Paper Airplanes

Chapter 4

        Jordan woke up late. His alarm wasn’t on, probably due to his idiot brother, and his mom was calling him.
        “JORRRRRR-DAAAAAAANNNNNNNN!!!! YOU’RE GONNA MISS THE BUS!”
        The boy picked up his things and ran outside, just as the bus was pulling out. “No… no, no, no, no, no…” His ran his fingers through his curly hair, even though there wasn’t much for his fingers to run through. He paced back and forth. “Okay… okay… I missed the bus. No big deal! I’ll just… take the extra car!”
        His family didn’t own an extra car.
        He shook his head, clearing his thoughts. “I’ll ask my friends for a ride,” he told himself.
        All his friends took the bus.
        Jordan groaned. There was nothing her could do but walk, and the school was about seven miles away. If it took the average person around ten minutes to walk a mile, he would be an hour late for school—at LEAST, putting a blemish on his spotless record.
He shrugged and started walking down his street. He had memorized the way to his school, so he had no need to follow the bus.
If only I hadn’t studied for that exam…
Jordan grinned glumly to himself. It didn’t matter, because now he was going to MISS the exam.
He sped up from a walk to a slow jog that was amplified by ten times because of the enormous weight of his backpack. He stopped and panted and mumbled, “Gods, this backpack is heavy.” He readjusted it and continued to jog.
His phone vibrated in his pocket.

Alex:
        yo, dude. where r u? u aint in class

Jordan:
        I’m running late.

Alex:
        rlly? U rlly runnin l8?

Jordan:
        Yes, really!

        A honk interrupted Jordan’s texting. He looked up at the driver. Then he realized he was standing in the middle of a road, having stopped while crossing it, and he mentally face palmed himself.
        “Hey, hotshot!” the driver, a brunette girl, called, “I could’ve killed you!”
        Jordan just stared.
        The girl rolled her eyes. “That means get in the car before someone DOES. You’re lucky there’s no traffic behind me, or else I would’ve. I’ll take you to school. Hollvale Public, right?”
        He nodded dumbly.
        The driver patted the seat next to her. “Come on! I go there, too. Plus, if I wanted to kidnap someone, I doubt it would be you.”
        He opened his mouth to defend himself, then figured that if he was getting a free ride, he would be stupid to anger the driver. Jordan opened the door and got into the passenger seat. The first thing he noticed was the crappy leather. The old vehicle was clearly a hand-me-downed hand-me-down.  He searched for something to say. All he could come up with was: “Uh… nice car.”
        “Lying is wrong,” the brunette replied.
        “Right… So… what’s your name?”
        The girl looked never took her eyes off the road before answering. “I’m Cleo.”