Roxas didn't really HATE school...ok yes he did. He and his family were constantly moving, since his mother had yet to find a steady job. These frequent moves had always left Roxas bereft of any friends. This was the part he had hated the most.
Currently, they were residing in Twilight Town. On this particular Wednesday morning (his first day of school, naturally), Roxas had overslept. Of course. Just as he had alarmingly began staring at the bright red numbers that were displayed on his bedside clock, his younger brother, Sora, slammed his bedroom door open, banging it against the wall, then began yelling before evidently noticing he was already awake.
"Roxas! Time to get up if you don't wanna be late! C'mon GET UP-oh. Good morning! Mom's already made breakfast, so hurry!" With these words, Sora bounced right out the door, not bothering to close it, and down the steps.
Sora was Roxas' twin, but had been born exactly 13 minutes and 8 seconds after Roxas had, making him younger. Also, despite his permanent-sugar-high attitude, he wasn't very social at all and thus, was "home schooled". This is in quotes because, since their mother was busy with her work, she had almost no time to be schooling him and simply left him to his own devices.
Roxas scrambled out of bed and onto the floor, throwing on a shirt and some pants that had happened to be laying next to where he had fallen. He flew down the stairs and straight to his seat at their kitchen table, where a plate of (mildly burnt) waffles was already sitting.
He finished it in record time and tore out the door and down the street.
xXx
It wasn't a very long walk to the school he now attended, so he made it with a little time to spare. This time was well-spent as he first stopped in at the front office to get his schedule, tried to find his assigned locker, and then had to locate his first period classroom.
He rushed through the door and into the closest seat; the bell rang mere seconds after. Roxas sighed in relief. For the moment, there was no teacher to be seen, so Roxas occupied himself by looking around the class. It was a small room and only had about 15 students in it currently. Since it was the first day of class, it was likely that many would be late.
He was ripped out of his thoughts by the door loudly slamming against the wall, being shoved open by a man who quickly scribbled across the whiteboard up front, then sat down at the desk. Roxas assumed he was the teacher. He didn't look like a teacher. He looked like a murderer. He was somewhat tall, with black hair and piercing eyes that seemed to glare through the soul of anyone he was looking at. On the board he had written 'Mr. Leonhart'.
"Finally sophomores, eh?" Mr. Leonhart, or Leon, as was his name, said. "About time, although I can't honestly say I'm happy about having to baby-sit all of you for the next 50 minutes." He frowned further as he pulled up a stack of books onto the top of his desk. "These are your geometry textbooks, to be kept in excellent condition and brought back everyday to work out of. 50 bucks if any of ya lose 'em."
With that, he began to hand them out one student at a time. He spoke while he was doing this, saying which chapters they'd be covering and which were to be skipped, how long they'd spend on each such chapter, and when the quizzes would be happening.
Finally, he was finished. "Did anyone not get a book?" he called.
Tentatively, Roxas raised his hand.
Leon glared. "Who're you then. Were you on the list?"
"Ah.." Roxas said, not actually wanting to speak to anyone, much less this crazed murderer.
Leon's glare increased in intensity.
"I'm not sure, sir! I'm a transfer student, sir." Roxas squeaked.
Leon, apparently satisfied at being called 'sir', only huffed as he stared Roxas down. "And what's your name then?" He asked, finger poised over the attendance sheet.
"Um, Roxas….sir," Roxas stated as Leon scanned the list.
"Ah here it is," Leon exclaimed somewhat louder than necessary. He grabbed a book from the stack and handed it to Roxas.
Roxas grabbed the book, then rushed on back to his seat, letting out a sigh of relief.
"Now," Leon started, as the last few late stragglers wandered in, "as I said before, we're skipping chapter one, since it's mostly review. You lot will be fine without it. Or not." He grinned evilly. Roxas could almost imagine him rubbing his hands together as he cackled "mwahahahah" or some similar version. Leon continued. "So if we were skipping chapter one, who thinks they know what chapter we're starting on?" He glared around the room, locking eyes with every single student in there. "C'mon, you idiots are in 10th grade geometry, you should know how to count!"
A student near the center of the room raised their hand. Leon glared at them, which they took as a cue to answer because they started speaking. "Um...two?"
"Hah! Wrong. We're starting on chapter 7. Amazing how you guys passed Algebra I." Leon chuckled. Ugh, stupid teacher humor. Leon continued, "Anyway, get to work." He walked over to his chair and sat down, busying himself with whatever teachers did, not even bothering to look up to make the final remark "Seriously, do something!".
Twenty-something students, all with terrified expressions, hurriedly opened their books to chapter 7, first reading, then working through sample problems.
Just as Roxas was finishing the last couple questions, the bell rang. Leon bounced to his feet and shot to the whiteboard, scribbling several page numbers and problems down for a homework assignment. Several students groaned out loud, not unlike the noise a dying animal makes as it's eaten alive, when Leon mentioned it was all due the very next day.
Roxas scribbled the numbers down onto his wrist with a pen and began to make his way through the portal of hell, otherwise known as Mr. Leonhart's geometry class. However, as he was very happily on his way out, a hand grabbed his arm, jerking him back in.
"What the -" Roxas started to say, glaring his most intense "I'm older" glare, the kind he was used to directing towards Sora.
It seemingly had no effect, as the refulgent emerald eyes he was met with seemed unfazed. Well, it was worth a shot. It had always worked on Sora.
"Hi. I'm Axel"
Roxas stared up in shock at the beautiful- er…. I mean brilliant green eyes. His mouth hung slightly open. Why would this dude be talking to him. And what was the deal with that hair?! It was this horribly extravagant red hair. It wasn't exactly a bright color, but it wasn't dark either. It was just this middle color red. That stuck out. A lot.
Axel snapped his fingers in Roxas' face. "'Ello? Got a name?"
Roxas immediately reached out and smacked Axel's fingers away. "Don't snap in my face."
Axel hm'd. "Weird name. Do you just go by 'Snap' or what's the deal here?" He grinned.
'My name is Roxas." Roxas gave him his older-brother glare again. Axel continued to be unfazed by such a thing. The nerve.
"Ah, but of course!" Axel said in a sing-song French accent. "Silly me. Anyway, I suppose we'd better get going. 5 minutes till the tardy bell."
Somehow, Roxas doubted Axel actually cared about being tardy. Still, he'd turned and practically skipped down the hallway.
He should probably get going as well, whether to class or not has yet to be seen… ok, no it isn't. Roxas always went to class, especially on the first day. Keeping that in mind, he began searching for his second period which was …
He glanced at his schedule.
… English!
He walked briskly down the halls, trying to look as if he knew exactly what he was doing and that it was important. After plowing through various students and almost knocking down a teacher, he decided English class may not have been so important after all.
Roxas managed to locate the classroom within the 5 minutes until the tardy bell rang, thankful that it wasn't very far - just up some stairs and around a corner. He wandered in. So far it only had 3 people in it. Well, four if Roxas counted himself as well. He looked around for a place to sit, and was abruptly startled by a loud voice in the otherwise silent room.
"Sit anywhere you'd like for today. I'll make up a seating chart later." A man's voice stated.
He jumped at least 3 feet off the ground, let out a very manly squeak, and rushed to a corner and promptly fell into a seat.
Having placed himself in the seat and a pencil neatly on his desk, Roxas let his eyes wander over the classroom, familiarizing himself with the foreign environment. It was just the traditional classroom. The usual drab floor and whitewashed concrete brick walls, holding students in like a prison. There were some grammar posters and a few motivational announcements here and there on the wall, but other than that, the room was practically bare. A whiteboard sat in the traditional spot in the front of the room, thirty or so small desks faced that, and a single larger desk sat in one corner.
The bell rang.
"Alright," the same voice as before began speaking, louder this time, "as you can see, my name is Mr. Fair." He pointed to the whiteboard, showcasing the words written there that Roxas hadn't noticed before. The writing was very faint and almost impossible to make out.
"Oh," Mr. Fair said, "the markers must be running out of ink. I'll be right back you guys, I'm getting a marker from next door."
He quickly stepped out of the classroom. The students sat in mild shock, unsure what to do with no teacher giving instruction. Before they could act, however, Mr. Fair was already back in the room proudly holding the brand new marker in his outstretched hand. He hurried about writing over the words he had previously written, the new marker writing beautifully bold so everyone in the room could see.
Roxas read as he wrote.
Mr. Fair (Zack)
Sophomore English
"My name is Zack Fair. I wouldn't care if you called me Zack, but the school requires that I force "Mr. Fair" upon you all. If you ever see me outside of school, feel free to call me Zack, though, since it is my name."
So far, the guy seemed pretty laid back. Maybe this class wouldn't be so bad after all. And surely not as bad as Mr. Leonhart.
"Alright," Zack continued, "we'll start passing out books now. When I call your name, please come to the front." He held up a sheet of paper with a lined table printed on it. "You'll need to write your name -first and last- in this first box," he said as he pointed to the respective box. "Then write the books number in this box. It should be right on the inside cover. In this one write the condition it's in as you got it. I believe the choices are 'excellent', 'great', 'good', 'fair', and 'bad', so choose one of those and write it right there. In this last box you'll need to sign your name. Do not just write your name again. Sign it."
This was basically how it was with first days. Textbooks and rules were all that ever got talked about.
'Except Mr. Leonhart' Roxas thought. He was ripped away from such thoughts by Zack beginning to call out students' names, a few at a time.
"Demyx, Naminé, Axel, and Roxas, come on up and start us off, alright?"
Roxas was mildly startled. The names didn't seem to be in any particular order, so why had he been called on first? He didn't have time for any of that at the moment as he was busy scurrying up to the front with the three other students names.
He grabbed a book at random, glancing at the book number. He'd grabbed number 13. He absently reached to where the paper was, only to grab a handful of nothing. The one called Demyx had already grabbed it and was busy scribbling away at it.
Roxas cringed. His handwriting was awful.
"Done!" Demyx announced as he flung the paper back down.
Before Roxas could get ahold of it, someone else snatched it away. Naminé, was it? Her writing was a beautiful curly script that flowed smoothly from the tip of her pen and across the line of the chart. She was finished before long.
Roxas made another desperate attempt at getting the paper, finally succeeding. He jotted down his name and the book's condition (it looked great to him) and went to write the book number...
'What,' he mused to himself. He'd already forgotten. He cracked open the book cover again to peer inside at the messy 13 scribbled there. He closed it again, and turned to write the number in the little box on the page. Finally, he signed his name neatly in the final box. He passed the page along to Axel. In a hurry to save himself from having to talk to strangers again, he made to rush back to his seat.
"You write like a girl," Axel muttered, halfway to giggling.
Roxas swing around to him, eyes wide.
"Look," Axel pointed. "It's so neat. It looks like a girl wrote it"
Roxas glared. "Whatever. Yours is probably hideous." He stalked back to his desk as Axel stuck his tongue out at him. Rude.
Zack called out the next names as Axel finished and sat down as well. The rest of the class passed without incident as everyone finally finished gathering books and Zack read class rules out loud, and which punishments to expect for breaking them. After what seemed like an eternity, the bell finally rang, signaling the end of the class that was on the verge of boring Roxas to death.
If only he'd been done with them. He'd have been so happy if that had been the last awful class to sit through. Sadly, he had 4 left in the day. Fabulous.
xXx
The next class he'd had was U.S. History. The teacher had insisted that they called him Zexion, completely forgoing all politeness that came to form through a "Mr. [Last Name]". The school evidently didn't force him to do anything, unlike Mr. Fair.
'Whatever floats your boat, man" Axel said, echoing what had been going through Roxas' head at that exact moment.
This class passed much like the others, though there was no book to register with anyone's name, since the books sat on a shelf in the front of the classroom to be used by anyone who needed it.
Zexion set out a seating chart for them, using first names in reverse alphabetical order, making Roxas sit closer to the front than he'd wanted, soothed only by Zexion's promise that "it will change later in the year". One good thing about it was that Axel was sitting in the back, far far away from him.
People's hype about sitting next to their friends or away from their enemies took practically half of the time allotted for the class, so Zexion went over a syllabus, having every single day planned down to the minute, even including excused times for snow days and the like. After that was finished, Zexion told them to look busy until the end of class, which apparently meant passing notes and quiet chatting. Roxas, however, sat quietly, waiting for Hell #3 to end.
Or, he tried to at least.
WHAP!
Roxas swung his head violently around to stare at whatever object just hit him in the head, and to glare at whoever had thrown it. His eyes landed on a little paper football and a very smug looking Axel, who motioned towards it.
He leaned out of his desk to reach it, almost falling out. He grabbed it and say back up. 'Open Me' it said.
So he did.
'I think Demyx is crushing on Zexion. Thoughts?'
What.
Roxas turned back around to Axel, having '?' clearly written all over his face.
Axel pointed over to Roxas' right. Roxas followed his finger over to a boy sitting at his desk, staring over towards Zexion, goofy grin hanging on his face. Demyx, he remembered now, from English.
At a loss of what to do with this new information, Roxas turned back to Axel, easing his eyebrows.
'Think so?' Axel mouthed. Roxas shrugged and mouthed 'looks like it to me' back.
Axel nodded thoughtfully and pulled out a new sheet of paper. He grabbed his earlier abandoned pen and began scribbling quickly across the page. He then folded it into another football and made to launch it at Roxas again.
"Wait!" Roxas said out loud. All eyes immediately snapped to him, curiousity drawing them. Whoops.
Roxas ignored them and stood up, walking slowly to Axel, grabbed the football, then walked back, still ignoring everyone around him. He opened it.
'Wats ur # ?'
He contemplated actually writing it down and handing it back, but was (very rudely) interrupted by the bell. Again. He shot out of his seat, turning his head towards Axel.
"Tell you later," he said.
A girl gasped audibly. Whatever was going through her mind, nobody would want to know.
Ignoring everyone once again, Roxas exited the room, ready to suffer through the last half of the day. 4th period was the longest period of the day since it included lunch. Even deducting the thirty minutes they have, though, it was still longer than other classes by a good ten minutes. Luckily, it was an easy class: Arts & Humanities. It should go perfectly smooth.
When he got in the room, he saw each desk had a post-it note with a name on it. Assigned seats.
"Just find your name, dear," the woman sitting at the desk in the front said.
He walked through the rows, awkwardly avoiding the people who were already in the room.
"Uh... Um... I'm sorry but, aren't you Roxas?" A quiet voice asked him.
"Yeah?" He tentatively replied, turning to the voice.
It was the same girl from 2nd period, Naminé. The girl with curly handwriting.
"Your seat is here, right next to mine," she pointed. Sure enough, his name was written on a post-it in all caps, indicating that it was, indeed, his seat. He sat down and ripped the post-it off the desk.
"Um...my name is Naminé," Naminé broke the silence again.
"Hello," Roxas answered politely. "You were in my English class, right?"
Her eyes lit up. "That's right!"
"Shhhh guys."
They both looked up, deer-in-the-headlights looks immediately on both of their faces. They'd forgotten the teacher was there and their voices had quickly risen quite above a whisper.
"Sorry," Naminé squeaked, organizing more pencils onto her desk.
Roxas figured she was finished speaking to him and looked away.
As class got started, he saw that Naminé was the only one in this class that he knew. That was fine, as the class passed without incident. The teacher -Roxas forgot her name already- didn't care what they'd done all period, saying "the first day isn't for work" and similar stuff, and left them to their own devices.
They had last lunch as well, so Roxas piled up his things and headed to the cafeteria. The food was, as usual, completely inedible, but he managed to force it down after some serious pep-talking. Near the end of the lunch period, he spotted Axel (actually, it was Axel's hair; Axel was conveniently connected) and was considering going over to continue whatever conversation they'd started the period before, but then saw him talking to several other people, who he assumed were his friends, and decided against it, remaining sitting alone until the bell rang.