"Nathan!"

"A fifth of your grade will be dependent on quizzes - vocabulary, reading quizzes,"

"Nathan!"

"What?"

"Are we gonna recreate Dethklok this year?"

Nathan sighed, raising his eyebrows at Pickles. Last year, in ninth grade, he and a few friends had started a death metal band, called Dethklok. Nathan was on vocals - Skwisgaar Skwigelf, the Swedish manwhore kid on guitar, William Murderface - ugliest kid in the grade - on bass, and Pickles on drums. There was also a rhythm guitarist, Magnus Hammersmith - but over the summer he'd tried to attack Nathan with a pocketknife, and thus was in jail.

"Come on, we can just recruit one of the orchestra kids to replace Magnus!"

The teacher droned on about what class would be like, and Nathan blew a piece of hair out of his face. The orchestra kids weren't brutal - and Pickles knew it too. They couldn't just have some random schmuck in the band, they had to have somebody brutal and talented. "Hell no."

"Okay, what if we got Murderface to play the rhythm guitar parts?"

"Who would do bass?"

Pickles made an annoyed sound and pulled Nathan back by the shoulders. "I'm not gonna go back to my old band, the douchebags all moved. All of them. And I wanna make music, dammit."

"Fine, I'll try and find something out."

"You'd better, man."

Nathan rolled his eyes and leaned back in the chair, looking around the room. Murderface was engrossed in drawing dicks on his syllabus - of course. Nathan wrote "Dethklok?" on a piece of paper, and threw it at Murderface, hitting him in the head. Murderface flipped him off - but nodded and grinned anyway. Dethklok was pretty much all he had, socially. He turned to Skwisgaar, on the other side of the room, and watched him take a dick pic with his phone, in the middle of class. Nathan didn't know what he'd expected, but waved his arms at Skwisgaar. Skwisgaar gave Nathan a Look, and Nathan mimed playing guitar with his hands. After a few seconds of quizzical staring, Skwisgaar shook his head.

Nathan was about to yell at Skwisgaar and ask him why the hell he wouldn't do Dethklok when he noticed a kid moving to the front of the room, looking uncomfortable as hell - but at the same time, brutal as a fucking snowstorm of fire, if that was even possible with the laws of physics. He reached back and pointed.

"I know, dude!"

The kid at the front of the room had long brown hair and noticeable muscles, and had some pretty heavy boots on.

"Anyway, this is T… ocky…"

"Toki."

"Toki Wartooth." The teacher gave the kid, Toki, a dirty look for making her look bad, then turned back to the rest of the class. "He's here all the way from Norway - his family just moved here. So, please help him get his bearings this year…" The teacher's gaze was fixed on Skwisgaar, whose lip seemed to be curled more than humanly possible. Pickles was cracking up at this. "Skwigelf, you know what it's like being-"

"No I don'ts."

The teacher gave a deep sigh. "Just help him around and everything, okay? Great. Class dismissed."

As they left the classroom, Murderface, Nathan, and Pickles swarmed Skwisgaar, asking what the fuck he was leaving Dethklok for.

"I'ms in anothers band. Besides, wes still don'ts haves a rhythms guitarist."

"We can find one, douchebag!"

Murderface crossed his arms and glared at Skwisgaar. "What the hell other band would you be in?"

"Shark Fin Soup. It's a post-punks revivals band."

"That's not brutal, Skwisgaar," Nathan muttered. "But if you don't join, we are going to come to all of your concerts."

"I don'ts care."

Murderface grabbed the collar of Skwisgaar's shirt. "We're blackmailing you Schkwisgaar, you really have to play guitar for usch… or elsch!"

"God, fine! Dildos."

"Fuck yeah!" Nathan grabbed Skwisgaar and messed up his hair - successfully pissing him off. "Alright, we'll practice at Skwisgaar's place again - and we'll make flyers to find a rhythm guitarist."

"Hates you guys…"

So far, Toki was liking America much more than Norway. Maybe it was because they didn't live in the middle of fuck nowhere this time - the nearest city in Norway was miles away, and when he started going to a normal school, it took 2 hours to get there. Now it was just 20 minutes - which gave him more time for chores, homework, extracurriculars, learning English, church, and sleeping. He was already in advanced placement calculus - but the rest of the classes he was with everyone else. If only he spoke English better, he'd be in more advanced classes - and he'd been locked in the cellar for a week for failing that test. He couldn't fail anything else.

He scribbled down notes on the format of the class - Cornell notes, like he'd been taught in the study skill class he'd taken over the summer. He was pretty sure nothing about how many tests there'd be or how essays would be graded would be that important to review, but he had to have some kind of notes. It eased his mind.

In two classes (math and history) he'd had to introduce himself in front of the class, and in two more (english and german) the teacher had introduced him instead. In one (chemistry) the teacher had made a point of "not accepting any sloppy work, even if you happen to be foreign!". Orchestra was the one relaxing part of the day - Toki played the cello, and was pretty good at it. He could sink into the music, drawing the bow across the strings and drinking in the low harmonies. Art was more horrible than he'd expected - he was pretty creative, but the teacher wasn't. Then, he had his last class - health.

Toki set down his bag at a desk near the back - health was the one class he felt he could afford to not pay as much attention in - granted, not paying much attention to Toki was still listening to the teacher and trying to pick out which details would be on tests and quizzes. Apparently everyone else had the same idea of not paying any attention in health - the kid next to him had brought a fucking guitar.

The teacher started talking - sex ed would come later in the year, and it would be abstinence based - which disappointed Toki. He'd hoped to learn something about sex that wasn't from the intense dogma of his parents and their church, or internet porn. He laid his head on the desk, staring out the window, when he felt somebody tap him on the shoulder.

"You'ms the Norways kid, right?"

It was guitar guy, and Toki would've shuddered at the horrible English if he didn't speak it any better. He didn't respond - he didn't want to get in trouble for talking in class. He glanced at the guitar kid - tall, blonde, high cheekbones, slightly gay outfit - then looked back out the window. There was another tap on his shoulder.

"So my friends tells me to talks to you, because we ams both Scandinavian - racist dildos. We ams in a bands, but wes don'ts have a rhythms guitarist… You plays guitar?"

"A bit," Toki admitted. "We'ms in class."

He'd played guitar before - at their old church the one not horrible part was singing, and Toki played acoustic guitar for them. At the new church he hadn't offered to, yet. He was still better at cello - but he couldn't join a band. He just didn't have the time.

"Ams health. Anyway, I'ms lead, so you don'ts haves to be as good." Guitar kid grinned, and Toki watched his fingers - expertly fingering every note and pattern. "I'ms Skwisgaar Skwigelf, 555-3245. Texts me and I ams gives you Nathan's address, be theres after school, ja? I loans you guitar."

"I… I guess?" Toki raised an eyebrow. He didn't have anything to do, yet - he could say that he was spending time at the library, it wasn't as if his parents would be able to find out. "Uh, 555-8654." He watched Skwisgaar enter the number into his phone - Toki would never take his phone out in the middle of class. He'd never talk in the middle of class, either, but it was health, and Skwisgaar had forced himself upon Toki.

"Okay great, you haves his address."

Toki nodded, weakly. He wasn't sure what the hell he was getting himself into - it was strange and weird and rebellious, completely unlike him - but he already loved it.

Pickles and Nathan were the first to arrive at Nathan's place. Nathan unlocked the door and entered, throwing his bag on the floor. Pickles's bag joined it and he flopped onto the couch, tapping with the drumsticks he kept with him on the coffee table. "Dude, do you have anything to eat?"

"My mom made spaghetti last night," Nathan growled. Over the summer he'd started speaking in a death growl all the time. Pickles had never asked Nathan why - he probably thought it was Nathan's obsession with metal, going to a somewhat comedic extreme.

"Yeah, that works."

Nathan got up and walked into the kitchen, leaving Pickles. He could already smell the sauce, and his stomach growled - he'd had a huge lunch, but his adolescent stomach needed more than just a few sandwitches and a cookie, and the various snacks he'd had throughout the day. He sighed and pushed himself up, to see if the spaghetti was ready - and walked into Nathan, getting the red sauce all over the front of his shirt.

"Shit!"

"Ah, dude, sorry," Pickles said, grinning sheepishly. Nathan laughed with him.

"I'm gonna change."

"Good plan." Pickles figured he could heat up the spaghetti then wipe up the floor - he refilled the two bowls that had spilled and popped them in the microwave, then stepped over the mess on the floor and through the halls to Nathan's room. "Hey, is 5 minutes a good amount of time for the-"

He had walked in on Nathan shirtless.

"Nathan… why do you have tits?