"McFlyn? Marti?" Mr. Jefferies called from the front of the room. His pronunciation of the name threw her off for a moment as she looked around the room trying to find who he was talking to. His eyes found hers and she realized that she's was being called on.
She raised a finger and said, "Present." And after a moment's thought she added, "McFly. It's pronounced McFly."
"So you're Marti McFly? Like from Back to the Future?" A red head asked from the row behind her.
"Exactly." Marti replied.
Mr. Jefferies sighed, "Alright… Marti, can you come to the front and introduce yourself?"
"I can." She answered and slid out of her seat and walked gracefully to the front of the classroom. "My name's Marti, I moved here from California as an emancipated minor as part of my probation agreement. On Sunday nights I take bubble baths and like to hook up with people behind football bleachers. I'm told this is destructive behavior, but I don't particularly mind… I'm not into labels."
Silence.
Marti looked up towards her teacher with innocent eyes. "Was that sufficient?"
He swallowed, "You may sit down now Ms. McFlyn."
"Thank you." She smiled politely and returned to her seat. Marti's eyes cast over the room and she greeted watching eyes with a sly smile. This was her eighteenth school this year and her probation officer had decided that it might be better for her to get away from the United States in hope that she would be less destructive around her peers via the culture shock. What officer Timmons didn't know was that Marti could be destructive anywhere.
Marti sorted the different social classes within the classroom in seconds. When you see enough of it, it stops becoming hard to fit into neat little boxes.
A brown haired girl sitting across the room made eye contact with her.
The girl breathed in.
And again.
It's almost like she's sniffing the air, though Marti.
The girl's eyes flickered and Marti leaned unconsciously towards her. Something clicked in her brain and Marti sat back again. She gave the girl a slow grin and shifted her eyes from green to yellow.
The girl jumped and her eyes flared wide in surprise. Marti winked and then looked back towards Mr. Jefferies, ignoring the girl's repeated attempts to attract her attention.
She tapped her fingernails against the table top of her desk, boring, boring, boring, and she stopped listening to what Jefferies was saying. Instead, she just listened to his voice and the sounds he made, everybody was just noises to her today.
She scratched an "M" into her desk with a fingernail. She rolled her neck, watching the other half of the room. A blonde boy stared unabashedly at her, she smirked, she didn't have to be a genius to know what he was either.
The period bell rung and she left the classroom without a second glance. The brown haired girl exchanged a look with the blonde boy and they both raced after her. They followed her into an enclosed staircase devoid of other students.
"Who are you?" The brown haired girl asked Marti.
"Do I need to introduce myself twice?" Marti snapped while still walking away from them.
"You don't smell like one of us." The girl told her.
Marti whirled on her heel and pointed a finger at her and then let her finger dance through the air until it was pointed towards the boy. "Us?" She looked towards the girl, "Let me guess, Maddy? You feel like a Maddy, you're more obvious than you might think to someone who is looking." She turned and scowled at the blonde, "And you are just plain laughable. So both of you, do me a favor and get lost."
Marti stalked off and Maddy and the boy stared after her.
"Why doesn't she smell like a wolfblood Rhydian?" Maddy bit the inside of her cheek.
"I don't think that she is a wolfblood, Maddy." He replied.
"But her eyes?" Maddy asked him quizzically.
"I don't know but she's not one of us." He said, staring off at her.
Marti clenched her fists from the floor up and shook her head as if dispelling an irritating buzz, she wasn't one of anybody.
####
Lunch came far too slowly for Marti, but that was nothing new. Nothing was ever fast enough for Marti. She looked briefly around the lunch table before spotting the brunette Maddy, she was sitting with the blonde, Rhydian, and the redhead who had brought up Back to the Future as well as a black boy who looked to Marti to be a soccer player. Or, it's football here isn't it? She amended while walking over to where there was a conveniently placed empty chair next to the redhead.
"Hello again, it would seem that we keep running into each other." Marti said while unpacking her lunch.
They all looked at her shocked until the redhead broke the silence and said, "You don't eat school lunches?"
Marti shook her head, "You have no idea what goes into processed food, my dear."
"Actually…" The redhead started but Marti cut her off.
"What's your name?"
"Uh, Shannon?" Came the answer.
"Was that a question? Because you didn't seem very sure." Marti cocked her head and brought a lettuce leaf to her mouth.
"Leave her alone. What's your deal anyways?" Maddy asked her with glittering eyes.
"Introductions all around!" Declared Marti, ignoring Maddy, and she pointed around the people around the table, "Shannon, or so she thinks, Rhydian who is not from Wales, let me guess…" She paused for a moment, "Tom. A socce—football player, and the lovely Maddy: our resident street dancer." She looked around the table, "Are you freaked out yet?"
"How—" Tom began but Marti cut him off with a wave of her hand.
"I'm incredibly psychic you know." Her eyes sparkled.
"As well as having the nasty habit of interrupting people." Interjected Rhydian with a glance at Maddy.
"If you're psychic, then…" Began Shannon, only to be interrupted yet again by Marti.
"…what am I thinking?" Marti raised her eyebrows, "I really thought it'd be something a bit more imaginative but alright." She closed her eyes and to Shannon she said, "Relax, or it's going to feel like you have a small jackhammer operating in the base of your skull." Shannon took a deep breath and Marti reached out and pulled out her hair tie in one swift grab.
Shannon jerked back, "Oi! What was that for?"
Marti opened her eyes and sighed, "To get the complete picture."
"The complete picture of what?" Shannon countered, trying to snatch her hair band back from Marti's wrist.
"You." Marti closed her eyes again and went still for a moment. She then opened her eyes, smiled, and said, "Yes, I am."
"Wait, that's it?" Queried Tom, "That was kind of anticlimactic."
"Not for Shannon." Countered Marti, "She wanted to know why I said 'people' earlier instead of boys and because she's just so good at figuring things out, wanted to know if I was bisexual." Marti leaned in close, her mouth next to Shannon's ear, and whispered to her through her curly red hair.
Shannon's eyes flew open and she blushed violently.
The rest of the table looked at each other, not sure what to make of the situation, the only acceptable action seeming to be to stare at their food awkwardly.
Abruptly, Marti sat up and leaned across the table. She held out her hand towards Maddy. "Allies?"
Maddy's brow furrowed at the choice of word, but shook Marti's hand anyways.
"Something tells me this is going to be fun." Muttered Rhydian.
Tom shot him a smirk, "Tell me about it."
Marti went and sat down again next to Shannon. "So, what is it that you English talk about?"
"The same things as you Americans I'd imagine, Marti." Maddy let out a large yawn.
A group of boys passed by their table and Marti stared after them, her shoulders locked up and she swallowed.
"Marti?" Asked Shannon, "Are you alright?"
Marti's almost grimace-like expression melted off of her face in the blink of an eye to be replaced with a flirtatious grin, "With you, next to me? Of course, I could hardly be anything else, sweetheart." She popped her lips, and then glanced back towards the boys, her eyes flickered.
"Hey, do any of you guys know any magic tricks?" She quickly deflected the attention back towards the group.
"I can explain the Monty Hall game theory." Shannon offered.
"And I can tell which door the car's behind on my first guess." Marti joked.
"I can pull four aces out of a shuffled deck." Said Tom.
Maddy raised her head from her food, "I never knew that."
Tom shrugged.
Maddy furrowed her brow and wondered why she never knew that.
Marti looked around and for the first time, seemed to recognize how much her arrival had shaken up the dynamics of the group. To diffuse the increasingly awkward situation, she said, "Watch this."
She flared open both of her hands and pushed up her sleeves. "Nothing in my hands or up my sleeve… but watch and be amazed…" She snapped both of her fingers and two tiny blue flames appeared. They burned brightly and reflected in the eyes of her audience like they were made of glass.
Maddy and Rhydian recoiled instantly.
Marti hissed, "Mhúchadh." And both flames were extinguished and the only evidence was two trails of blue smoke coming from both of her hands.