To comply with a request given to me by my SOLE reviewer, I have left Avalan hog-tied in my bathroom. *squeaks can be heard in the background* Shuddup!
Ahem. To the ONE LONESOME REVIEWER who I therefore dedicate this chapter to, as I wouldn't have continued writing without your pestering. So… yay!
^___^ I like his name too.
IMPORTANT NOTE: I have, and most likely never will go to an American high school. So, don't blame me if my descriptions are ever-so-slightly off the mark, but I'm just going by what I've seen in movies and stuff…
Disclaimer: I own nothing but a sketch folder and a couple of mangy pencil-stubs.
School Daze
I was stealing wallets again the night before I went to school, in the rain, and got my new clothing absolutely soaked. That's right, I gave up my old hospital rags, and bought myself the first pieces of clothing I came in contact with. Well, you can't claim I'm not a guy…
But I somehow managed to get the sizing horribly wrong… I thought I went by ages, so I brought everything in size 16, because there was no size 17. I still don't like to bring that up, it's really quite embarrassing, but I didn't really know what I was doing; I was an out of touch kid with no parental guidance or anything. I was completely alone, and suffering for it.
I also didn't know how to deal with a head cold. I woke up in my dingy little hotel room feel like my head was filled with something infinitely heavier than water, but still managed to slosh about when I moved, and make me feel nauseous by moving. My nose was blocked, and my throat hurt like it was coated with sandpaper(1).
But, eventually, I got myself up, and choked down some of my tasteless cereal, and tried to make the best of it.
That day was Monday. My first day of school.
I dressed myself in my loose dark blue jeans, which constantly slipped down my hips, and tan sweater that was falling off my thin, pale shoulders and ran a hand through my messy back hair in an attempt to straighten it. My bark blue eyes were red-rimmed in the half-light coming from beyond the tartan curtains that refused to open, and the dust in the room clogged my nose even more than usual, and made me cough and sneeze.
It was a relief to step out of my motel room, and I stopped in through my weary stumble towards the school grounds at a pharmacy and picked up a small box of tissues. I needed them by that point, I had been rubbing my nose raw by wiping it on my overly-long sleeves and black gloves. Remember, before you cringe at my appalling manners, I was working under a tight budget, and didn't really know what to do about a leaking nose.
When I reached the school grounds, barely aware of my arriving, the sky was once again overcast, and rumbling threateningly. The other students were all hurrying towards the main door, their conversations kept to hushed and worried words. Even through my stuffed nose I could smell the storm coming. It was obvious.
I stood for a moment, being buffeted by the cold wind blowing past the school, and looked at it. That was a building I would be walking to daily for almost a year. I had been told that I was the right age for a senior. I didn't know what that meant, but it sounded okay. Though, the thought had crossed my mind that I might be re-learning what I'd already been taught. It was possible, I didn't really have much to do except learn in the institute.
When I entered the bustling corridor, it was filled to the brim with students all too eager to keep out of the impending storm, all milling around chatting.
I felt crowded. I hadn't been around this many people my entire life. All I had to do was walk through the crowd to the office and pick up my timetable but it suddenly seemed like the hardest thing in the world. I'm not sure whether I was hallucinating or not, but the corridor seemed to suddenly stretch on forever.
I swallowed thickly grimaced, and started to duck and weave as well as I could through the throngs of students.
It was like a video game, where you have to go around the sliding blocks, and choose just the right moments to jump onto the swinging thing to reach the other side. People were constantly moving positions, going in different directions and changing course themselves, making negotiating anything hard. I think I would have lost all my lives by this point, the most memorable moment being when I walked headlong into another student. We both jumped back a few paces, and I must have stared, surprised.
He was of average height, comparatively not too much taller than myself, and had blue-black hair that almost reached his shoulders.
"I'm terribly sorry!" I said, making myself look remorseful.
"Sorry." He said in return, while moving past me and off down the hallway again. He had an accent that I couldn't place at the time.
It seemed that bumping into people was a regular occurrence. Well, at least where I was concerned.
My timetable was abominable. It could have been written in Swahili as far as I could tell, but it was supposed to tell me where my first class was. Joy.
Just what I needed at the time, a headache on top of a cold.
The halls emptied surprisingly quickly, and I soon found myself alone. Every now and again, a stray person would trickle past, and eventually I struck up the nerve to ask one.
"Excuse me… Hey!"
A tall young man with red hair and eyes hidden behind sunglasses slowed down and stopped.
"I don't mean to be a bother or anything, but can you tell me where I'm supposed to be right now?"
I handed him the sheet of incomprehensible paper, and he looked at it for a second.
"Sure. You're… in the same class as me."
His eyebrows raised slightly behind is shades, and he shifted his books into his other arm, partially bared by his jumper rolled up to his elbows.
"You don't have to tell me, I know I'm puny…"
He laughed, and we moved on together.
"I'm Scott. I take it you're new here?"
Finally! I knew someone's name! It was instantly in my memory.
"My name's Selwyn." I grimaced at the funny look on Scott's face. "Again, I know, it's weird."
He stopped in front of a room, and we both went in.
"Sorry I'm late, I was showing Sel where our class is."
I was suddenly stuck somewhere between terror of actually meeting people, and being enormously happy at finally having a nickname. In the institute I had been called 'the kid' or 'he' so it was a big change.
The woman standing at the front of the class smiled at me, and beckoned me closer from where I had been standing near the door, unsure if I could move.
"Everyone, this is our new student. Why don't you take a seat over there?"
I found myself slotted abruptly in the second row in the middle of the class. The people I passed gave me curious looks as I passed, and I felt suddenly like I was immersed in the middle of many different cultures. There were so many different faces, races and cultures all mixing and interacting. It was so new and fresh compared with my old life.
When I pulled back my seat and sat down, the entire world seemed to spin on it's axis. I gripped the front of my desk with shaking hands, and inside my gloves I could tell that my knuckles would be white. Eventually the world stopped spinning so much, and I sat, listening to the teacher droning on, trying to ignore the sound of my pulse in my ears. My nose had stopped dripping by now, and was blocked so badly that I had to breathe through my mouth.
As the lesson moved on, I was incredibly hot, but the desk was incredibly cold. The fans overhead annoyed me and made me shiver, the palms of my hands were sweating badly.
The teacher assigned us some sort of work to do during the class that I didn't hear. I doubted I had moved all lesson.
She walked down the aisles between the desks, checking over people's shoulders. She stopped when she reached my desk, and leant over slightly.
"Selwyn? Are you alright?"
I turned my head to her, and replied faintly that I was fine.
"I don't know, you were pale before, but now ya look just plain sick…" She said, bringing a hand up to hover around my forehead. "You're much too hot to be fine… Scott, you showed him the way here, why don't you show Mr Kai where the nurse's office is while you're at it?" She intoned, not even turned around to say it. Her eyes danced over my face concernedly.
"Uh… yeah." Scott closed his book, and walked over to my desk.
The world was closing in on me. I shoved my chair back, and shakily made my was to my feet.
The room spun again, and I groaned and put a hand to my forehead.
The smooth leather of my gloves felt sickeningly hot against me, and didn't help to stop the spinning, as I had half-heartedly hoped.
*~*~*~*
By the time we were moving down the hallway, I could tell that something was up. I was loosing control. The lining of my gloves had already stared to shift about it sand, or dust. Soon my gloves themselves would be gone.
Frantic thoughts about why is was here swam through my head. Why had I been so stubborn about school? I could have just waited a day until my fever passed, but instead, I was endangering the entire school by wandering around with my powers unchecked. I might accidentally hurt someone, or worse.
I can vaguely remember stumbling into a drinking fountain and insisting on stopping.
I stripped off my gloves and gave them a rough shake, trying to get all the ashes out.
Scott was hovering, so I hastily wet my face and tried to regain my breath. My gloves had been shoved into one of my over-sized pockets.
Then I realised something. The fountain was shaking. The button burst out and hit the wall with a ping, and I jumped back, and pulled Scott onto the floor.
I knew all too well what would happen next.
"Cover your head!"
The fountain exploded with an almighty boom, showering metal, pipe and water over a good ten yards.
Scott and I were drenched. The back of my right leg stung where some metal had nicked it, but apart from that I was fine.
I slowly pulled myself onto my knees, then stared at the damage.
"Oh my god… I'm sorry!"
I ran. I didn't know what else to do. I ran past the confused faces of the people in my school, and out into the town. All I had ever wanted was to be normal. I had deep-down known that I could never truly be normal, not while I was still blowing up everything I touched, but I had wanted as close as I could get. The flu had made me weaker, and I could no longer keep up the barriers that I had erected when I was much younger. It would take a lot of self-restraint until I could bring up another. It was all a mental thing, and with my mental facilities on the fritz, I should have expected something would happen.
I found myself outside the same chemist that I had been to that very same morning, and bought a packet of cold and Flu tablets.
I returned to my hotel room and didn't come out again until someone rapped on my door.
Argh. I wrote the start of this in one night, and the middle and end about a month later. ' Sorry if it's boring or doesn't make too much sense, but I'm tired!
Please review! My fragile little ego can't stand being ignored!
(1) Believe me, I know this feeling all too well. Sick sucks, and I have actually had to go to school in the height of a head cold as well, so I'm writing from experience here! I barely knew where I was for half the day… Just sat there feeling really horrible for most of my classes. (Quote: "I don't even know why I'm here!")