"Mother! Ryan! I am home!"
The door to the Anders household swung open as Kori returned from school. She furrowed her brow as she slid her house keys back into her book bag; the house was full of an unearthly silence. Remembering that her mother was working late that evening, Kori dropped her book bag onto the floor and kicked off her shoes. "Ryan!" she called again. "Ryan, are you home?"
He must be in his room…Kori bounced up the stairs. "Ryan, I wish that you would answer me! I know that middle school lets out before my school does, and I know that you are home!" She came to her brother's bedroom door and rapped on it with her knuckle. "Ryan, I command you to respond!"
Kori was becoming a bit worried; her brother had always greeted her when she came home from school. She waited for about fifteen seconds before she could hear a muffled response…
"All right, Kori…"
The door slowly swung open, and Kori found herself staring her brother in the eye. Her own eyes widened in horror. "Little brother!" she screamed, cupping her brother's face with her hands.
"I didn't want you to see me like this," Ryan said apologetically, wincing slightly at her touch. His right eye was blackened; it looked as if he had been punched. Below his eye two purple scratch marks stretched across his cheek. "I was cornered at school today…it was these two boys. They were calling me horrible names and punching me…"
"Ryan…" Kori blinked back her oncoming tears.
XXXXXMany hours later morning dawned on Jump City. In a certain house there was a high school student who was not quite ready to face the day. He lay buried under a green comforter, on the top of a loft bed, having quite marvelous dreams indeed…
BZZZT! BZZZT! BZZZT!Garfield Logan shifted under the blanket at the sound of his alarm clock. His eyelids fluttered as he woke up; he glanced down at his bedside table where the offending clock was. The time read 7:15.
"Urrrrgh…" Garfield shut his eyes again. I can hang around a little while longer…school doesn't start until 7:50, he reasoned. Suddenly his eyes blinked open again, and he re-checked the clock; now it read 7:40.
"WHAT? I fell asleep! I can't believe it!" The fourteen-year-old boy leapt off the loft and crashed feet first onto the floor. He practically flew to his closet, grabbed the first ensemble he could see, and quickly changed. Garfield snatched his backpack, ran downstairs, retrieved a granola bar from the kitchen, and rushed outside to get his bike and ride to school.
Luckily for Garfield, there was only a short distance between Jump City High and home, so he made it to school in the nick of time. He parked his bike in the bike cage and headed to his first period class: cooking. Garfield enjoyed working in the kitchen, especially with the ever-flexible food called tofu, which was why he had signed up for the class that accommodated his hobby.
Most of the students were already in the room. Garfield took a seat at a table near the front. The teacher was also present; his name was Mr. Closki, and flattered himself by sharing his vast experience with the students.
"All right, class," Mr. Closki began just after the bell rang. "Today we are starting our first project. Since I have explained the mechanics of the oven yesterday, this certain project should be fairly easy for all of you: we're making tacos. So. Will each table group send up one person to bring a tray with the needed ingredients to your table?"
Garfield was in a group with four other people, two of which were girls and the other two were boys. Without hesitation one of the girls got up and went to retrieve a tray. She returned shortly and her tablemates bent over the tray to see what they had to work with; the tray was piled with small plates of lettuce, tomato, tortillas, and, to Garfield's horror, chicken and beef.
"We have to put meat in our tacos?" Garfield exclaimed in disgust.
"Well, yeah. Everyone eats chicken," the girl said snidely.
"I don't," Garfield retorted indignantly. "I'm vegetarian. You know, it means that I don't eat meat."
"No wonder you're so skinny," one of the boys said indifferently. This earned some impish giggles from the girls.
"I refuse to cook anything with meat in it," Garfield spat.
"Quit being stupid," the boy scoffed. "The rest of us eat meat. Why should we have to do what you want us to do?"
"Fine," Garfield growled. "Eat as many dead carcasses as you want. I'm going to complain to Closki and set things right." He got out of his chair and trudged to the teacher's desk, where Mr. Closki sat supervising the students.
"Is there a problem, Mr. Logan?" Mr. Closki asked as Garfield approached.
"Yes, there's a problem! I'm a vegetarian, and you gave us all meat to put in our tacos."
The teacher narrowed his eyes at his student. "If you are considering becoming a chef, then you will have to learn how to cook things that you don't necessarily want to cook. And if you're going to have to cook these foods, you will need to know how. That is why we have this class."
"But I'm not going to be a chef," Garfield insisted. "Cooking is my hobby…it's just what I want to do."
"Yes, but not all of these students are like you," Mr. Closki countered irritably. "Most of my students need to learn these things. My only suggestion for you is to grin and bare it, because I need to cover these topics." He waited for Garfield to say something back, but saw that the teen had failed to think of a good comeback. "Go and help your teammates. Unless you would prefer an F for the day, of course."
Muttering to himself, Garfield slouched back to his table in defeat.
XXXXX"For the next few weeks," Mrs. Lenard was telling her first period class, "we will be reviewing the Age of Religious Discord. We will start with the reformation, and continue from there. Now, I am sure that you all have covered the reformation before, in middle school perhaps?"
There were murmurs of agreement throughout the classroom.
"Very good. Now, if you will all take out your books and turn to page forty-four…"
Papers and backpacks were rustled as each of the students dug into their bags to retrieve their books. Raven slid her book onto her desk and accidentally knocked it into her pencil; it skidded across the desktop and flew onto the desk in front of her. Before she could say anything, the white-haired boy sitting in that particular desk picked up the pencil, turned around, and held it out for her to take. "Thanks," she muttered, taking the pencil.
"Don't let it happen again," the boy sneered.
Lenard's voice rang out from the front of the room. "Mr…Rorek Conte, is it? Please turn around and face the whiteboard. I will have no talking during my lesson, thank you very much." She went to the whiteboard and wrote the heading "REFORMATION THEOLOGY" with a thick black marker. Behind her back the boy called Rorek flicked out his right hand middle finger.
XXXXXAt lunch Kori met up with Garfield, Richard, and Raven at the same cafeteria table they had sat at the day before. "I cannot help but worry for Ryan," she informed them anxiously. "Those boys will undoubtedly be after him again."
"I'm sure that he'll handle it," Richard said reassuringly. "He's in the eighth grade now. He knows how to stand up for himself."
"That, I also have serious doubt for."
Raven interrupted by sliding a piece of paper onto the middle of the table. "It's only the second day and I've already been assigned my first Poetry project," she said distastefully. Her friends bent over the paper to read it:
Write a poem expressing your relationship with other people. Reflect on your emotional and mental reactions to being with friends, foes, and family.
"This should be easy for you," Garfield chuckled. "I can imagine it… 'People: by Raven. I hate them all/They are very tall/Whenever I see a guy I like to kick him in the—'"
"Garfield, I have hot tea right here and I am certainly not afraid to use it."
"Shutting up."
"On a slightly more cheerful note," Richard laughed, "I'm considering trying out for the after school karate league. The coach is going to choose the best students in the class to come to competitions."
"I'm sure that you will get into the league with ease," Kori said, taking a tender sip from her lemon water. "You've been training for quite some time."
"I'll just have to hope that it pays off," Richard muttered nervously.
"Dudes, do you know what's the stupidest thing ever?" Garfield queried suddenly. "Closki is making me cook meat in my cooking class. I've already explained to him that I'm a veggie, but he won't take no for an answer! We had to make beef and chicken tacos today."
"Did you make them?" Richard asked, eyebrow raised.
"Well, yeah. What else could I have done? The guy's insane!"
"You could've made a complaint to the office," Raven deadpanned. "At least suggest that there be meat alternatives of some sort."
Garfield seemed to consider it for a second. "Yeah," he mused. "Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. Tomorrow I'll report Closki…and if he doesn't do anything then I won't participate in any more projects! Ray, you're a genius!" Much to the purple-haired girl's dismay, he full-on glomped her. "You're my friend!"
"Please let go."
"Okay. Sorry."