Chapter III
Lunch!!! (and its consequences)
Second period passed just as slowly. Legolas had some trouble finding out where to go. He just followed Lissette and Alex around like an abandoned dog until they finally told him he had to go to English class. He did not understand, so they took the trouble to actually escort him to his locker to get his books and then to the English classroom. He was quite amazed at his locker-house when he got there.
"So…this is my house?" he asked.
"Your locker," Lissette said matter-of-factly.
"Loc-ker."
"Yes."
He was extremely shocked to find a large picture of himself hanging on the wall of his "loc-ker," but he said nothing. He had already figured out not to question anything in this strange single-sex world (it's actually an all- girl school, but he didn't know any better), where letters could equal numbers, where cities were given identification numbers instead of names, where you could be an 'Alex,' where animals exploded and sizzled when you fed them the wrong food, and where ladies yelled at you because they didn't like the way you wore your shoes.
"Now," Alex said, "you have English, so get your English books." The last thing she was going to do was be the servant to a formerly semi-self- sufficient friend.
Legolas stared blankly into his house-locker. He thought it was rather small. He tried to picture himself squishing himself into the small space which was already mostly filled up with loose papers, pictures, and books.
Lissette sighed. "I'll get it." She reached down and grabbed his supplies for English. She threw Alex an aggravated look as she closed the door of Legolas' locker-house.
They escorted him to room 204, but he immediately resisted. "But I am of 205, not 204!"
"Look!" Alex shouted, desperation mounting in her, "You are, as of now, of room 204. Now, stay in there, and do as Mrs. Snow says!"
"Jocelyn, this really isn't funny anymore, we have to get to class. Stop it." Lissette's face grew serious. Legolas was confused, he had done nothing wrong in his eyes.
"But—" he started, but it was too late, the Lissette opened the door to room 204 and Alex shoved Legolas inside.
Once Legolas was inside, he saw several large, round tables spread out around the room, and another writing space at the front of the room. A girl waved to him and shouted out, "Hey, Jocey!" When she evoked no response out of him, she came up to him.
I guess my name is Jocey as well. Let's see, I've been called Jocelyn, Jobas, Shoes, and Jocey…I've got to remember these. I must have several name, Legolas silently thought. He followed the girl to the table. Another girl, this one had brown hair, greeted her, "Hey, Jocey Posse!"
Posse?
"Hello," Legolas glanced at her binder and read her name, "Cathy Beatty." He pronounced it quite badly and it came out sounding like this, "Cat-hye Be-ya-tye." She threw him a strange look but laughed it off.
"Okay, girls!" Mrs. Snow said to get their attention. Legolas had to get used to being called a girl. "Let's get out our grammar homework and we'll check it."
Legolas looked at the other girls. They had opened their green book and were flipping through the pages. He took his book and imitated them. He flipped the pages, but he didn't know why. He flipped to the end of the book, and then flipped back to the front.
"Page 452," the girl named Kaitlin said, "good one, Jocelyn." She laughed.
Why are they always laughing at me? he asked himself.
He turned to page 452 and looked at the it. It meant nothing to him. Commas, apostrophes, semicolons, colons, parentheses…Oh no, he thought, will this be like earlier today? Worse.
"Um…Jocelyn. Number one," Mrs. Snow said.
Legolas turned to face her, his face blank.
"X," he said, guessing blindly relying on the former experiences in first period. Everyone laughed. Even Mrs. Snow laughed, she thought he had been joking…but he wasn't.
"Okay, Jocelyn. Do number one, just read the sentence and say where you put in the semicolons," she instructed again.
"Right," he said nervously, "John has lived in Dallas, Texas; Albany, New York; and Tallahassee, Florida."
"Uh huh," Mrs. Snow nodded, "now, where would you put the semicolons?"
Legolas had no idea what a semicolon was. "Um…after John?"
"No."
"Before John?"
"Think about it. What is the rule for semicolons when there is a series in a sentence?" she said patiently.
Her patience encouraged Legolas a little bit, but her hint had had no effect whatsoever on him. "After Florida?"
"That's the end of the sentence."
"Oh," he said, having no idea why that would matter.
"After Dallas?"
"Close, but no. What's the rule?" she asked.
"Fifty-six?"
"No," she couldn't help feeling frustrated with his cluelessness, "that's a number."
"Texas?"
"Right! Good job, Jocelyn," she commended, "now, can you tell me why?"
Legolas was back where he started. He hung his head and put his hands on the back of his neck and sighed. "Um…because you need to find the square root of the quantity of (x-3)?"
This continued for the rest of the period, there was a lot of laughing, whispering, and rumor-spreading as Mrs. Snow made futile attempts to try to explain to him the purpose of a semicolon.
"But…why would you use it?" he asked, failing to see the purpose in such a seemingly useless thing.
"For clarification," she answered.
"It's so…pointless. Why not just use two sentences?"
"Hey, I didn't make it up, I'm just teaching it. Now please, try to concentrate," her patience was wearing thing.
Legolas did not want to make her angry. She much more tolerant and he did not want to take advantage of that by being rash. But as they moved on to their poetry homework, he did not see any improvement whatsoever. As they read the poem, "A Dream Deferred," by Langston Hughes, he became utterly flustered. The class leapt into a focused discussion on the meaning of the poem, and Legolas sat quietly. He thought it a rather bad poem…if it was a poem at all. With occasional rhyming words, it seemed to skip from thought to thought, random compilations of rhyming phrases. And when Mrs. Snow asked him his thoughts on the meaning of the last line, he was at a loss.
"Um," he read the last line again. It read, "Or does it explode?" He didn't understand. Why would it explode? And why was it in italics? He blinked a few times to wake himself up, and said, "It's deeper meaning is that a dream deferred may destroy itself and therefore cease to exist, except for little pieces of it which cannot be repaired back together."
To his amazement, she nodded. "Hmm…interesting view. Devon?"
He sighed in relief. For the first time today, he seemed to have done something right. He turned to look at the girl who was speaking, apparently her name was Devon. She had tan skin and brown hair and sat at the other end of the room. She seems nice, he thought. He made mental notes about all the girls who seemed to regard him as a friend or were friendly. He saw the strawberry blonde girl sitting across from him write her name around a sheet of paper. Laura… he repeated in his head, I supposed that's her name.
That was the last thing he thought before the bell rang (actually a buzzer which makes a dull droning sound, but bell makes more sense). Legolas saw a few girls copying words off the writing space onto their planner, and he did so as well. He didn't know what they were writing, so he wrote a bunch of random things on his planner, scribbling along the edges of the pages. The girl named Cathy turned to him in amusement.
"Having fun?" she asked.
He looked up, and not knowing what she meant, nodded. As other began to leave, he picked up his books and left as well. He didn't know which books were his, so he picked up a bunch of other books along with his. He went to his locker-house and opened it, still not able to get over the fact that it was decorated with pictures of him. He stuffed his (and other people's)books inside, shoving them so they would all fit. He heard a voice behind him.
"Jocelyn!" Alex shouted.
"Good morning, Alex," Legolas replied.
"Whatever, let's go to lunch."
The thought of food made his stomach pain with hunger. "All right. What is there?"
"Let's go check."
Spaghetti? he wondered as his eyes scanned over the lunch menu list hanging on the middle school bulletin board. "Spag-hetti?" he asked Alex.
"Whatever you say, Jocelyn, whatever you say," she said, her confusion growing.
All of a sudden, out of nowhere, there came a loud shout. "Pasghetti! Pasghetti!"
Alex turned to face Jocelyn, "Uh oh…I forgot…"
Lissette jumped out from behind the two with another shout. "PASGHETTI!!"
Pasghetti?
Legolas' former impression of Lissette faded as he saw another side of her. She danced around energetically with her occasional chant of "pasghetti!"
Legolas watched intently as she did this and joined in, dancing and chanting. He thought it might have been some type of lunch ritual. A couple of girls came up and stared at them. Lissette stopped and began laughing unstoppably. Legolas stopped also, but did not laugh.
He recognized one of the girls, it was Devon. The other girl he did not recognize though. She was shorter than the others and had black hair. He later figured out her name was Angela. What strange names… he thought.
"What are you guys doing?" Devon asked, determined to keep her temper.
"Pasghetti!" Lissette shouted as if that explained it all. Apparently it did, for neither Devon nor Angela asked any more questions. Legolas remained silent.
They waited for another fifteen minutes before entering the lunch room. Legolas was surprised to see so many girls congregated at once…eating. They were all shouting and yelling, or in the words of the elves, "merrymaking." He glanced at the strange foods on their plates and resolved not to try any of it except for the very basic foods which he recognized.
There's no knowing what types of garbage they consume…these "humans." I'm beginning to have my doubts. What strange humans. Wait until I tell Aragorn… he stopped. Thinking of Aragorn made him a little homesick. He missed the normality of Middle-Earth. Everything here was crazy and it was as if the entire world had been turned over. The people were so strange, with their uniform clothes, and their strange rules, and strange questions. Not to mention the food.
As he filed into the lunch line, he glanced in wonder as Lissette put a plate of this "spaghetti," or spag-hetti as Legolas pronounced it, onto her tray. He picked up a tray also but passed by the spaghetti without picking up any. He also passed by the mushy-looking apple cobbler and the pee- colored lemonade. His eyes widened as he passed the salad bar. Finally, something he recognized.
He hurriedly ran over to the salad bar with his tray. His picked up the oversized tweezer thingies and began picking at the lettuce, but he could not get a hold of it, unaccustomed to the strange new utensils. He threw it down, and hands first, dug into the pile of salad. He shoved it onto his tray, oblivious to the small plates they had available for salad. For decoration, he put a few tomatoes and eggs on one side, and for symmetry, he put several cheese blocks on the other side. Finally, with this strange assortment of foods heaped on his tray, he went to sit down.
Not realizing there were separate sections of the cafeteria for different grades, Legolas sat down at the closest table to him…the teacher table. The teachers eyed him with frightened curiosity as he appeared with his lettuce- tomato-egg-cheese filled tray and sat down next to them.
"Uh, Jocelyn?" Mrs. Cunningham, the history teacher, "Are you sure you don't want a plate…or something?"
Legolas looked up and said, "I've got one," pointing to the red tray.
"I meant a plate."
"I've got one," Legolas repeated. Then, seeing the forks, he immediately recognized them, and grabbed one. Without hesitation, he began to attack his food. He did his best to remember his refined elven manners, but having had nothing to eat in the past week or so, he had some trouble not eating too quickly.
"Don't you want to sit with your friends?" Mrs. Larsen, the other Algebra teacher, asked.
"Friends?" he said, his voice was muffled because his mouth was full of salad. Then, swallowing the food, he asked more clearly, "Friends?" He was not sure who his friends were supposed to be.
"You know," she began, "your friends?" She was hoping he'd get the hint.
Legolas was no idiot, he knew that he somehow was not wanted, but was stubborn. "Why can't I sit here?"
"Well, you might want to sit with people your own age," Mrs. Cunningham reasoned.
"My own age?" he laughed, "My own age? I am nearly 3,000 years old, and I think I am right in presuming that I am closer in age to you than to the human children?"
Everyone in the table stared at him, not knowing whether to laugh or be worried. They chose the latter. "Jocelyn, you are not 3,000 years old," Mrs. Larsen said.
"Why not? I said so, and I think I know how old I am."
The teachers began to whisper to one another in concern. Finally, Mrs. Larsen spoke up, "Are you feeling all right?"
"Feeling better than I have in weeks!" he said as he continued filling his mouth with as much food as it could fit.
"Okay, if you say so…perhaps you would like to see the nurse?" Mrs. Cunningham asked.
"I'm—" he did not have a chance to finish his sentence, for Alex pulled him away from his chair.
"Jocelyn, what the FUCK(!!!!) do you think you're doing?" she said with clenched teeth.
"I'm eating," he took this opportunity to chew and swallow what was in his mouth.
"No, you're not. You're making a complete asshole out of yourself!" argued Alex.
"I'm eating."
"What is wrong with you? Jesus! It's like you got hit in the head with a fucking bowling ball. You've gone absolutely crazy!"
"I'm eating?" he said sheepishly.
"Whatever, get your tray. You're coming with me." She waited for him to get his tray and then dragged him to the table where she, Lissette, Devon, Angela, and a few more strangers were sitting. "Jocelyn, I don't know what's wrong with you, but you seriously need to stop. Okay?"
Legolas had no idea what he had been doing that was so wrong. True, he admit he had been a little impudent with the teachers, but he felt as if they had deserved it. "Okay," he lied so she would stop reprimanding him. He figured he would keep his mouth shut for the rest of the time until he could figure out how this strange world operated.
He ate silently, filling himself up with salad. He did not notice the strange looks people were throwing at him. Devon was about to ask something but then decided against it.
Suddenly, a voice was projected around the room from the microphone where a girl was standing behind. "May I have your attention please?" the girl asked. She had a raspy voice, and it shocked Legolas to hear it so loudly.
The cafeteria slowly became silent. Then, she began to speak, about what, Legolas had the foggiest idea about. Something about study hall and about after-school sports. Then he heard the words, "Let us pray." Everyone lowered their heads (almost everybody, Alex remained picking at her food) and listened.
"God is great, God is good, let us thank him for this food."
"What?" Legolas asked, unaware that the rest of the cafeteria was silent except for him. His voice sounded loudly around the room and captured the attention of nearly everybody. Alex clamped a hand around his mouth and shushed him.
"Shut up, bitch!" she whispered, "Abbo (a high school teacher)will be here in a second and tear you apart. Just get under the table." She shoved him underneath the table as a stout man came strutting close by. Legolas remained underneath the table as he saw the thick pair of legs next to him.
"Who said that?" he demanded, "Who was that?"
No one said anything. "I think it was a seventh grader," said Angela, her voice shaking.
"Who was it?!" he shouted, unaware that he had caught the attention of everybody in the cafeteria, even the lunch ladies.
Again, everyone at the table was silent. None of them wanted to face his anger.
"Seventh g-grader…" Lissette began.
Abbo pounded his fist on the table, making the silverware rattle. "Don't try to lie to me."
Legolas was fuming underneath the table. It was a simple mistake, why did this "Abbo" have to be so angry anyway?
"If you don't tell me now, I'm going to make sure you all get punished, severely," he threatened, his voice was grave. "Who ever did it, speak up NOW!!"
No one replied, so he pointed to a girl named Sarah. "It was you, wasn't it?" When she shook her head vehemently in fear, he pointed an accusing finger to someone else. "Was it you?" he asked.
Legolas could not bear it any longer. He couldn't listen as this man bellowed out at the girls above. He jumped out from underneath the table.
"It was I!" he shouted nobly.
"What were you doing down there?" Abbo yelled, though he knew the answer.
"I was hiding, but I know now that you are evil, and I will not watch as you punish my friends for something so small and insignificant as 'what!' So stand ready, and face me like a man!" Legolas challenged. He positioned himself, ready to attack. Abbo looked at him like he was crazy.
"Sit down! What's your name?"
"Jocelyn," Legolas didn't sit down.
"Jocelyn what?"
Legolas was silent. He didn't know. But before he had a chance to answer at all, Abbo pushed him down into his seat. Legolas hopped back up again.
"Do not touch me! I am royalty!" he commanded.
"I don't care if you're the King of England, you were disrespectful, and you are being disrespectful right now," Abbo said, "you're serving a detention with me today, until ten o'clock! I'm calling your parents right now!"
The cafeteria was filled with gasps.
"At night?" Devon asked, surprised.
"She has lacrosse practice," a girl with brown curly hair named Rome (Legolas later found out) pointed out.
"Shut up you two, or you're getting a detention, too," he warned.
"I am serving nothing to you!" Legolas said, misapprehending the meaning of "serving a detention." "You can't force me to do anything!"
* * * * * *
Legolas found himself sitting in detention later that day. He was sitting at a desk, drumming his fingers on the surface of the table, humming to himself. This isn't so bad, he thought, at least it's quiet. And nobody's asking me questions. The man called Abbo was not present at the moment, but he threatened Legolas within an inch of his life if he even attempted to leave. Besides, Legolas had a funny feeling Abbo was waiting for him just outside the door. He sat for another hour.
At last, he was unable to contain it any longer. He stood up. Since no lightning came to strike him down to the ground, he figured it was acceptable if he at least wandered around the room. This is when he discovered the magic of the radio.
Picking up and examining things ever once in a while, he made his way around the room. He played with beakers, glass rods, and scales. All of a sudden, something caught his eye. It was a black rectangular shape with many buttons and a long antennae stretching out from it. Legolas approached it warily, poking it a couple of times before determining it was safe to come within contact of it. He walked up to it, and poked it, turning it on. He heard a loud static noise coming from the speaker, and he jumped back.
"Shh! Shhhh!" he shushed the strange black box. He put his hands around it, hoping to muffle the noise, but as he did so, he pushed a few more buttons, turning it onto the radio. Once again, he jumped back. He slapped it in attempt to make it shut up.
"Be quiet, stupid creature!" he hit it numerous times. He slapped a few more buttons and the radio switched to a station which had classical music on it. Legolas, not surprised anymore, but instead calmed by the violin concerto, approached the box again. Now amazed, he poked it again, and it switched radio stations once more. After a few times, he figured out that the more times he poked the box, the more times it changed sounds. He poked until he found a sound that he liked.
When Abbo returned, he found Legolas head-banging to some heavy metal music. He tried to shout to get himself heard, but Legolas did not hear or see him. Abbo walked up and turned off the music. Legolas turned around. "What?" he said insolently.
"It's ten o'clock. You can go," he said, "you're parents are outside waiting for you."
* * * * * *
Legolas walked around the school, not knowing where to go. He was lost. He couldn't find his locker-house, and he didn't know where he could go for help. The place seemed to be asleep, barely any lights were on, and he couldn't find a single person. The last thing he wanted to do was to go back to Abbo and tell him he couldn't find his locker-house.
All of a sudden, a young boy came out of the shadows.
"Jocelyn!" the boy said, "it's ten thirty. I thought your detention was over at ten."
Legolas shrugged. He didn't know why this boy was talking to him. "Do you know where my loc-ker is?"
"You'd better hurry," the boy ignored his question, "dad is really mad already."
"Dad?" Legolas asked, more to himself than to the boy.
"Yeah, he's in the car," the boy said, "we've got to go."
"Car?"
"Yeah! Let's go!" and with that, the boy grabbed Legolas' (or Jocelyn's, actually)hair and pulled him towards the door.
"Let go of me, you hobbit!" Legolas shouted, kicking and screaming. He tried to fight off the boy, but the more he fought, the harder the boy yanked on his hair.
"Shut up, Jocelyn."
"Let go, you hairy-footed hobbit! I never liked you hobbits, with your messy hair and short legs!" he shouted.
The boy yanked even harder on Legolas' hair. "Don't talk about the hair," he said possessively.
So, fighting and struggling, the boy managed to pull Legolas all the way to the car. Once his dad saw Legolas kicking and screaming, he came out to help the boy shove him into the car. Legolas wished dearly for his strong elven muscles once more, but found out he was still the owner of the small, adolescent body.
The second he was in the car, the man and the boy immediately strapped him down with the seat belt. Not knowing how the seat belt worked, Legolas was not able to free himself of it, but instead pulled and tugged at it the entire ride. The minute the car left, the man began to yell at Legolas.
"What were you thinking? I can't believe you got a detention! Jocelyn, what's the matter with you? I'm going to pull you from Hockaday if you don't shape up. You think I'm kidding? I'm very serious, I will take you and home-school you. You don't understand how long I'm going to ground you for this. No TV, no Internet, no phone calls, no friends, no anything, until further notice. I was always too lenient with you, now I have to shape you up. If you mess up one more time, it's over. Understand? I'll send you to Taiwan to live with your relatives, show you what it's really like. Maybe you'll learn a lesson or two," the man yelled.
Legolas was not listening, he didn't even realize the man was talking. He kept yanking and wrenching at his seat belt, trying to get it off of him, but in vain. He realized that it was no use. His efforts were futile.
Lunch!!! (and its consequences)
Second period passed just as slowly. Legolas had some trouble finding out where to go. He just followed Lissette and Alex around like an abandoned dog until they finally told him he had to go to English class. He did not understand, so they took the trouble to actually escort him to his locker to get his books and then to the English classroom. He was quite amazed at his locker-house when he got there.
"So…this is my house?" he asked.
"Your locker," Lissette said matter-of-factly.
"Loc-ker."
"Yes."
He was extremely shocked to find a large picture of himself hanging on the wall of his "loc-ker," but he said nothing. He had already figured out not to question anything in this strange single-sex world (it's actually an all- girl school, but he didn't know any better), where letters could equal numbers, where cities were given identification numbers instead of names, where you could be an 'Alex,' where animals exploded and sizzled when you fed them the wrong food, and where ladies yelled at you because they didn't like the way you wore your shoes.
"Now," Alex said, "you have English, so get your English books." The last thing she was going to do was be the servant to a formerly semi-self- sufficient friend.
Legolas stared blankly into his house-locker. He thought it was rather small. He tried to picture himself squishing himself into the small space which was already mostly filled up with loose papers, pictures, and books.
Lissette sighed. "I'll get it." She reached down and grabbed his supplies for English. She threw Alex an aggravated look as she closed the door of Legolas' locker-house.
They escorted him to room 204, but he immediately resisted. "But I am of 205, not 204!"
"Look!" Alex shouted, desperation mounting in her, "You are, as of now, of room 204. Now, stay in there, and do as Mrs. Snow says!"
"Jocelyn, this really isn't funny anymore, we have to get to class. Stop it." Lissette's face grew serious. Legolas was confused, he had done nothing wrong in his eyes.
"But—" he started, but it was too late, the Lissette opened the door to room 204 and Alex shoved Legolas inside.
Once Legolas was inside, he saw several large, round tables spread out around the room, and another writing space at the front of the room. A girl waved to him and shouted out, "Hey, Jocey!" When she evoked no response out of him, she came up to him.
I guess my name is Jocey as well. Let's see, I've been called Jocelyn, Jobas, Shoes, and Jocey…I've got to remember these. I must have several name, Legolas silently thought. He followed the girl to the table. Another girl, this one had brown hair, greeted her, "Hey, Jocey Posse!"
Posse?
"Hello," Legolas glanced at her binder and read her name, "Cathy Beatty." He pronounced it quite badly and it came out sounding like this, "Cat-hye Be-ya-tye." She threw him a strange look but laughed it off.
"Okay, girls!" Mrs. Snow said to get their attention. Legolas had to get used to being called a girl. "Let's get out our grammar homework and we'll check it."
Legolas looked at the other girls. They had opened their green book and were flipping through the pages. He took his book and imitated them. He flipped the pages, but he didn't know why. He flipped to the end of the book, and then flipped back to the front.
"Page 452," the girl named Kaitlin said, "good one, Jocelyn." She laughed.
Why are they always laughing at me? he asked himself.
He turned to page 452 and looked at the it. It meant nothing to him. Commas, apostrophes, semicolons, colons, parentheses…Oh no, he thought, will this be like earlier today? Worse.
"Um…Jocelyn. Number one," Mrs. Snow said.
Legolas turned to face her, his face blank.
"X," he said, guessing blindly relying on the former experiences in first period. Everyone laughed. Even Mrs. Snow laughed, she thought he had been joking…but he wasn't.
"Okay, Jocelyn. Do number one, just read the sentence and say where you put in the semicolons," she instructed again.
"Right," he said nervously, "John has lived in Dallas, Texas; Albany, New York; and Tallahassee, Florida."
"Uh huh," Mrs. Snow nodded, "now, where would you put the semicolons?"
Legolas had no idea what a semicolon was. "Um…after John?"
"No."
"Before John?"
"Think about it. What is the rule for semicolons when there is a series in a sentence?" she said patiently.
Her patience encouraged Legolas a little bit, but her hint had had no effect whatsoever on him. "After Florida?"
"That's the end of the sentence."
"Oh," he said, having no idea why that would matter.
"After Dallas?"
"Close, but no. What's the rule?" she asked.
"Fifty-six?"
"No," she couldn't help feeling frustrated with his cluelessness, "that's a number."
"Texas?"
"Right! Good job, Jocelyn," she commended, "now, can you tell me why?"
Legolas was back where he started. He hung his head and put his hands on the back of his neck and sighed. "Um…because you need to find the square root of the quantity of (x-3)?"
This continued for the rest of the period, there was a lot of laughing, whispering, and rumor-spreading as Mrs. Snow made futile attempts to try to explain to him the purpose of a semicolon.
"But…why would you use it?" he asked, failing to see the purpose in such a seemingly useless thing.
"For clarification," she answered.
"It's so…pointless. Why not just use two sentences?"
"Hey, I didn't make it up, I'm just teaching it. Now please, try to concentrate," her patience was wearing thing.
Legolas did not want to make her angry. She much more tolerant and he did not want to take advantage of that by being rash. But as they moved on to their poetry homework, he did not see any improvement whatsoever. As they read the poem, "A Dream Deferred," by Langston Hughes, he became utterly flustered. The class leapt into a focused discussion on the meaning of the poem, and Legolas sat quietly. He thought it a rather bad poem…if it was a poem at all. With occasional rhyming words, it seemed to skip from thought to thought, random compilations of rhyming phrases. And when Mrs. Snow asked him his thoughts on the meaning of the last line, he was at a loss.
"Um," he read the last line again. It read, "Or does it explode?" He didn't understand. Why would it explode? And why was it in italics? He blinked a few times to wake himself up, and said, "It's deeper meaning is that a dream deferred may destroy itself and therefore cease to exist, except for little pieces of it which cannot be repaired back together."
To his amazement, she nodded. "Hmm…interesting view. Devon?"
He sighed in relief. For the first time today, he seemed to have done something right. He turned to look at the girl who was speaking, apparently her name was Devon. She had tan skin and brown hair and sat at the other end of the room. She seems nice, he thought. He made mental notes about all the girls who seemed to regard him as a friend or were friendly. He saw the strawberry blonde girl sitting across from him write her name around a sheet of paper. Laura… he repeated in his head, I supposed that's her name.
That was the last thing he thought before the bell rang (actually a buzzer which makes a dull droning sound, but bell makes more sense). Legolas saw a few girls copying words off the writing space onto their planner, and he did so as well. He didn't know what they were writing, so he wrote a bunch of random things on his planner, scribbling along the edges of the pages. The girl named Cathy turned to him in amusement.
"Having fun?" she asked.
He looked up, and not knowing what she meant, nodded. As other began to leave, he picked up his books and left as well. He didn't know which books were his, so he picked up a bunch of other books along with his. He went to his locker-house and opened it, still not able to get over the fact that it was decorated with pictures of him. He stuffed his (and other people's)books inside, shoving them so they would all fit. He heard a voice behind him.
"Jocelyn!" Alex shouted.
"Good morning, Alex," Legolas replied.
"Whatever, let's go to lunch."
The thought of food made his stomach pain with hunger. "All right. What is there?"
"Let's go check."
Spaghetti? he wondered as his eyes scanned over the lunch menu list hanging on the middle school bulletin board. "Spag-hetti?" he asked Alex.
"Whatever you say, Jocelyn, whatever you say," she said, her confusion growing.
All of a sudden, out of nowhere, there came a loud shout. "Pasghetti! Pasghetti!"
Alex turned to face Jocelyn, "Uh oh…I forgot…"
Lissette jumped out from behind the two with another shout. "PASGHETTI!!"
Pasghetti?
Legolas' former impression of Lissette faded as he saw another side of her. She danced around energetically with her occasional chant of "pasghetti!"
Legolas watched intently as she did this and joined in, dancing and chanting. He thought it might have been some type of lunch ritual. A couple of girls came up and stared at them. Lissette stopped and began laughing unstoppably. Legolas stopped also, but did not laugh.
He recognized one of the girls, it was Devon. The other girl he did not recognize though. She was shorter than the others and had black hair. He later figured out her name was Angela. What strange names… he thought.
"What are you guys doing?" Devon asked, determined to keep her temper.
"Pasghetti!" Lissette shouted as if that explained it all. Apparently it did, for neither Devon nor Angela asked any more questions. Legolas remained silent.
They waited for another fifteen minutes before entering the lunch room. Legolas was surprised to see so many girls congregated at once…eating. They were all shouting and yelling, or in the words of the elves, "merrymaking." He glanced at the strange foods on their plates and resolved not to try any of it except for the very basic foods which he recognized.
There's no knowing what types of garbage they consume…these "humans." I'm beginning to have my doubts. What strange humans. Wait until I tell Aragorn… he stopped. Thinking of Aragorn made him a little homesick. He missed the normality of Middle-Earth. Everything here was crazy and it was as if the entire world had been turned over. The people were so strange, with their uniform clothes, and their strange rules, and strange questions. Not to mention the food.
As he filed into the lunch line, he glanced in wonder as Lissette put a plate of this "spaghetti," or spag-hetti as Legolas pronounced it, onto her tray. He picked up a tray also but passed by the spaghetti without picking up any. He also passed by the mushy-looking apple cobbler and the pee- colored lemonade. His eyes widened as he passed the salad bar. Finally, something he recognized.
He hurriedly ran over to the salad bar with his tray. His picked up the oversized tweezer thingies and began picking at the lettuce, but he could not get a hold of it, unaccustomed to the strange new utensils. He threw it down, and hands first, dug into the pile of salad. He shoved it onto his tray, oblivious to the small plates they had available for salad. For decoration, he put a few tomatoes and eggs on one side, and for symmetry, he put several cheese blocks on the other side. Finally, with this strange assortment of foods heaped on his tray, he went to sit down.
Not realizing there were separate sections of the cafeteria for different grades, Legolas sat down at the closest table to him…the teacher table. The teachers eyed him with frightened curiosity as he appeared with his lettuce- tomato-egg-cheese filled tray and sat down next to them.
"Uh, Jocelyn?" Mrs. Cunningham, the history teacher, "Are you sure you don't want a plate…or something?"
Legolas looked up and said, "I've got one," pointing to the red tray.
"I meant a plate."
"I've got one," Legolas repeated. Then, seeing the forks, he immediately recognized them, and grabbed one. Without hesitation, he began to attack his food. He did his best to remember his refined elven manners, but having had nothing to eat in the past week or so, he had some trouble not eating too quickly.
"Don't you want to sit with your friends?" Mrs. Larsen, the other Algebra teacher, asked.
"Friends?" he said, his voice was muffled because his mouth was full of salad. Then, swallowing the food, he asked more clearly, "Friends?" He was not sure who his friends were supposed to be.
"You know," she began, "your friends?" She was hoping he'd get the hint.
Legolas was no idiot, he knew that he somehow was not wanted, but was stubborn. "Why can't I sit here?"
"Well, you might want to sit with people your own age," Mrs. Cunningham reasoned.
"My own age?" he laughed, "My own age? I am nearly 3,000 years old, and I think I am right in presuming that I am closer in age to you than to the human children?"
Everyone in the table stared at him, not knowing whether to laugh or be worried. They chose the latter. "Jocelyn, you are not 3,000 years old," Mrs. Larsen said.
"Why not? I said so, and I think I know how old I am."
The teachers began to whisper to one another in concern. Finally, Mrs. Larsen spoke up, "Are you feeling all right?"
"Feeling better than I have in weeks!" he said as he continued filling his mouth with as much food as it could fit.
"Okay, if you say so…perhaps you would like to see the nurse?" Mrs. Cunningham asked.
"I'm—" he did not have a chance to finish his sentence, for Alex pulled him away from his chair.
"Jocelyn, what the FUCK(!!!!) do you think you're doing?" she said with clenched teeth.
"I'm eating," he took this opportunity to chew and swallow what was in his mouth.
"No, you're not. You're making a complete asshole out of yourself!" argued Alex.
"I'm eating."
"What is wrong with you? Jesus! It's like you got hit in the head with a fucking bowling ball. You've gone absolutely crazy!"
"I'm eating?" he said sheepishly.
"Whatever, get your tray. You're coming with me." She waited for him to get his tray and then dragged him to the table where she, Lissette, Devon, Angela, and a few more strangers were sitting. "Jocelyn, I don't know what's wrong with you, but you seriously need to stop. Okay?"
Legolas had no idea what he had been doing that was so wrong. True, he admit he had been a little impudent with the teachers, but he felt as if they had deserved it. "Okay," he lied so she would stop reprimanding him. He figured he would keep his mouth shut for the rest of the time until he could figure out how this strange world operated.
He ate silently, filling himself up with salad. He did not notice the strange looks people were throwing at him. Devon was about to ask something but then decided against it.
Suddenly, a voice was projected around the room from the microphone where a girl was standing behind. "May I have your attention please?" the girl asked. She had a raspy voice, and it shocked Legolas to hear it so loudly.
The cafeteria slowly became silent. Then, she began to speak, about what, Legolas had the foggiest idea about. Something about study hall and about after-school sports. Then he heard the words, "Let us pray." Everyone lowered their heads (almost everybody, Alex remained picking at her food) and listened.
"God is great, God is good, let us thank him for this food."
"What?" Legolas asked, unaware that the rest of the cafeteria was silent except for him. His voice sounded loudly around the room and captured the attention of nearly everybody. Alex clamped a hand around his mouth and shushed him.
"Shut up, bitch!" she whispered, "Abbo (a high school teacher)will be here in a second and tear you apart. Just get under the table." She shoved him underneath the table as a stout man came strutting close by. Legolas remained underneath the table as he saw the thick pair of legs next to him.
"Who said that?" he demanded, "Who was that?"
No one said anything. "I think it was a seventh grader," said Angela, her voice shaking.
"Who was it?!" he shouted, unaware that he had caught the attention of everybody in the cafeteria, even the lunch ladies.
Again, everyone at the table was silent. None of them wanted to face his anger.
"Seventh g-grader…" Lissette began.
Abbo pounded his fist on the table, making the silverware rattle. "Don't try to lie to me."
Legolas was fuming underneath the table. It was a simple mistake, why did this "Abbo" have to be so angry anyway?
"If you don't tell me now, I'm going to make sure you all get punished, severely," he threatened, his voice was grave. "Who ever did it, speak up NOW!!"
No one replied, so he pointed to a girl named Sarah. "It was you, wasn't it?" When she shook her head vehemently in fear, he pointed an accusing finger to someone else. "Was it you?" he asked.
Legolas could not bear it any longer. He couldn't listen as this man bellowed out at the girls above. He jumped out from underneath the table.
"It was I!" he shouted nobly.
"What were you doing down there?" Abbo yelled, though he knew the answer.
"I was hiding, but I know now that you are evil, and I will not watch as you punish my friends for something so small and insignificant as 'what!' So stand ready, and face me like a man!" Legolas challenged. He positioned himself, ready to attack. Abbo looked at him like he was crazy.
"Sit down! What's your name?"
"Jocelyn," Legolas didn't sit down.
"Jocelyn what?"
Legolas was silent. He didn't know. But before he had a chance to answer at all, Abbo pushed him down into his seat. Legolas hopped back up again.
"Do not touch me! I am royalty!" he commanded.
"I don't care if you're the King of England, you were disrespectful, and you are being disrespectful right now," Abbo said, "you're serving a detention with me today, until ten o'clock! I'm calling your parents right now!"
The cafeteria was filled with gasps.
"At night?" Devon asked, surprised.
"She has lacrosse practice," a girl with brown curly hair named Rome (Legolas later found out) pointed out.
"Shut up you two, or you're getting a detention, too," he warned.
"I am serving nothing to you!" Legolas said, misapprehending the meaning of "serving a detention." "You can't force me to do anything!"
* * * * * *
Legolas found himself sitting in detention later that day. He was sitting at a desk, drumming his fingers on the surface of the table, humming to himself. This isn't so bad, he thought, at least it's quiet. And nobody's asking me questions. The man called Abbo was not present at the moment, but he threatened Legolas within an inch of his life if he even attempted to leave. Besides, Legolas had a funny feeling Abbo was waiting for him just outside the door. He sat for another hour.
At last, he was unable to contain it any longer. He stood up. Since no lightning came to strike him down to the ground, he figured it was acceptable if he at least wandered around the room. This is when he discovered the magic of the radio.
Picking up and examining things ever once in a while, he made his way around the room. He played with beakers, glass rods, and scales. All of a sudden, something caught his eye. It was a black rectangular shape with many buttons and a long antennae stretching out from it. Legolas approached it warily, poking it a couple of times before determining it was safe to come within contact of it. He walked up to it, and poked it, turning it on. He heard a loud static noise coming from the speaker, and he jumped back.
"Shh! Shhhh!" he shushed the strange black box. He put his hands around it, hoping to muffle the noise, but as he did so, he pushed a few more buttons, turning it onto the radio. Once again, he jumped back. He slapped it in attempt to make it shut up.
"Be quiet, stupid creature!" he hit it numerous times. He slapped a few more buttons and the radio switched to a station which had classical music on it. Legolas, not surprised anymore, but instead calmed by the violin concerto, approached the box again. Now amazed, he poked it again, and it switched radio stations once more. After a few times, he figured out that the more times he poked the box, the more times it changed sounds. He poked until he found a sound that he liked.
When Abbo returned, he found Legolas head-banging to some heavy metal music. He tried to shout to get himself heard, but Legolas did not hear or see him. Abbo walked up and turned off the music. Legolas turned around. "What?" he said insolently.
"It's ten o'clock. You can go," he said, "you're parents are outside waiting for you."
* * * * * *
Legolas walked around the school, not knowing where to go. He was lost. He couldn't find his locker-house, and he didn't know where he could go for help. The place seemed to be asleep, barely any lights were on, and he couldn't find a single person. The last thing he wanted to do was to go back to Abbo and tell him he couldn't find his locker-house.
All of a sudden, a young boy came out of the shadows.
"Jocelyn!" the boy said, "it's ten thirty. I thought your detention was over at ten."
Legolas shrugged. He didn't know why this boy was talking to him. "Do you know where my loc-ker is?"
"You'd better hurry," the boy ignored his question, "dad is really mad already."
"Dad?" Legolas asked, more to himself than to the boy.
"Yeah, he's in the car," the boy said, "we've got to go."
"Car?"
"Yeah! Let's go!" and with that, the boy grabbed Legolas' (or Jocelyn's, actually)hair and pulled him towards the door.
"Let go of me, you hobbit!" Legolas shouted, kicking and screaming. He tried to fight off the boy, but the more he fought, the harder the boy yanked on his hair.
"Shut up, Jocelyn."
"Let go, you hairy-footed hobbit! I never liked you hobbits, with your messy hair and short legs!" he shouted.
The boy yanked even harder on Legolas' hair. "Don't talk about the hair," he said possessively.
So, fighting and struggling, the boy managed to pull Legolas all the way to the car. Once his dad saw Legolas kicking and screaming, he came out to help the boy shove him into the car. Legolas wished dearly for his strong elven muscles once more, but found out he was still the owner of the small, adolescent body.
The second he was in the car, the man and the boy immediately strapped him down with the seat belt. Not knowing how the seat belt worked, Legolas was not able to free himself of it, but instead pulled and tugged at it the entire ride. The minute the car left, the man began to yell at Legolas.
"What were you thinking? I can't believe you got a detention! Jocelyn, what's the matter with you? I'm going to pull you from Hockaday if you don't shape up. You think I'm kidding? I'm very serious, I will take you and home-school you. You don't understand how long I'm going to ground you for this. No TV, no Internet, no phone calls, no friends, no anything, until further notice. I was always too lenient with you, now I have to shape you up. If you mess up one more time, it's over. Understand? I'll send you to Taiwan to live with your relatives, show you what it's really like. Maybe you'll learn a lesson or two," the man yelled.
Legolas was not listening, he didn't even realize the man was talking. He kept yanking and wrenching at his seat belt, trying to get it off of him, but in vain. He realized that it was no use. His efforts were futile.