Hey, my name is Odd, Odd Della Robbia. Yeah, strange name I know. Any way I'm a border at Kadic Academy in France, I'm 14 years old and I keep a dog in my room-shh! Up until today my life was reasonably normal. I have four friends, Yumi, Ulrich, Jeremie, and Aelita.
Yumi Ishiyama is a Japanese day student who lives with her parents and little brother Hiroki near campus. Yumi is one of those girls you don't mess with; she could probably take down ten fully grown men at once. She takes Pencak Selat, Karate, and swimming. She and Ulrich have a thing going on though neither of them seems willing to make a move. It might help if she wore a color other than black once and a while.
Urich Stern is my roommate, and trust me his last name is 'stern' for a reason. He is pretty much the most serious 14 year old I know, though that's not really his fault. His father is pretty much the biggest ass on the planet. Though he has plenty of girls after him-including Sissi, I'll tell you about her later-since he's the school soccer star and he can be pretty fun when he tries.
Jeremie Belpois is a nerd of many words, too bad I don't understand any of them! Jeremie is in love with Aelita who was his pen pal in our Foreign Languages class. The teacher knew he was a flop at foreign languages though and gave him a pen pal from Canada. They Skyped for a whole year after that project before Jeremie managed to get Aelita enrolled in Kadic. They've been inseparable ever since.
Aelita Stones is a transfer student at Kadic Academy from Canada. Who has pink hair! Anyway Aelita is an orphan which is why it took so long to enroll her in Kadic. Jeremie worked day and night for a year, starting petitions, appealing to courts, and finding loopholes. Eventually it was decided it would be good for Aelita so she was sent to France and she's been a border at Kadic ever since. Aelita is super sweet, if not a little naïve.
Of course I have enemies too. Elizabeth "Sissi" Delmas is the daughter of Jean Pierre Delmas the principle of Kadic Academy. While her father is a jolly, if not somewhat dense man, Sissi is mean as dirt. She is always scheming so she can have Ulrich-who is uninterested-and pulls dirty tricks like taking Ulrich's journal and threatening to expose Kiwi-my dog-to her father. She also frequently teases poor Aelita. Luckily for us, Sissi isn't too bright and it's easy to out think her.
Ok, so maybe my life wasn't perfectly normal. But whose is? My point is today my life changed forever. Today he came to our school. Today I met, William Dunbar.
It started out as a fairly normal day for me. I ate breakfast with the others as we chatted excitedly about the field trip today. It was only to the nearby woods, but we hardly ever got field trips and it was even more rare that both eighth and ninth graders got to go. Ulrich was off somewhere, I don't know where.
That was when I met him. Yumi introduced William as the new student and told us she was planning on partnering up with him for the project during the field trip. Ulrich's not going to be happy about that. I thought looking at William; he wasn't a bad looking guy to say the least. He was at least a head taller than me and much more…filled out. Dark hair and black and red clothing, he looked like he could be Yumi's brother. It was obvious right away though, that's not what William had in mind.
"I'm going to ask Mrs. Hertz about working on the project together," William told Yumi giving us a wave before leaving the dining hall. "I think Ulrich wants to talk to you," I said leaving as well. I needed to get Kiwi in my bag, so I could take him with us. He sure put up a fuss, but I got him settled down and walked outside just in time to watch an angry Ulrich glaring at Yumi and William who were walking towards the bus.
"That's William," I informed him "He's pretty cool." Ulrich just frowned and stayed frowning the entire bus ride. When we finally got to the place, where we would be doing our projects, Ulrich picked a place on a hill, so he could observe William and Yumi. Not that I minded the view, this William guy was pretty handsome when he concentrates. This brings me to one, tiny detail I forgot to mention before. I'm gay. Now before you freak out it's not like I'm attracted to every guy I see. I've never had interest in Ulrich or Jeremy, or really any of the guys at Kadic. I've tried plenty hard to be straight, but I don't see the point anymore-what's wrong with being gay? Well other than the fact you'll be ostracized by society and it's impossible to get a boyfriend.
Of course it's just my luck that the first guy I find any interest in falls in love with Yumi. I love Yumi to death, she's like the older sister I already have six of, but why do so many guys fall for her? Before I knew it, it was almost time to leave and we hadn't even started. I tried to get Ulrich back on track, but he just snapped at me, so I did the drawings myself. On the way back to the bus I ran into William.
"Oh hey, you're Odd right?" William greeted giving a half smile that almost knocked me off my feet "Yeah, Yumi introduced us this morning," I said casually and William furrowed his brows thinking back. "Yeah, hmm…well see you around Odd." He smirked before catching up to Yumi. Well, this was going to be an interesting year to say the least.