"Yes," I breathed. "That would be incredible." Ella smiled at me.
"Yay! It'll be great!" She led me down her hallway to a closet. She opened the closet. Inside were blankets, and clothes. She gave me a big warm shirt and fluffy pants to wear to bed. I wasn't used to such luxuries. Once I had changed, Ella went to her living room, and made her couch into a pullout bed by…. You know, pulling it out. We slept there together, just like a sleepover. Talking for an hour about school. Ella's best friend Mandy. The kids on her bus. Her favorite teacher, Mr. Fischer. And so on. It was the most peaceful I'd ever felt since Angel was….. never mind. I have to keep my head up.
That night, I had another dream/vision:
Angel sits at the beginning of a maze like thing. She is breathing hard. I guess they put her through the maze multiple times already. She takes a sip of water, looking exhausted. When a bell rings, she is pushed and she runs through the whole thing without stopping. Exhausted, she falls down at the end. Angel….. my heart twists with pain. She looks up, blinded by the bright lights. A man comes up, maybe mid forties in age, and smiles at her. Who is he? I try to read his mind, but it's just a vision, I can't do anything but watch. She knows him, I can tell, she looks excited, then terrified. Who is he? What has he done? Questions float through my head as I jolt awake.
"Ahh!" I yell, scared out of sleep.
"Snow? What's wrong?" Ella asks tiredly, sitting up and yawning. I don't tell her much. Just that I had a bad dream.
"Girls! Time for school!" I hear Dr. M's voice from the kitchen.
"We're up Mom!" Ella yells back. We run down the hall, and Ella gives me clothes to wear that are hers. I'm a little bit taller then her, but the clothes still fit so I put them on. Ten minutes later, we go in the kitchen for breakfast, joining Dr. M. She set out tiny plates, and silverware, and fruit, and juice, and so much food. I feel ravenous but don't start eating yet. A minute later, Max comes in. "Max!" I say, and give her a hug. I knew she'd be okay, but I really care about her. I care about the whole flock a lot. I feel like I was meant to be with them.
She smiles, a little bit surprised. "Morning Snow."
Ella smiles. "Hi-a Max!"
She smiles in reply and focuses on her food. I start too, using the silverware, which really slows me down, but I manage to shovel about six pounds of food in my mouth within ten minutes. It's delicious! Eggs, Potatoes, Fruit….I've never had a home cooked meal before. "Ready for school, Snow?" Asks Ella, jolting me out of my thoughts.
Max looks surprised. "You're going to school?"
"It's just for today," I reply, hoping she's okay with it.
"Yeah okay," she mutters. I quickly read her thoughts. "If you're at school, how can I protect you?"
"Max, I'll be fine," I shoot into her mind. She sighs in her mind. "Fine, just be careful."
"Okay."
So I grab my backpack, colored red and black, and Ella and I walk to her bus stop.
We get there ten minutes later and see a girl who looks our age, she's wearing too much lipstick, too much makeup in general, and looks generally slutty.
"Hey dork. Who's the friend?" The girl sneers at Ella.
Ella glares at her. "Just go away Shauna."
Shauna smirks. "Don't want to look like a dork in front of your little friend there?"
I interject. "Ella's my cousin, and if you insult her one more time, I'll make sure you can't move without a wheelchair."
She looks at me, her mouth set in a scowl. For a few minutes, we just stare at each other. Finally, she looks away in discomfort. I smile. Oh, by the way did I mention that Ella and I are both in 7th grade? Although technically I'm 13 and she's 12, I'm not quite a year older so we're in the same grade.
The bus arrives. Towards the middle of the bus, there's a three seater with one person in it. I immediately like this girl. She's our age, with cute earrings, black pants, and a dark blue shirt. She smiles and waves over Ella, who invites me to sit next to them. I do, and Ella introduces us. "Mandy, this is Kate. Kate, this is Mandy." Kate is the name I chose as my "normal name". Snow was an unusual name. In fact, it probably wasn't even a name. So I just went with Kate. I smile nervously. "Hi." She smiles at me. A huge smile. It looks painful, it's so big.
"So nice to meet you!" she chirps. "Did you just move here?"
"Actually, Ella's my cousin I'm staying with her for a couple days," I answer quickly.
"Oh. Okay then." Her smile never falters.
The bus arrives at the school. We go to the office, get my "name" checked in. (Kate Martinez). Then we find my locker, and Ella has to teach me how to open it. Luckily, I catch on quickly… after the first twenty times.
"Yes!" I cheer as I finally get my lock to open without any help. Mandy looks at me a little strangely.
"Don't they have locks where you're from?"
"Lie, Snow, lie," I tell myself. "Umm… we have keys for our lockers. No combinations."
"Oh okay then." There's that smile again. We go to homeroom. It turns out Mandy and Ella have a lot of classes together, I have a lot of classes with Ella, and the ones that Ella isn't in, I have Mandy. Thank god for that.
We walk to our homeroom(we're all in the same homeroom) and tell the teacher about me and he adds my name to the roster. "Okay, you're all signed in." He smiles at me. Ella and Mandy go over to a group of desks in a corner where some other girls are sitting so I followed them.
"Hi Ashley! Hi Amy!" Calls out Ella.
"Hey Els! Hey Mandy! Hey-wait who is that?" Asks the one who I think is Ashley.
"This is Kate, she's my cousin," Ella quickly introduces me.
"Hi Kate, I'm Amy." Smiles one of the girls. She is blonde, and short, with sparkling blue eyes.
"Hey I'm Ashley." Smiles the other. She is Indian, also short, and has brown caramel eyes and frizzy black hair.
"Can I call you Ash?" I ask timidly.
She smiles. "Sure! A lot of people do!"
"Nobody does," scoffed Mandy.
I feel better as the girls around me talk-about boys, school, and other stuff, and they always try to get me in the conversation. They are really nice, and I'm so grateful to be able to go to school with Ella, I feel so normal for once!
"Earth to Kate…" I hear faintly.
Amy laughs. "You dozed off a little Kate."
I roll my eyes. "Well I woke up pretty early this morning."
"SAME!" laughs Mandy, and I'm not sure why I laugh but I do. Then suddenly, we're all laughing and I feel…. So normal again.
First period is gym. I didn't bring "gym clothes," but I tell my teacher that I can run fine in jeans, and so he lets me play. We're doing a mile run today. Only a mile? We go outside. Some girls shiver, even though it's not that cold. Mandy jogs over to me. Ella's not in my gym class, so it's just us two. "Hey Snow, wanna run together?" She asks.
I laugh. 'Try to keep up."
She laughs too. "Is that a challenge I hear?"
I try to keep serious. "Yes."
"Okay let's do this."
On the gym teacher's count, we get ready.
3….2….1….GO!
I didn't want to show off my enhancements but I couldn't help it. I sprinted off, leaving many students in the dust. I ran a mile in two minutes, arriving back at the gym teacher in, I guess, record time. He gaped at me. "How…. How did you?"
I smiled confidently. "I'm good at sports."
Mandy finished in about seven minutes. Not bad for a regular human.
"Damn, Kate!" She exclaimed, out of breath. I was barely sweating. "How did you do that?"
"I told you I'm good at running," I reminded her.
She shook her head in wonder. "I think we'll get along well, Kate." She smiles but my heart fell. After today, I will probably never see her again. I smile back, but it probably looks as fake as it feels.
So…second period. Science. I know a lot about Science so I prepare myself to astound the teacher. She comes into the room, and I walk up to her.
"Shut up, and do your do-now!" She screams at me.
"Well, I'm new, and…" I stutter.
Her glare softens. "Oh." She gestures to a table of students with one chair empty. "Sit over there. If you don't understand something, ask your groupmates." Then she stormed to her desk to look through some papers.
Wow. She's mean. "Is she always like that?" I whisper to the boy next to me.
He nods. "Sometimes worse," he whispers back. Ella gives me a small smile from across the room. I smile back, but first mouth "This teacher's really mean!"
"Well, her nickname is Miss Devil," she mouths back before returning to her work. Ugh.
I start my Do-Now, finding it easy. I finish it quickly, and sit to wait for more instructions. Well, nobody got detention so I guess it wasn't a terrible class. People were yelled at though. After living through hell my whole life, I hated to see anyone unhappy. Except the scientists or the Erasers. They should burn in hell.
So...next was 3rd period. Ella nudged me as we walked down a set of stairs. "This is my favorite class, Mr. Fischer is the best!" She told me enthusiastically. I hoped for the best.
Turns out Ella was right. Mr. Fischer was really funny and nice, too. I couldn't wait to tell the flock about him. "Just focus on school," I told myself, breathing deeply but quietly. When I thought about the flock, I started crying a little. I stopped, and laughed at Mr. Fischer's jokes, got through Math even though I might have failed a test, had fun in English where the teacher was also nice. For lunch, I ate a lot because I needed to. I burn calories faster than the average human. When a bunch of "popular girls" saw me with all that food, they laughed and called me "Fatso." They weren't even trying to hide it. I wanted to kill them so badly. Or at least break their noses. But I kept it in. For mine and Ella's sake. I ate my food. Amy, Ashley, Mandy, and some other girls that included a crazy girl named Lisa sat at our lunchtable didn't care what we ate or how much. I felt better as I started my fourth burger.
After lunch, I have orchestra. Umm…never played a violin before. I thought I was going to fail. But Ella introduced me to her friend Iris, who helped me understand some basic things before I confronted the orchestra teacher. She scared me a little, but she seemed to understand that I might fail, and told me I should just play really softly. Thanks for the boost of confidence.(SARCASM). Then I had French class with a nice lady, who was old and was named "Mrs. Marshall." I was already fluent in French, English, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and I spoke a little Mandarin. Thanks again, asshole scientists. So I took the quiz she handed out, positive that I got a 100.
After school, Mandy and Ella showed me to the bus. But I had something different in mind. "Ella, can you come with me?" I asked.
She looked confused. "Okay, just me?"
"Yeah, sorry Mandy I…."
"It's okay, I'll just take the bus." So Mandy took the bus home. Ella looked at me in wonder.
"What is it Snow?"
"Let's fly home," I felt excited.
She looked at me in astonishment. "Snow…I can't fly."
"I'll carry you."
"How strong are you?"
"You can trust me."
"Okay."
