Alba Fruhling could hear the ticking of each second as it passed, signaled by the wall clock to the side. As he stood, for the first time, in front of his peers, he tried to calm his breathing. Why had the teacher asked him to stand there as the rest of the class trickled in and sat down? Well actually, Alba half knew the answer; he was the new student. His family, consisting of him and his mother and father, had just moved from only a couple towns over. His old home was close enough that he was vaguely familiar with the area, but far enough that he had to transfer over to a whole new school system.

Tick

Tock

Tick

Tock

The second hand only seemed to get louder and louder as the class got fuller and fuller. Calm down, he warned himself, this is a good opportunity to meet people, don't mess this up. It was true, this move was probably good for him. After all, he didn't leave behind a single friend at his last school, so with a whole new pool of people who have never heard about how embarrassing he was, he had the chance to make a friend.

Yes, Alba Fruhling was going to be optimistic this year!

As the morning bell went off, his teacher, Mr. Attena, started by saying that they had a new student and gestured towards Alba, who had now been awkwardly standing in front of everyone for a least the past 5 minutes. Alba then brightly introduced himself and mentioned how excited he was to meet everyone, before being sent to sit at an open desk.

Alba sat down and Mr. Attena jumped into the history lesson. Being new didn't negate his need to do things right, so Alba attentively scribbled his notes at the lecture droned on, knowing that he was going to have to do so much make up work to catch up. Thankfully, it was only the third week of class, so catching up wasn't going to be too hard; he just needed to befriend a classmate. That was going to be the major problem.

About halfway through the class, the PowerPoint lecture was finished, and Mr. Attena began to pass out a worksheet to work on in pairs. When he made it to Alba's seat, he stopped.

"I never really got to introduce myself to you," the short, elderly teacher mentioned, "The schedules name me as Mr. Attena, but all my students refer to me by my first name, Rudolf. Feel free to stop by my classroom if you need help catching up."

Alba looked at his worksheet, and since it was a partner activity, he knew he had to work on it with the person next to him, if what the rest of the class was doing was any sort of example.

"I'm Alba!" he said to the person sitting next to him, as he extended his arm.

"I heard you introduce yourself," his neighbor said, clad in a navy blue tee and a wine colored scarf, "Do you take me for some sort of idiot?"

"No!" Alba said, shooting up his arms in defense, "I didn't mean to imply anything like that! I just wanted to know what your name was!"

"I'm Ross," he said, looking down at his sheet instead of at Alba, "What's the answer to question one?"

Alba did not pick up on the fact that Ross was only copying his answers until the worksheet was completely finished. He was actually a little angry and upset, but before he could confront his partner about it, the bell rang and Ross bolted towards his next class. Grumbling, Alba packed away his notebook, trying not to let this anger ruin his first day at a new school.

"Is he always like that?!" Alba asked aloud to no one in particular. He might need to consider asking about changing seats if this sort of thing were going to continue. He wasn't going to be the one who did everyone else's assignments!

"Yeah, but at least he's not like Teufel or Ares," a voice said from behind him, "He sometimes helps a little."

Alba turned around and saw someone a few inches taller than him, with a dark tan, spiky hair, and a green tank top.

"Ah, how rude am I not introducin' myself! I'm Elf November!" the classmate said, sticking out his hand for a handshake, "You said yer name was Alba, right?"

Alba nodded his head and shook Elf's hand. Ok, this guy had a firm grip.

"So where's yer next class? I can help you get there!"

Alba looked down at the schedule he had printed that morning, "Uhh, I have English 11 with Mr. Lyman Oz Baum in C201."

"So do I! I can walk you there!"

Alba felt a wave of relief. This guy seemed maybe a little too eccentric, but definitely nice enough. Maybe he would leave school today with a budding friendship after all!

As they walked to their next class, Elf babbled on about Mr. Baum, "He's the soccer couch, so most students here call him Coach Baum. He has this really cool lookin' scar on his face, nobody knows how he's got it. Sometimes he doesn't really act like he knows what he's doin', but he's a pretty chill teacher."

When they finally reached the class, Alba wasn't really sure if he was going to like Mr. Baum or not. Elf walked over to his seat while Alba hesitantly approached the teacher's desk. It appears Elf had not been exaggerating about the teacher's face scar. As Alba approached, Mr. Baum looked up from a pile of what seemed to be graded quizzes.

"Uh, who are you?" Mr. Baum said.

"I'm the new student, Alba Fruhling."

"Oh good! I thought I was forgetting my dear students names for a second."

Alba continued to stand in front of the desk as Mr. Baum cleared up some of his papers. A moment later, they dropped onto the floor, "Wait a second, did you say Fruhling?" When Alba nodded, he continued, "You wouldn't happen to know a Midnight Fruhling?"

"Yeah he's my dad," Alba said, wondering who Mr. Baum was. He seemed very excited about Alba's dad, but Alba had never heard anything about a Lyman Oz Baum in his dad's stories of the past.

"Well your dad and I are old high school pals! He completely showed me up at soccer my Junior year! Since then we were friends!"

"My dad played soccer?!" Alba asked, rather confused. His dad's tales were barely rooted in reality, as Alba was well aware, but at the very least, some facts could sneak their way in.

The bell rang, signaling the beginning of class.

"Good morning class!" Lyman shouted over the chattering voices of his class, "Today we're welcoming a new student, Alba Fruhling!" He pointed to a student sitting next to an empty seat "Crea Crossfield! I'm leaving him in your hands! Make sure he knows what he's doing!"

The first thing Alba noticed about Crea was his black and white dyed hair. The second thing was his cheery personality.
"Leave it to me!" Crea said, striking what he must have deemed was a cool pose.

Alba walked over to the desk and dropped his bag on top before plopping down in the seat beside Crea.

"So you're new here? Where are you from?" Crea asked eagerly.

"Oh I'm only from a few towns over, in Turtle," Alba replied, disappointed in how boring his answer must have sounded.

Crea's excited face didn't dim, "Oh so that means you know the area a little! That's good. Is moving such a big change, or do you think it's weirder when you only move a little bit?" and like that Crea was off talking a mile a minute.

English passed in a blur, and then he said goodbye to Crea before heading to German II. He didn't recognize anyone in there as anyone he had talked to yet that day, and nothing happened notably in there. After German, he went to Science, and took care to sit far, far away from that Ross kid from first period, so they weren't paired for a lab that Alba would do by himself. Lunch followed Science and that was how Alba found himself looking around the cafeteria.

Crea was in such a good mood after meeting Alba second period. He just had a good feeling about him, and when Crea had a good feeling about something, he was often right.

"Hey Crea did you meet that new student?" Ross asked as Crea sat down across from him.

"Yeah!" Crea replied, "Alba, right? I think he's great! Oh hey! Look! He's in this lunch!"

Ross looked up from his tray and followed Crea's finger to see Alba standing like a confused lost puppy, holding his lunch tray in the middle of the cafeteria.

"He looks like some sort of idiot with no place to sit," Ross smirked as he returned his focus to his lunch.

"We should invite him to sit with us!" Crea suggested. Ross clenched his fork and opened his mouth prepared to make his threat, but before he could stop it, Crea stood up and shouted loudly, "Alba! Over here! Sit with us!"

Ross had facepalmed, but between his fingers, he was looking at Alba. Wow Alba looked cute when he smiled in relief, and nope Ross was going to put a stop to attraction before it even happened. Not this time. No.

"Hi Crea!" Alba said cheerily as he approached the table. He put down his tray on the table next to Ross and slid into the bench. He hadn't even finished sitting when Ross took a fry off his tray.

"Hey! What was that for!?" Alba shouted.

"It's just a fry," Ross said, "Did it really mean that much to you?"

"Oh it's you," Alba said, and Ross actually felt a little hurt about how disappointed the statement sounded.

"Oh does Alba know Shion?" Crea beamed, not quite realizing the tension.

"Shion?" Alba asked.

"Crea's nickname for me," Ross said. Why had Crea invited Alba to sit with them? He shot Crea a glare as he took a bite of his apple.

"So what class have you got after this?" Crea asked Alba, trying to avoid Ross's sudden death glare.

The three ate lunch in an awkward half conversation, carried mostly by Crea.

Alf Parkinton was most definitely not in love with his best friend. Not at all.

"So the new student's name is Alba and he seems cool. I think I wanna invite him to sit with us fer lunch sometimes," Elf continued, babbling about how awesome that dumb new student seemed.

Ok so maybe Alf was super jealous, but that didn't mean that he loved his friend romantically. They had just been together since elementary school, and he didn't want that messed up, that was all. At least that's what he told himself as he bitterly tore bites from his PB and J sandwich, growing more and more impatient as Elf continued to gush about Alba. He had gotten to where Elf was describing Alba's warm brown eyes before he had enough.

"I've got to print something in the library!" Alf said, masking his anger, as always.

"Ok! I'll see you after school!" Elf called after him.

I hope Alba's straight, Alf found himself thinking, before scolding himself for being so selfish. It should be enough for Elf to be happy.

Should be