Everyone gets it: that sinking feeling right after summer break on a September Monday morning. You wake up, finding that the night's sleep goes faster than usual due to the ominous events to occur, and once your eyes open wearily the first thing you think of is:
Oh, school.
Shit.
Then it gets worse - you have to haul yourself out of bed (knowing that's one step closer to a dull, book ridden hell.) then the usual again; pull on the uniform gathering dust at the back of your closet - I even had to blow on it as if it were an ancient book – then go downstairs from your small attic-like room, being reminded that it's your first day back at school by your overly happy-slappy mother (who seems like she wants to get rid of you and uses school as an excuse). Then the final step - have a long, painful breakfast and go out of the door to the underworld (or "The Outdoors", some call it.)
I, wanting to prolong that last part as much as possible, ran back upstairs. I was expecting Hikari to come to my door and knock for me as always – I wanted to prolong that too.
Upon entering my room, I stared into my mirror; I looked like one of Satan's underlings in the fiery depths, except I'm on Earth (for now.) As I was enjoying staring endlessly into my awful reflection, my mother's voice rang intrusively: "Kotone! Hikari is here!"
Startled, I pulled my hair into the pigtails I always wore before tearing down the stairs at an incredible pace.
Reaching the bottom of the stairs, I saw my navy-haired friend, Hikari. You see, she's by default bright and bubbly - this is the complete opposite of what I am. As she stood there with the ridiculous smile stretching her face, I eyed her up and down. I stared at her head, seeing the night-sky coloured river of hair spilling perfectly down her shoulders, finding myself becoming instantly jealous of how great she looked in the mornings.
I hate people.
After an awkward 30 seconds of staring (and feeling like I paid way too much attention to her appearance) I finally looked her in the eyes, managing to supress a scowl that would make the toughest man on Earth cry.
She opened her mouth, "Kotone, it's great to see you after so long!"
I winced a bit - Hikari's voice always had sounded like a disastrous fusion of a 2-year-old child screaming bloody murder and the yell of a male mouse having his balls kicked in. Not hearing it for over a month strengthened the impact of the atrocity.
I raised my hand, lazily waving and taking my school bag before promptly slinging it over my shoulder. Despite all these factors of Hikari that I absolutely detested and felt like they should be burned in hell for as long as she lived and more, she was actually one of the only decent people I've ever met.
Believe me, I find people less entertaining than eating 10 tonnes of cotton wool.
We ventured out into the outside world, where birds chirped and winds softly blew in the autumn air. Eww, nature.
We were half-way up the road to the nearest bus-stop when Hikari stopped so suddenly, she nearly lost her balance. After a moment of silence, her eyes laid upon the bus stop which was barely in view from the bottom of the small paved hill we were currently half-way up. She sported a grin that would make the Cheshire cat jealous and squealed a little too long for it to be remotely amusing. During this spell of…whatever it was, she grabbed my hand, forcing me to splutter in surprise, and the only (listenable) justification I received was, "Come on come on come on, Kotone! I need to show you something!"
Truthfully, that was a bit of an anti-climax: I was hoping that she was gonna spontaneously combust and run around in panicked circles (much more entertaining).
Escaping her grasp, I raised my hands in protest but she inevitably grabbed them again and nearly dragged me across the floor, down the street to the bus stop. Well shit, we could have gotten here without all the hassle.
Turning my head, I saw something that made me smile for the first time that morning. I saw Silver, the one person who was much of a pessimistic bastard as yours truly. He sat, slouched on the small bus shelter with his elbows rested on his knees, and chin in his palms. His shirt was untucked messily and his blazer was tied around his neck like a cape. I gazed at the long crimson hair licking his cheeks, and noticed that he too managed to look better than me in the morning.
People are horrible things.
I looked at Hikari and she grinned at me scarily. Was this the thing she wanted to show me? If so, she couldn't have overreacted more. Treating Silver as a novelty was the most underwhelming thing in the history of ever. I sat beside him, exchanging a glance or two because we both knew we weren't in the mood for talking. Nobody should be in the mood for talking at 7:30AM in the fucking morning. Hikari plopped herself down next to me, whipping out her phone and acting like she was actually doing something with it. I knew full well she was just excluding herself from any kind of social situation that could occur at the present time. Quite frankly, I didn't blame her one bit.
It was a long silence before the bus arrived, and the sounds of such beautiful nature began to do more than annoy me. The bus pulled up with a mechanical screeching just in time before I started kick-starting my first career in inventing my own bird-killing weapons using materials only from my pencil case.
Begrudgingly hauling ourselves onto the bus, Silver and I looked to the back seats to lay eyes upon five girls sitting at the back doing disgusting typical teenager-y things as Hikari ran to join them. I preferred to sit next to Silver in silence, staring at the patterns threaded into the somewhat soft seating of the bus as the other idiots around me made their noise. I chose to sit to the left, which was the opposite side of where Barry was. Knowing Barry and his overly energetic personality, he had most probably run five laps of the bus before he had even sat down and then completed an entire gymnastics routine whilst the bus moved.
Barry is another reason I hate humans. The guy has too much energy – so much I'm surprised he hasn't been kept on a leash and been identified as some other kind of species – and has seemingly only one goal in life: to annoy everyone he comes into slight contact with, regardless of whether they were an outcast or some jock who would pummel him to the ground in 5 seconds flat. He's still living (somehow) and had appeared to have picked his target for this term.
Staring into the back of the bus where he was sat – no - bouncing up and down – I saw the hyperactive blonde leaning over the seat in front of him and tugging hard onto spikey, gravity-defying hair. This term's victim would be…interesting to say the very least. The spikey (almost) white-blonde hair belonged to Volkner, who was one person I could stand as a matter of fact. Volkner never was in a good mood, and was always staring very hard at whatever happened to be in front of him at that time in dumbfounding amounts of concentration. It was rather inhuman, actually, how he could stare for so long without even twitching. (It also happened to be a godsend that he hadn't torn Barry's head from his shoulders.)
Before anything drastic happened, my eyes darted elsewhere. I settled upon the girls near the backseats, and a (stupid) commotion appeared to be occurring.
"Well Gardenia, you'll just have to deal with it – I'm not doing that for youof all people."
Ah, Marley. Marley is the school bossy-git everyone's afraid of. Nobody fucks with Marley and gets away with it. She has jet black hair, of which she usually ties up into long pigtails. On her face are the muddiest brown eyes I've ever seen on a girl and when she's angry, Marley's eyes turn a stern steely grey colour. This frightening death-glare makes douchebags run for the hills.
Her mouth is always fixed into either an angry frown, or a cocky, triumphant smirk - neither of which were good.
You see, if you get her frown, you've fucked it up (which is scary in itself). If you get a smirk, you better start running before she displays your pathetic little head on a spiked pole.
Then there's Gardenia was fairly loud and stubborn. She would always annoy Marley with her constant nagging and pestering – then again, Gardenia would annoy everyone she came across with that annoying habit of hers. She owed most people favours but never paid them back like a decent existence would, such favours were as simple as handing her homework to a teacher you were just about to pass, or buying her food at lunch break.
So far, she owed around a thousand favours, and hadn't repaid any of them. If you haven't guessed already: she's on my hit list.
Speaking of irritating…
A voice nearby to Gardenia threatened my hearing, "Wah! Keep your feet to yourself Gardenia! You're getting my cute new knee socks dirty!"
Whitney. Whitney is the short girl with pink pigtails that nobody likes. We all pretend to like her because she has midget's rage inside her. She'll kick you in the shins so hard you'll fall flat on your face, then she'd laugh at you and run off like a 6 year old with no sense of direction. Whitney hates to lose, even if she's losing a game in gym class, she would cry her eyes out and sit down on the floor transforming into an unmovable, irritating time-bomb who sniffles every 10 seconds or so. I personally believe that there's a reason why her eyes are red - I have a feeling that maybe she the reincarnation of that one kid from the Omen Trilogy.
We all knew that once Pinky McSmallTitties started causing a racket, all hell would break loose. "Whitney, just shut up!" Marley yelled, smacking the girl behind her pink, annoying little head. Whitney screamed as if she was rehearsing an extra cameo in 300, leapt over Gardenia and onto Marley, futilely kicking and wailing in anger as she spat out insults like they were bullets from a gun. Marley tensed angrily, and she leered down at Whitney, the bridge of her nose wrinkling in pure rage.
Silver muttered under his breath: "Three…two…one…"
Whitney screamed as she was thrown off of Marley and onto the floor, rolling down it as she held her stomach. She landed right at the other end with a small thud.
Everything went hilariously silent. Even Barry stopped whatever he was doing to boldly stare at the crumpled up body that was shaking in a heap near the bus' driver's seat. I felt the silent praise Marley was receiving from every soul on the bus besides Whitney.
After about a minute of whimpering like a small dog, Whitney shakily stood up, growling and fuming with her hair askew and far from the perfection it was about 120 seconds ago.
"MARLEY, I'M GONNA KICK YOUR ASS SO HARD!" she yelled, bolting like lightning to the back of the bus and leaping onto Marley once more.
I watched as the two girls began to have a catfight on the floor, rolling back and forth and it began to cross my mind that the bus driver hadn't even noticed.
Perhaps he was enjoying seeing Whitney getting her teeth kicked in and refused to disturb the justice taking place.
Candice who was sitting next to Volkner, cheered and whistled. Volkner observed with raised eyebrows, which was a miracle considering nobody thought the guy even had the facial muscle strength to change facial expressions. Silver sighed and turned back to looking out of the window, evidently bored, and meanwhile Hikari stood up and cheered for Marley, being the physical embodiment of what everyone felt inside.
Barry's face stretched into a surprised realisation, and he screamed so loud every single deity in existence could hear: "WE'RE HERE!" as the bus pulled up to a halt outside the school.
Volkner's hand finally flew onto Barry's face with a satisfying crash, which was his way of saying: 'Shut up, you annoying fuck.' Barry rubbed his nose, seemingly unfazed by the swollen nose he had just recently acquired. The bud doors opened with a squeak and the two girls on the floor stopped pulling at each other's hair. Marley lifted Whitney off of her body and placed her onto the floor like a mother getting rid of a small child before standing up, dusting herself off as if nothing had happened, and strutting out of the doors. Whitney stood up in a silent fury, wonkily stepping out of the bus after Marley. People began to wake up and come to their senses, picking up luggage and making their way sleepily out of the bus too. I hung back for a while to escape the crowd while Silver casually followed on after me, looking up at the ceiling. Once we had all drowsily dribbled out of the vehicle, I looked over at the flow of school students pouring into the gates of Goldenrod High. Silver stood next to me, Hikari on the other side.
Silver's eyes flitted over to me, "This year's gonna suck so hard."
"When does it not."