I sprinted all the way to the North hall. I didn't slow down until I was just a few doors away from the 12th room in this hall. I couldn't believe what had just happened back there. Rodrick must have been even worse than I thought! Good God, what did he do?!
It was gonna be helluva rough year with Slike, I could tell that. He was like a devil or something… Ugh, I felt the overwhelming urge to upchuck. He ruined my day.
I sighed and bravely walked into the art class. My eyes were captivated by the woman in front of the room, a young blond. My eyes bestowed on her lovely frame, what a dame! She had big, blue-green eyes, long and wavy blond hair, soft pink lips and a womanly figure. She wasn't too tall, maybe 5'4… looked around 25 or so...I couldn't take my eyes away from her. She was a spitting image of my love, Holly. Maybe she was related…
"Hello, what is your name?" I was wiped out of my trance. Was that question directed to me? I looked into her haunting hues. Whoa.
"Uhhh… Greg. Greg Heffley, ma'am." I blushed intensely. She smiled and scanned her list.
"Okay, you may have a seat. I'm Miss Freely. Welcome to Introduction to Art."
I nodded and wobbled over to a free seat. I sat next to some ginger guy. I didn't know him. My eyes shot back to the goddess before the class. My heart pounded furiously. I was so engaged in her features that I could hardly hear a word she spoke. Her voice was gentle and peppy, like a lady's should be.
Thank God Rodrick isn't reading this…
"Okay, today we're just going to practice with shading in objects with a pencil. It helps to really make the object 'pop out' and bring it into focus. I'll pass out the paper and I have a tin of number two pencils on my desk that you can use, kay? Today you may sketch and shade whatever you like."
And just like that the class was in action. After a minute passed I stood shakily and headed over to the back of the line at her front desk.
Once I sat back down I glanced around the room for something simple that I could draw. I'm a bad artist, so I wanted to keep my first assignment as easy as possible. That way it would turn out at least mediocre for the lovely teach to grade :)
Let's see... ah, how about the window! Yup, just one big square, then four lines crossing inside of it. Piece of cake! I quickly sketched that up and "shaded" around it to make it pop out, as the pretty ma'am had suggested. I then smacked it on her desk and waited for the hour to end. It did at 11:10. I was off to lunch, I guessed.
Since Rowley had gotten early lunch, I doubted that I'd be seeing him there, unless he skipped out on his fourth hour and hit the cafeteria for a second time. Wouldn't have surprised me too much if that was the case. Yet, it was not. I hadn't seen him there, but once I got my lunch of a hamburger and a bag of sun chips with chocolate milk, I spotted the guy I met that morning in Gym, Earl Dere. I decided to sit by him.
I went his way and took a seat next to his other friend, some guy with shaggy black hair and acne. "Hey, Earl," I said to get his attention. He turned to me and smirked. "Greg. How is your first day goin'?"
I couldn't help but frown. I had had my thoughts set strictly on the incident with my scary as hell math teacher, Mr. Slike.
"Not great, Earl. Mr. Slike is a little meaner than you told me. He threatened me already, and for no reason whatsoever. He is going to keep watch on me very closely all because of my brother's outrageous antics that he enacted on him when he was his student... it's not fair."
Earl seemed to reply indifferently. "Just switch out. Try to get into Kemper's class." He then continued to snack on his pizza slice while the guy next to him was chuckling to himself, probably because of what I had told him. He didn't even hear the whole story yet.
"I want to, but he threatened that if I even think about switching out of his class then he'll 'mount my hide on the wall above his fireplace'."
His friend began to crack up intensely while Earl simply replied with a raised eyebrow. "He can't do that. Teachers can't force you to stay in their class, Greg. They have no authority to do that. Just go down to the Guidance office tomorrow during your third hour and ask to switch teachers. I'm sure they can do it for you."
I sighed a breath of relief. Phew, that was good. I was really fearing a dreadful year with that freak of a teacher. I hope what Earl had said is true, for I will be testing it out first thing tomorrow. His buddy continued to chortle.
"Pff, ha ha! Man, it's like that one episode of SpongeBob! Ya know? When Mr. Krabs hired SpongeBob and Patrick to paint his walls or somethin' like that, and he threatened them that if they got ONE DROP of paint on any of his artwork then he'd like, well...pff, mount their hides on the wall!" He went on laughing, like I was now too. Earl grinned.
"I no longer watch that show, Johnny, but I like your point there." Earl then turned to me. "Oh, Greg, this is Johnny Beatz. Johnny, Greg Heffley. He's a sophomore, and Greg here's a fresh-"
"Whoa! Heffley? Your bro is like awesome, dude! He was dope at the graduation speech! Shit, man. He didn't give a damn any longer! He just threw out swear after swear and promised us all that he'd make the MTV music awards one day. Real dreamer."
Yes, I freaking knew. I went there for Pete's sake...
"Yup..." I gruffly sighed. My brother was a real moron alright.
Throughout the rest of lunch he and his friend talked about their schedules and more on being a first year high schooler. Earl's biggest pointer seemed to consist of just doing your homework on a regular basis and not slacking off. Johnny seemed to kinda disregard all of that. Johnny sort of reminded me of Rodrick. He was like a more generous and cool version of him.
The bang rang at 11:40 signaling the start of my 5th hour. Bio. I waved goodbye to my new friend(s) and headed off towards the East hall for my next class. I knew that I'd be meeting my more wimpy friend there as well.
Once inside I took interest in the table at the far back of the room. I suspected that Rowley would be meeting me there upon his arrival. I plopped my backpack onto the large table for two and took a seat. I had taken oodles of science classes throughout my first eight years of school, but I had never taken biology. I wasn't exactly certain of its criteria. Earl had told me that it was a fairly simple course, but I had to watch out for chemistry later on after freshman year, for that class was "the tough shit", as quoted by Johnny Beatz.
Sure enough, my goofy and husky friend waltzed in minutes later, likely just two, red in the face and tip of the finger as well. He saw me and plopped down aside me. I didn't think his day was going too well.
"Huh! I hate high school, buddy! Phhhhhh-EW!" he groaned as I felt tempted to give him a comforting pat on the shoulder. "Just another two hours and we're done for the day, Row. And why are you complaining? You're not gonna believe what I have had to go through so far," I replied as the teacher walked in. He appeared to be middle aged like my Gym teacher, but maybe a little younger by five or so years.
"Hello, class. Welcome to Biology! Who in here likes science?" he asked the class, as only a few people raised their hands in response. He smiled. "Good, good, now, for those of you who don't already know I'm Mr. Pillup. Yes, yes, I know, it's awful close to 'pull-up', everyone always gets a good chuckle or two out of that... Anyway, we're going to be checking out text books today and then we'll move on to the Introduction. Nothing much, really, it is your first day after all. Alright, let me get attendance here before we take off to the bookroom."
Rowley face-planted the desk as he did attendance. Was the first day really taking that big a toll on him? I shook him once he began to obnoxiously snore. "Rowley...ROWLEY!" I whispered coarsely in a furious attempt to awaken his slumber. He groggily leant back up. "Yeah, yeah, I'm awake..." he sighed, then proceeded to support his noggin in his right palm. And I thought I was the wimp, here? Looks like my friend since childhood took the cake- and ate it too...
"Gregory Heffley?"
"Here."
He continued down the list, soon getting to Rowley's name. "Rowley Jefferson?"
Rowley sheepishly blinked and refused to respond. "Jefferson? Is Rowley Jefferson here?"
I rolled my eyes and lifted up his heavy arm for him, waving it in the air for the scholar to see. "He's here, sir," I threw in, as he returned a small smirk with a raised eyebrow. I let go of my pathetic friend's arm and it smacked down onto the table, making it shake lightly in response. Good grief, he was really worn out.
Once he had gone through everyone, he grabbed his keys and directed us out of the room. I stood and attempted to egg the sleepy head up. He had to check out his own damn book. That, I couldn't do for him.
"C'mon, Rowley! It'll only take a few minutes!" I pleaded, as most of the class had already cleared out. He sighed dejectedly. "The school wins, Greg. The school has won."
Wtf?
"Moron. Get up. Don't be a baby. We're only freshmen. We've got a long way to go from here on out! You think this is tough? Well then, wait till CHEMISTRY next year!" I warned, seeming to get to him a tad now. He groaned and stood to his feet. "Fine. Let's get this over with..."
We departed the class and followed everyone else to the bookroom. I decided to question the lethargic guy walking with me whilst heading for the BR. "So... rough day?" I asked, as sincere as I could manage. He nodded gloomily in response.
No one was looking, so I patted his back. "It's gonna be alright, bud. Two more hours and we're free."
Another sigh of defeat escaped his lips. Not exactly a fighter, is he? Well, he was pretty feeble back in Middle school as well. Yeah, I guess he's always going to be a bit of an underachiever.
"Hey, lighten up. I know you've got a birthday comin' up...two weeks! Fifteen's a big one," I declared. He still moped perpetually. "Whatever."
I was thankful to finally come across the bookroom. I could have used a little distraction from Rowley's depressing moodiness. I could only take so much.
"Alright, single file, you know the drill. Mrs. Killian will be handing the books out, then you will take them over into the next room and get them scanned and checked in. Okee doke?"
Some students nodded while the rest of us had our eyes wandering all over the detail of our halls. Nothing much to see, really, just a bunch of lockers and a few fundraiser posters plastered on the wall.
We marched in one by one to obtain our book. My eyes darn nearly popped out of their sockets at the size of the books. They were HUGE! Good freaking GRIEF! Oh man, I'd hate to see what my sluggish friend would do once he got ahold of one of those books-
"YYYYYOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW!" roared a too clumsy Rowley next to me - who had dropped the large novel onto his right foot, it having not been in his palms for a petty second. Crap...
He collapsed down on his ass in pure agony. Students circled around the doof who had just let a 15 pound tome crash down onto his shoed toes. His face went impossibly red and he rocked back and forth whilst sitting on his fat ass. I face palmed as he began to cry, at this point Mr. Pillup had come in to see what the commotion was, to see my lousy reflexed friend on the floor in a suffering mess.
Mrs. Killian went pale at the scene. I could hear some students from outside the room chuckle at the ridiculousness, and I could hear some of the kids muster "Jefferson just let the book drop on his foot!" Then more cracking up.
Mr. Pillup frowned and looked as if he was about to face palm just like I had. "Ugh... Jefferson, can you- uh, do you feel any sensation in your feet?" he asked while looking down fretfully at the tear-faced moron on the floor. Rowley sniffled and tilted his shoe back and forth, supposedly checking to see if he could even move his freaking toes. The response with as expected.
"God...NO! I - I can't!" he hollered back, panic-stricken terribly. The teacher groaned silently.
"Everyone, clear on out of here and get your books checked out, then head back to class. And BE CAREFUL with them for goodness sake!"
This...this was pathetic. I stood next to my weak hump of a friend as Mr. Pillup knelt down. "We'll have to remove your shoe, son." He then gestured Rowley to extend his foot out towards him to slip off, like reverse Cinderella, in a weird way. Rowley continued to snort heaps of snot up his nose as the teacher removed his tennis shoe, then sock.
A doozy, would make for a decent understatement. It appeared the klutz had every right to moan like a whale drying up on a shore, because all his toes and half his foot went a red-purplish color. He had really dropped quite the weight on himself this time. It nearly made for a dumbbell.
Rowley wailed in both peril and pain as he saw his own foot for himself. I felt sorry for him big time. Mr. Pillup grimaced intensely and grumbled something inwardly to himself that I couldn't make out entirely. Probably a swear or two.
He placed his hand over his face and slowly brought it down to swipe over it frustratingly. "You're gonna have to see the school nurse, bub. I'm not sure that a hospital is necessary though..."
Rowley didn't like the sounds of that.
"WHAT? OF COURSE I NEED THE ER! I'VE BROKEN MY FOOT!" he retorted, taking both me and the lady near us aback quite a ways.
Mr. Pillup sighed yet again and directed his attention to me briefly. "Go on, Greg. I don't think you're gonna wanna hang around for this."
I stared down at my injured friend sorrowfully. Two injuries in one day? Masochist rookie...
"Um, will he be OK, Mr. Pillup?" I asked, while he quickly shrugged (very quickly so as to prevent crybaby Rowley from seeing!) "Yep. Though I cannot disregard the possibility that he may have some broken toes..."
"WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!"
Mr. Pillup shot me one more serious glance and I got the message. I was getting the hell outta there!
