INEZ ARCHER WAS WEIGHING the advantages and disadvantages of being late to class. 

Sure, the disadvantages seemed to outweigh the advantages by a landslide, assuming that there were any advantages, anyway. Being late to class meant being marked tardy, which will eventually count towards her attendance record. Being late can also mean getting a citation. A certain number of citations could lead up to the punishment of an in-school suspension, which was never a pleasant type of thing. Just thinking about the horrible outcomes of being late gave Inez bone-chilling anxiety, which caused her to believe that she would be marked tardy — or even worse — get a citation. It was a nightmare to think of, especially on the first day of her senior year. 

Like any other new high school senior, she craved a fresh start, not a rough, bumpy start. She was surely headed towards that direction, however. With a rough estimate, Inez assumed that it's been about a minute since the late bell has rung, and halls were becoming emptier by every second. 

She was already treading into some thin ice. What a way to start off a new school year. 

At this point, all Inez could do was to hope that her teacher wouldn't do anything drastic, like sending her off to a nearby tardy station so she could get a tardy slip. There was no way that her teacher could've done so. It was because she was going to her last class of the day — choir — her all-time favorite class period. It topped core subjects like English and electives like Ceramics, combined and alone. It was all because of one thing, too. 

Singing. 

Singing and music is Inez's ultimate go-to passion, one that taking choir as an elective class preserved. The idea of singing in front of a charismatically roaring crowd has warmed Inez's heart ever since she was little. When she started high school, her choir director, Dr. Terry, has generously aided Inez in her vocal skills, which helped her improve drastically. 

For her senior year, she'd be getting the same choir director, which she was forever ecstatic about. When the girl arrived at the choir room, she slowly paced her way through the loud swinging door, taking a brisk glance at everyone inside. Based on how loud the door was, it had to have grabbed everyone's attention. It did. The small bubbling conversation that stirred throughout the room toned down as heads turn to discover who was at the door. 

That was one of the disadvantages of being late to class. Getting watched. Even if Inez loved singing in front of ecstatic crowds, that didn't mean she liked being stared at, especially in the awkward situation she's in right now. But she was sure as heck lucky that her teacher didn't throw her out of the classroom so she could retrieve a tardy slip. By now, she had to have been at least two minutes late. 

At least I won't be marked AWOL, she pondered. Being marked tardy was just as bad in a way, but it wasn't so extreme, at least. 

Taking a glance at the chairs her classmates were seated on, Inez observed the formation of them. The chairs were placed in rows, a walkway down the middle to divide the seats into two sections. Most of the seats were filled except for a few here and there, so Inez stood where she was in front of the class, hesitant on where to sit. 

"Inez, just in time. I was about to take roll, so consider yourself lucky because you're sort of late," Dr. Terry announced with a genuine smile as she gestured to the empty seats scattered around. "Please, have a seat anywhere for now." 

The girl decided to take a seat in the front row, next to her best friend, Jolien. It was a win-win situation, considering that the girls were fortunate enough to sit beside each other. The pair is practically inseparable from each other, being that they've been best friends since kindergarten.

Friendships normally don't last that long, but they were fortunate enough that theirs did. Back in grade school, they had similar interests in playing with wooden blocks and Barbie dolls alone during their free time. Their friendship skyrocketed from there, following them into middle school, high school, and where they are today, their senior year in high school. It was amazing to think about how far they've come along since then. 

Jolien blew a kiss to Inez with her palm before she frowned with disappointment. "Girl, where were you? You're like, two minutes late. I was one of the first few people here and people kept on trying to take your seat. I had to keep shooing them away like flies." 

"I came here from all the way across the school, and I took a main stairwell. That was a bad, bad idea," Inez explained briefly as she adjusted her new box braids, which laid on her back accordingly. "But thank you so much for saving me a seat." 

Jolien nodded before facing forward to the teacher, who was trying her best to take attendance without calling too many names out. After all, most of the students in the room have been in her choir classes for the past three years. In fact, there were only a few new faces in the room, which no one recognized. But luckily, Dr. Terry didn't have too much trouble with their most names, only stumbling on a few, so she finished with attendance in no time. She placed her clipboard on her table and cleared her throat. The room fell silent as everyone directed their undivided attention towards her. 

"Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Advanced Mixed Chorus," Dr. Terry proclaimed with a generous smile. "As a lot of you know, I'm Dr. Terry and I'm hoping that everyone had an amazing summer and is prepared for this new, advanced level of choir. This school year, like usual, we will be having our usual four required performances and occasional after-school practices to help better prepare ourselves." 

The energy of the room began to hype up. Nearly everyone began whispering to their neighbor of how everything would turn out for the choir. Even Inez threw Jolien a charismatic look, grinning from ear to ear at each other. For students like them, this specific choir has been extremely successful in the recent years. And in some cases, it was even fun to go out in public for certain performances. Inez in particular was looking forward to new, yet fun beginnings that laid out in the path the choir and her were about to take. 

"I know that you all are excited, but we have to start preparing ourselves so we can be ready for our first performance, which will be by the end of next month, October," Dr. Terry advised before she picked up a small stack of paper from a table. "Because it's the first day back, we'll start off easy by practicing scales. After that, I will let you preview and listen to the music we will be playing at our first performance." 

The woman began to pass out a couple of papers to each student. These papers contained daily vocal scales and the sheet music for the songs they will perform, Joyful Joyful from Sister Act 2 and Maybe I'm Amazed from Joyful Noise, both widely popular songs from the hit movies. Based on the baffled buzz swarming around the room, the students weren't too familiar with the songs, but there was always room to learn them. Learning songs started off with choral scales, which vaguely stood in the back of their minds due to the summer vacation. 

Dr. Terry, however, was about to bring it back to their memories. 

She took a seat at her brown, baby grand piano, counting down from three so the choir could vocally prepare themselves for their warm-ups. She played several notes on the piano, expecting the students to mimic the sounds with their voices as they looked on their pieces of sheet music. Dr. Terry assured her choir that this exercise would familiarize themselves with music notes over again. With two months of fun in the sun and not a single music notes in mind, it was completely ideal to start of nice and easy with some basic scales. 

The students' voices were satisfactory when it came to lower notes but got more and more out of tune as they reached higher notes. Dr. Terry acknowledged that by performing the same warm-up over again until a large majority of the students nailed it. Warm-ups weren't at all difficult for Inez, who found them easy, especially the higher notes. Her vocal range was broad and diverse. Sure, she didn't have an Ariana Grande type of vocal range, but she could hit high notes like she could hit low notes. 

Once the class was through with warm-ups, Dr. Terry allowed the class to take a quick vocal break by going back to her office to retrieve her laptop so she could present the music to the class. Jolien and Inez used this opportunity as a time to dive into deep conversation. They couldn't let any time waste away down the drain, especially on their first day back at school. 

"You ate the warm-ups up. Your vocals are just . . . amazing," Jolien complimented generously as held out her hand to give Inez a high five. "And it's only the first day back from break, Nez." 

"You're too kind, Jolien. It's nothing, really," Inez insisted with a giggle. "You know, you sound good yourself." 

"Maybe, but you sound out of this world," Jolien exaggerated before brushing a strand of her naturally straight, shoulder-length mocha brown hair behind her ear. Over the summer, she cut her hair short so it could simply reach her shoulders. It was surely a change from the longer hair Jolien has had over the years, but things change as people evolve. Being new seniors in high school, both Inez and Jolien knew that. "Can you believe that we're seniors now? It seems like yesterday we were just in kindergarten playing with Barbie dolls and wooden blocks." 

"Time really does fly. I still can't believe that we'll be graduating in the next nine months," Inez nodded in agreement. "That's why we have to enjoy our time here. To me, chorus is like an extracurricular activity, so we definitely have to make the most out of it, especially since we're here together."  

Jolien nodded her head in agreement. "I couldn't have said it any better." 

Soon enough, the pair watched the teacher gently place her laptop on a stand and plugged multiple cords into it. The projector was turned on, which presented her screen that contained two YouTube browser tabs of the music the group will sing. 

"Settle down, class," Dr Terry announced over the erupting chatter of her students. The room fell silent to the point where anyone could hear a pin drop. "Here is the first song we will sing — Maybe I'm Amazed. I want you to observe the video closely, but I also want you to feel the song. Listen to the way the lyrics are sung." She pressed the play button before she sat back on a wheat brown wooden, kitchen stool. 

The class observed the music with their eyes and ears as their teacher explicitly instructed. They noted the way the actors and actresses sung the music, but at the same time, looked at their facial and body expressions that came along with it. The first portion of the song was a duet between two individuals, a male and a female, back and forth, while the last bits consisted of the entire choir as a whole. The song closed with the soft voices of the same pair who sung the duet. It was a melody that was more on the calmer side, but at the same time, it was powerful. 

Dr. Terry allowed the song to sink into the choir's heads as she switched her browser tab to search for the second song, Joyful Joyful. Instead of beginning with the choir as a whole, the song began with a single female solo part. Inez couldn't help but notice how pretty the solo part was, the soloist's voice humming a wide range of higher notes and lower notes. Within a minute later, the rest of choir came into the picture. 

The song was lively and ecstatic with multiple other duet and solo parts peeking in. Inez was excited for this song because of its lively vibes. Maybe if she was lucky, Dr. Terry would let her sing the solo part, or at least the female duo part for Maybe I'm Amazed, but all Inez could do was hope. It was too early in the school year for that decision to be made. 

"We will start singing these pieces tomorrow during class, but information about the upcoming concert will be provided at a later date," Dr. Terry announced before pulling her laptop out of projection mode. "But please, keep your sheet music and scales safe in a folder, and bring it to class every day." 

It was early September, a rather humid beginning of the season of autumn. By the time the concert would take place, it would be near the end of the next month, so the choir will have over a month to prepare. Preparing for their performance would mean practicing their vocals, re-familiarizing themselves with music notes, practicing dynamics from loud to soft, and many more other vital skills to achieve success on their performance. Those were skills the choir will need to adapt to all over again, considering that they haven't sung together in the lengthy duration of two months. 

Not to mention that a large majority of them were juniors at the time. A lot of them are now seniors, so the choir will need to step their skills up. It will be a long journey, but for the sake of the choir, every bit of it will be worth it. 

To begin their journey, Dr. Terry decided to help the students with their vocals once more, individual and as a group. It may have not seemed like much, but the choir director was a younger middle-aged woman of value. She believed that there was always more room for improvement when it came to training her students about the beauty of music and singing. She even took the time to acknowledged that by taking note of how consistent her students' vocals sounded, probably for when they will start their music the next day during class. 

Once the final bell of the day rang, class was dismissed, and various students huddled up together in mobs as they scurried out the classroom's swinging doors, pouring out into the broad corridors like ants from a colony that had just been destroyed by a human's foot. Inez and Jolien joined together in preparation to make their departure so they could catch the bus to head home. 

"Lucky for us, it looks like we've survived our first day back," Inez raved as she shook her best friend's arm playfully to hype her up. "That means that there is . . . only one-hundred and seventy-nine days left until we're officially high school graduates." 

"Yes, I'm so excited. It's still hard to believe that we're seniors, though," Jolien reflected. "I remember when we were freshmen, wandering around the hallways like lost little kids to look for our classes on the first few days. Now, we're not only upperclassmen, but we're seniors. We're at the top of the food chain." 

"Right, it's just so un—" Inez said before being bumped into by her shoulder. Judging the light pain on her shoulder, it felt more like a playful shove, except it was a little more playful than it should've been. But the thing was, it wasn't a playful shove. It wasn't supposed to be a shove at all, for that matter. It was a so-called accident made by a tall Korean boy walking by. 

He had to be at least four or five inches taller than her, giant compared to Inez's five-foot-six frame. The boy had pale, peach-ish skin and combed-out, shaggy chocolate brown hair. He wasn't just any boy, however. He was someone that Inez has known for a long time, not as long as she had known Jolien, but for several years. It was no one other than Alexander Choi.

Born in the United States, Alexander was mostly raised in freezing cold New Jersey, but came to the busy, metro Atlanta city where they are currently located in Georgia of when he was in third grade. However, Inez didn't meet him until they were in middle school. 

The two individuals have had a rather troubling history. 

"You shoved me," the girl scoffed as she squinted one eye with annoyance. 

"I'm so sorry about that, Nezzie. I wasn't . . . I wasn't watching where I was going," Alexander apologized briefly as he looked Inez straight into her mocha brown eyes. 

"Don't call me Nezzie," Inez retorted calmly before motioning Jolien to the exit door. 

Nezzie. It was a nickname the girl was often given by people, but she's always cringed by it. Being called a name she found absolutely ridiculous always made her feel squirmy inside, as if earthworms were crawling right through her. Other people considered the nickname as a cuter version of her real name, but by all means, she hated it. It wasn't cute, and it wasn't pleasant. It was sickening like the flu, she believed. 

Ever since Alexander and Inez were in middle school, the boy had an obnoxious habit of calling Inez the unwanted nickname, which annoyed her hell out of her. It was all fun and games to him, but Inez absolutely hated it. 

Jolien, who third-wheeled the entire brawl between her best friend and Alexander grimaced. "That was . . . awkward." 

"Tell me about it," Inez scoffed as she shook her head. If anything, her best friend has been with Inez the entire time to watch Alexander and her be the rivals that they are. It was never a pleasant thing to watch, but their rivalry had its roots. 

It all originated when they both signed up for their middle school's elective class, Beginning Chorus. There were many people in the class that had excellent voices, but the voices that stood out the most were Alexander and Inez's voices. It was a talent that was naturally gifted to them both. Realistically, they could've both used their voices together to make one powerful, melodious sound. 

But instead, they didn't. Everything became competitive between the two to the point where one wanted to outsing the other. The tension followed them into high school, being where they are today. Their rivalry sounded unnecessary and hot-headed, but neither of them took the chance to play with the fire. It was already fueled enough, and there was one thing they both knew and understood damn well. 

Playing with fire will only cause bigger, tenser flames. 

But Inez knew one thing for sure — she was going to win the spotlight for her own — fair and square. That meant no communication or contact with Alexander whatsoever, but regardless of the circumstances, she was willing to do it. 

a/n: hey besties! i hope you enjoyed the first chapter of tms!! we've officially met Inez & saw a little bit of Alexander. any thoughts/feelings? 

just so you know, i've written the entire story already, so updates for this story will take place on tuesdays and thursdays unless said otherwise. please remember to vote and comment when you can. it feels extremely empty to write a story with no reader interaction. y'all know i love reading comments, especially if i'm spammed with them 😍

also, here's a quick disclaimer: this book is completely fictional. my meadowbrook high school isn't real, it's all imagination. 

thanks for reading!! i love y'all so much!! mwah 💗