Danielle Part 1

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever." The tall, dark haired girl mumbled as she walked through campus. "It's just one grade. I mean, it can't hurt my average that bad. Can it?" The February sky seemed to mirror her thoughts, dark, heavy, and threatening to break loose at any moment. Around her, the regular school lives of hundreds of students continued, as did the girls stormy mutterings. "Hah! Who am I kidding? London! Right, Mom. 'You'll have a fabulous, glorious time, dear.'" She mimicked her mother's extravagant tone and British accent.
Storming on to the rhythm of her thoughts and blinded by her mood, she walked straight into some guy standing around with his friends. "Hey! Watch it!" he yelled, turning around. "Oh, sorry," he said, recognizing her. "Are you alright?" The girl nodded wordlessly. "I'm Keith. And you're…" The girl snapped to attention. "I'm, uh, Danielle," she said. He laughed, "Well, hello then, 'uh, Danielle'." Danielle smiled warmly.
A blond girl in a pink beret said, "You're new right? Didn't you come from, like, America or something?" Danielle vaguely wondered how these people knew so much about her. "Yeah," she said, "From California." A loud car horn sounded in the distance. Ouch. Only Danielle's mother would dare to buy a car that loud. "I'm sorry," she said with a grimace, "I think my mother is here." "Oh, that's OK," said Keith sympathetically, "See you around, then." Danielle said goodbye, then waved and set off in the general direction of the honk. There!
Her mother's bright yellow Mercedes awaited Danielle in the parking lot. Halfway to the attention snatching vehicle, Danielle heard someone call her name and turned around to see the beret girl from before hurrying forward with a black sharpie in one hand. "Hey! Danielle! Wait up!" she called in her Londoner's accent. When the blonde reached Danielle, she prattled, "Here is my name and phone number. Call me if you need me like for English homework because you're in my class and maybe we could meet up somewhere or something 'kay sweetie?" Before Danielle could respond, the other girl was off and away as speedily as she had flown in.
Danielle's mother honked the horn again and yelled for her daughter to "hurry up, dear." Alright, mother, thought Danielle, if only you'd stop using your car to kill every person's brain cells within a mile of here! Danielle hurried over to her mother's device of torture. As soon as th words, "Hello, Mrs. Rosings" were out of Danielle's mouth, her mother started the flow of babble that would most likely be the main reason for her daughter's displeasure for the rest of Mrs. Rosings life. "Oh, what nonsense, child! You shall call me mother! After all, I have given you nothing but the best attentions since the day you were born." As her mother continued, Danielle almost gagged at the mention of her birth. And 'the best attentions?' Her mother had abandoned her two weeks after she was born, and only bothered to contact her when she heard of her successes in a painting competition. How was it possible, that Danielle was born of this lady, Mrs. Rosings, who provided a deep contrast to Danielle's personality and looks? The only similarity was… Well, there was none. Danielle was fit but not as thin as her mother, who was downright calorie deprived and yet somehow had enough bustling energy to sustain all of England. Danielle sometimes obsessed about her looks, despite all her friends' opinions. She had dark, perfectly straight hair and her father's twinkling caramel eyes that looked almost orange in the sunlight.
Now those eyes stared out the window at the gloomy landscape sliding by. Oh, how she missed her dad and Sarah, too, her father's new fiancée.  
But instead of riding the horses on the ranch and feeding Dakota her daily carrot or apple, she was stuck here. In England.
As the blond girl with the beret might have said: bugger.