"Dance. Smile. Giggle. Marvel. TRUST. HOPE. LOVE. WISH. BELIEVE. Most of all, enjoy every moment of the journey, and appreciate where you are at this moment instead of always focusing on how far you have to go." - Mandy Hale

The weekend passed quickly, with me going to the school each day to get a head start on learning English. I was also started on 7 new medications to go along with my original 8, but I didn't like these ones as much because I had to dry swallow them instead of having water to help. Mama had taken me shopping to get some new clothes as well. It was a pastel light green shirt and a skirt like the one from my old school uniform.

Mama woke me up at around 4 AM so we could walk the 21 blocks to the school and make it before classes start at 7. I was still on home hours though, so I didn't complain. Mama explained how she was able to get me on a free food system at the school so I would have to eat breakfast and lunch there.

'At least lunch is served at the school.' I thought to myself. Back home, we walked the 5 kilometers to school in the early hours, did our classes, then we had an hour long lunch period. The only thing is, they didn't serve lunch at the school, so I would have to either run all the way back home for a 5 minute lunch, or go without food until dinner.

When I got to the gate of the school, the clock outside read 6:15 AM. Mama wished me goodbye and left to her work. I had a bag with a few note books, a special calligraphy fountain pen given to me by Mama, and a lock and change of clothes for physical education. I had also brought my ballet slippers so I could continue to practice, but other than these, I had nothing else for school.

The gates to the school weren't even opened yet so I just sat and waited. Around 5 minutes later, a cheerful brown haired boy came up to the school with a brown skinned boy with short hair. As they came closer, I realized that it was the cheerful boy and his friend from Friday. They were still talking about legos but I heard the cheerful boy say that a real sized version of it would be 'cooler'.

When they saw me, they were a bit surprised, but then Mr. Lee came up in a car.

"Hey kids. How are you this morning?" He asked happily as he got out of the car. He started to get out a key chain and approach the locked gate as the two replied.

"Oh, we're great Mr. Lee!" Cheerful replied and his friend nodded.

"That's good! By the way, Peter, those new books on Gamma Radiation should be here by today. You sure know how to pick complicated reads, don't you?" Mr. Lee said as he unlocked the gate. Newly named Peter got even more cheerful and started gushing about the author, Bruce Banner, and his amazing works.

I just got up and started to go through the gate when Mr. Lee addressed me.

"How about you Valentyna, how's your morning been so far."

I stopped and looked at him in surprise.

"I-I miss home, but I will do fine," I replied. "But how did you remember my name? I only said it once." I asked him, tilting my head to show my confusion.

He didn't reply. He just smiled warmly and walk through the gates. I stared after him for a second before turning to Peter and tilting my head again to ask him if he knew. He just shrugged and turned his face a bit so that I couldn't see it.

He took a breath and turned back, smiling. "I'm Peter. This is Ned." He said pointing to the boy next to him.

"You m-must be new here, I-I've never seen you before. Do you ne-eed any help finding your cl-classes?"

I almost shook my head. I had gotten a tour on Friday after all. I knew where my classes were. But his smile seemed to draw me in, making me not want to say no. So I didn't.

I nodded and he smiled wider. Ned looked at him with what seemed like confusion, but either Peter didn't notice or he didn't care. I would say he didn't notice.

Peter, Ned and I walked around and they soon found out that I didn't know very much English. Instead, they talked about science and math. When I asked Peter to explain it, I found that it was things that I had done in my first year of school. I think I surprised them both when I joined their science talk and kept up, even if I replaced words I didn't know in English for their closest counterpart in Ukrainian. They lead me into the Cafeteria and when I looked at the clock, it read 6:46. That must explain why there were actually a lot of people in there.

"Hey, Valentyna, you can sit with us at lunch if you want." Peter offered me. I smiled widely. "Of course. See you then." I said as the bell rang and I stood up to get to my class. By the way he smiled when I said that, I'm sure I made a friend.

♬.♩.♪.♫✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧♫.♪.♩.♬

Peter's POV

I really like Valentyna. She's smart and really pretty too. I thought about this on my way to lunch, and I'm sure I smiled.

Suddenly, a foot came out of nowhere and I tripped, scattering all of the pages I hadn't bothered to put into my backpack yet.

"Watch where you're going Penis! You'll never get anywhere being as big of a klutz as you are!" I heard Flash say as he continued walking as if nothing happened.

I just sighed when I saw all of the other students who were just stepping on my papers when, I saw a pair of hands shooing aways some feet off of a page and pick it up. The hands did this a few more times before their owner came closer and held out the pages to me. I looked at who the hands were attached to and found Valentyna expectantly holding out the papers, waiting for me to take them.

"Th-thank you!" I stuttered out. She just tilted her head and smiled.

"It is what friends do, no?"

I smiled and nodded, taking the papers she had offered. The two of us walked to lunch with both of us talking about what we had learned. Her eyes seemed to sparkle when she talked about learning to speak English better. They also sparkled when I talked to her about the book that I was waiting for, the one written by Dr. Bruce Banner on gamma radiation.

She truly had a love for science, just like I did. We had sat down where Ned had found a spot for us and were almost done with our lunches when a little alarm went of on a really poorly made watch on Valentyna's wrist. She looked at it a bit disappointed.

"I have to go, but I will be back before lunch ends." And with that she headed out of the Cafeteria.

I must have looked disappointed because Ned nudged me and sent me a questioning look.

"She's the only girl I know who seems to love everything about school. She's nice too. She stopped others from stepping all over my papers after Flash tripped me and my papers went everywhere." I answered his unspoken question.

"So you go all puppy eyes because she's nice and loves school? That's all?"

I felt my face get red. "Ned, I just met her. Plus, we're to young for relationships."

"You haven't even taken a glance at Liz though."

My mind stopped working as I realized that he was right. I quickly came up with an answer though. "Well I can't stare at her all the time, that would be creepy Ned."

He just nodded, but it was clear he didn't buy it. "Sure, sure." Just then Valentyna came back and the bell rang, signaling the end of lunch.

Ned and I walked and talked to Valentyna all the way to our home class, which happened to be Science. When I told her what it was, she smiled even more and started to talk excitedly in a language that I didn't understand. Still, she seemed happy and I looked at Ned and tiled my head towards her, to prove my point that she was very happy and excited about school.

Ned just complained a bit.

"Uhhh... We have P.E. after this."

When we got into class, Ned and I split up to go to our seats while Valentyna went up to the teacher. Everyone had settled down quickly, they all like to dissect new students with their eyes when one comes through our classroom door.

"Everyone, this is Valentyna Burick. She just recently moved to New York from Ukraine, so I expect you all to be nice to her. It's not easy moving to a different country, so give her a warm welcome." Mr. Johnson addresses us and paused to glare. It was as if he was silently daring us to step out of line. No one did. "Ms. Burick, you'll be sitting next to Flash. He'll be your lab partner as well. Raise your hand Flash."

Well that's bad luck. Flash raised his hand, looking very bored. Valentyna went over and sat down reluctantly.

The rest of class passed rather quietly, with Flash finally examining Valentyna. When we started doing our review lab, Flash didn't even do anything, he just watched her do everything and didn't even bother to help. That got me a bit mad, I'm not going to lie.

She seemed to do just fine on her own though. Mr. Johnson seemed to see this, but he's the kind of teacher to just observe. If he finds you not doing work, he'd normally deduct points and it would lower your grade. Flashes parents however, had paid for his grades to stay As no matter what he does. Still, I could see Mr. Johnson writing down some notes, and the paper looked to me like a report card sheet.

Science passed rather quickly and Valentyna was ready and waiting by the time the bell rang for passing period.

"You might like P.E. who knows. Last week, the teacher had told us that we were going to be choosing our own units today for what we want to do until Christmas break." I reassured her as us three walked to P.E.

She nodded and smiled at the idea. When we got into the gym, the normal stuff happened. Except that Valentyna walked up to the Mrs. Brown, the PE teacher, with a paper. When she read it, she nodded and just directed her to a spot near the front of the class. Mrs. Brown sent us all off to the locker rooms and when I made it back out, I saw Valentyna had on other P.E. clothes.

Instead of the school uniform, she just had blue shorts and a grey shirt with her name written on them. When stretches started, Valentyna seemed to do better than well over half the class. We were told to sit and Ned and Valentyna came over to sit by me.

"Alright. So as I told you on Friday, you will be picking what unit you want to do until Christmas break. There are only three to choose from. Pickle Ball, Blacktop Hockey, or Gymnastics." Valentyna's eyes lit up when she said Gymnastics. "You'll have to run two laps around the school and make it back here before you can choose. There's only 15 people allowed in each group, Pickle Ball gather closest to the door leading outside, Blacktop Hockey on the other side of the room, Gymnastics in the middle. Go!"

Everyone shot up and we raced to the door leading outside, each wanting to finish the run so we could choose what we wanted before it was full. I faintly noticed that Valentyna didn't start running. She went to the middle of the room and stayed there.

I didn't have time for that though. I ran fast enough to not lose my breath and for Ned to be able to keep up. By the time Ned and I were halfway done, everyone else had stopped running. They had all used to much energy starting off, they couldn't run very well now.

Because of this, Ned and I were two of the first people finished. When we got back into the Gym, I saw that Valentyna was still sitting right in the middle of the room where I had seen her go when everyone else started to run. I shrugged it off and went to sit with her in the line for Gymnastics. 'It couldn't hurt to try.' I thought.

Ned looked at me like I was crazy, but joined us in the line for Gymnastics. Around 15 minutes later, everyone else had finished and the Gymnastics line was the only one that was missing a few people.

"Well it looks like were all doing Gymnastics." I muttered to myself.