Friends With Familiar Faces

by disneyfan.est2001

One person in particular caught my attention it was a boy obviously my age but a hell of a lot shorter everyone in the classroom was sitting except for him, yet he was the same height. He had very feminine facial features for a fifteen year old boy but it was strangely attractive. His skin tone was about the same as my pale skin but his orange irises seemed to make his skin darker.

CHAPTER 1

Nothing had been the same since mom got up and left, and the situation ahead of me, well I guess behind me now, wasn't going to make things better. My mom left my dad and me when I was only eight, almost nine, telling my dad that she had a great job opportunity over in Europe. My dad refused to leave and thought it would be terrible for me to have to move so far away from what we now called home, a two bedroom apartment with a tiny kitchen and one bathroom. She left us anyways being the stubborn woman she was; my dad says that I get that from her, and my dad was left to take care of an eight year old. That is until he was called back on "business", and by "business" I mean ruling a kingdom that I had no clue existed, let along run by my own father from thousands of miles away for my whole life. I have no clue how he was able to keep this a secret from me for fifteen years.

Since my dad was next in line for the throne, for one the tiniest islands to ever exist, I was forced to attend a royal academy. I really didn't want to go, I hope you all realize this, you're all thinking this a little girl's number one dream to become a princess, but I am no longer little and I had more realistic dreams. I walked into school on the first day more nervous than I had ever been and to make my day so much better, I was already late. My stomach felt like it was going to collapse and my palms were so sweaty that I could barely hold onto my sleek, new textbooks. The textbooks were extremely heavy and probably weighed more than my extremely fat Bengal cat, Apollo. I was told when I first got Apollo that Bengal cats were supposed to be really energetic and that had made me really excited, but obviously they were wrong about him. He was probably the laziest cat to ever exist; he just laid around and did nothing, and sometimes we had to bring his food bowl to him or he refused to eat. Anyways, here I was walking down this long stretch of hallway and I had no idea where I was going. The strong scent of cleaning supplies burned the inside of my nose. "How could anyone stand that smell for more than eight hours a day?" I thought to myself. It was horrific and I was suddenly glad that my dad decided not to clean the house very often.

The floors were a solid white tile, no grey spots or anything like normally seen in tiles. The long expanse of hallway floor was simply plain white tile, almost like someone had spilled white paint everywhere. The tiles were polished to the point that I could see my own reflection on the floor. My hair was the most prevalent against the white, especially my light green roots. I had extreme ombre hair, as my dad liked to put it, but I just liked my colorful hair because it took away from my pale skin and annoying red freckles. The roots of my hair were an emerald green right next to a small section of blonde, which then faded into a royal blue, and finally into a long section of vibrant violet at the end. My dad had been hesitant about letting me dye my hair at first, since I was only ten when I had asked the first time, but he promised that I could when I turned thirteen and he kept his promise. Since my mom was gone, I had no maternal figure in my life and didn't know how to deal with girly problems. I was now fifteen and had gotten my hair re-dyed every year on my birthday, as a birthday present from my dad. I had blonde roots so no matter what color my hair was, my eyebrows always remained blonde, which wasn't always bad but every once in a while the colors contrasted against each other.

The lockers seemed the most out of place objects in the long, white hallway since the ceiling matched the same pale color as the floor. They were the ugliest shade of orange, almost like they were once beautiful silver lockers and had started to rust over the years, but had also managed to stay one solid color. The lockers looked more out of place than I did which, in my case, was pretty hard to beat. My eyes scanned the small white numbers at the top of the lockers for mine, number forty-six. The numbers were in cursive so it was hard to make out the faded numbers on some of the doors. I had no idea where it was even located in the hallway! The only thing that made it easier to find was the fact that they were in numerical order. The evens were on the right side and the odds were on the left of the hallway so I knew I had to stay to the right side of the hallway to find my locker.

After almost reaching the far end of the hallway I finally found number forty-six, my locker. The white numbers were almost completed gone, making it look like sixteen instead of forty-six. I opened it as quietly as I could, the fading of the numbers giving me a subliminal message that it was pretty old or hadn't been used for a while. Just as I had predicted the locker opened with a loud screech, the same way everything did at home, breaking the silence of the hallway like a gunshot echoing through a calm forest. I winced and lifted my shoulders at the terrible sound; I was really hoping that no one had heard that but I highly doubted it. There were voices in the distance but I could barely make them out or even begin to figure out where they were coming from because everything seemed to echo. I continued into my locker since now I was seriously late to class. Inside the locker sat a thin shelf about waist high, on it sat a stack of notebooks, pencils, and a brand new computer. On top of the tall stack was a small orange note, which was the same color as the lockers, and written in black ink was the following: "Thank you so much for joining us at our academy, Ms. Corrigan." I hate my last name, if you were wondering. "In your locker, since you've hopefully found it, you will find the following: seven notebooks properly labeled for each subject, twenty pencils, ten mechanical and ten standard, your school schedule for the semester, and a new laptop of our own inventing. I hope you enjoy your time here and make lots of new friends! Your dearest headmaster, Mr. Diedrich."

I also hated it when people didn't meet you in person and decided it would be okay if they just left a note with "all" of the information they thought was necessary. I had no idea how the schedule worked, where any of my classes were, how to get there, and what class I had now that I was really late to. I was really hopeful that my new "friends" would be able to help me out with all of this, but I was about to find out that making friends here was not going to be easy. I'm not the best at making friends so I was thinking maybe the people at this school are extroverts and will try to befriend me first; boy, was I wrong. I glanced at my schedule, Period One, Speaking to a Large Crowd, Public or Private – Period Two, Science – Period Three, History Of Kingdoms And Their Conflicts – Period Four, Music – Period Five, Works Of Literature And Their Effect On The Way We Think – Period Six, Art Is The Skill Of A Steady Hand – Period Seven, Math, The Universal Language. The classes seemed simple enough but that made it even more stressful. That's the strangest thing about being a teenager for me everything that seems easy when it's handed to me ends up being the most stressful thing I've ever done. I had a feeling that this is exactly how this academy would end up, and I would hate it and want to leave, but of course my dad, and the law, wouldn't allow me to do that.

I leaned down to look for the notebook for my speech class, which was my first class according to my schedule. My new high waisted bleached skinny jeans, which were brand new, restricted almost every movement that involved bending my hips or knees. I ignored the restrictions and continued looking, slowly kneeling down to obtain more balance. The fabric pinched the back of my calves and I flinched slightly at the sudden pain but I was determined to get to this class. I placed the notebooks one by one on the floor, creating what looked like a barricade around me, until I found the one I was looking for. My speech notebook was labeled with the words class name, "Speaking to a Large Crowd, Public or Private" and my name.

It was also a pale green color, which exactly matched the color of the roots of my hair, but lighter. I looked down at my other six notebooks on the floor and noticed that two of them were the exact same way, different shades of my hair but lighter. At first I had found it really creepy, but then sort of found it cool and moved on to wonder if anyone else received something similar. I left my speech notebook on the ground as I piled the others back into my locker, one on top of the other. I stared at my name, which was written in silver marker, against the green notebook, I didn't love my name but at the same time I didn't hate it. "Tallulah Corrigan," I muttered to myself, it didn't even sound like a name.

Grabbing the notebook, I stood up from my kneeling position, releasing the pinch in my calves, and took my new computer out of my locker. The computer's decorations were strangely based off of my favorite things the case on the outside was an ombre purple, which was my favorite color, and it had sticker that looked like a Bengal kitten, which was my favorite cat breed. I stacked the small laptop on top of my notebook and tucked one of the mechanical pencils behind my ear. The pencil seemed to match the exact royal blue color of my hair. I slowly raised my hand to the locker door getting ready to close it, the cold painted metal was soothing under my steaming hand. Before closing my locker, I quickly realized bringing my schedule along might be a good idea since it was only the first day. I shut my locker as quietly as I could, but that task had been a complete failure and the screech of metal echoed through the hallways once more.

I looked once more at my schedule to see if I could find the classroom number. Period One; Speaking to a Large Crowd, Public or Private, same information I had read before but underneath of it I noticed a smaller print, Classroom 23. Perfect, I had the room number and just needed to find the room, one thing down, one to go. Like the lockers, the classrooms were in numerical order, and the even numbers were on the right and the odds were on the left. I made sure that my pencil was firmly tucked behind my ear and walked towards a classroom door that was only a few feet to my right from my locker. The sounds of voices were muffled through the classroom door but I could tell by the tone and pitch of the voices that they were having fun. The numbers were in the same print as the numbers on the lockers, but in black instead of white. I looked lifted my head to look at the number above the door, the classroom I had walked towards was labeled with the number fourteen, nowhere near the number I needed.