d been holding in since leaving home. She was going to be safe for the time being, despite feeling sweaty again with a lump in her stomach that would not release. She looked at her hands, hoping that she wasn’t quivering like leaf. They looked normal if not a little chapped from the cold. The pale gray wedding band glinted on her ring finger sticking out like a bad mole. The ring! Her eyes widened in surprise as awareness of it hit her.

“Damn it! Shit, shit, shit…” spewed out, trailing behind her as she ran to her locker, covering her left hand as if it were injured.

She reached her locker and jerked it open as soon as she swirled the numbers in the padlock. There were a few textbooks inside as well as some paper folders for her assignments. She slid the band off her finger and into a folder and took a second huge breath of relief. How had she forgotten about it? She shook her head in disbelief and mentally smacked herself across the cheek in exasperation. It was good that first period was imminent. Her distress was probably confused for a banal fear of being late for class.

“You doing alright there, Meg? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” A booming smoker’s voice came from behind the locker door.

Meg was so on edge she jumped despite herself. The voice, however, was familiar and appeasing. She turned around and looked up to greet a girl five inches taller than her. To Meg, Alicia Mander was a six-foot giant built like a marble statue. And she had a boisterous attitude to match her size. If Meg’s demeanor was the equivalent of a partially cloudy day with chances of light showers, Alicia was the yellow-hot desert sun, constant and unyielding. It was this sweltering heat that Meg desperately needed to burn away her troubles.

“What’s up Lisha?” Meg grinned despite herself.

“Nothing much. Just got a case of Monday depression. You know how it is. I am so over this high school bullshit!” she knocked her knuckles against her forehead in a display of exasperation. “How ‘bout you? How was your weekend?”

Meg flinched. “Oh, you know. Doing what I can to not freeze to death,” she said desperately trying to be casual.

“Tell me about it!”

“Ha, with the way you exude heat, I’m surprised there aren’t spring daisies popping out of the snow everywhere you go,” Meg jabbed, slowly regaining some life. Maybe the semester would be okay.

“This just in: the origin of global warming has been discovered by Stanford scientists. A woman named Alicia Mander is single-handedly superheating the planet. The military is sending an attack force to neutralize her as we speak,” Alicia took on the matter-of-fact persona of a news anchor. They both chuckled before Alicia asked. “By the way, are you okay? You looked distressed. Did you forget an assignment?”

“Yeah, actually. I forgot to do my pre-calc worksheet.” Meg was not lying. The question had sparked the missing homework back into her mind. Ironically, the worksheet was saving her from coming up with an explanation to diffuse Alicia’s questioning.

“Don’t worry, you can copy mine. It’s math which means if the teacher asks why their identical, we can just say we worked on it together” Alicia proposed like a good friend.

“Done. I’ll buy you a smoothy after classes to pay you back.”

Alicia shook her head. “I can’t. I have basketball practice after school and then the team was planning on going to laser tag afterwards. It’s one of the girls’ birthday today. I’ll take you up on that offer another time though. Trust me, I won’t forget a free smoothy.”

Meg imagined it would have been nice to go laser tagging on her birthday. She opened her mouth to tell Alicia that it wasn’t a problem when she spotted a real problem. Turning the corner into the hallway, followed by a group of other boys as well as brewing storm, was the groom.