Hello! Hope you all had a happy Halloween! Anyway, without further ado, here's the chapter! (By the way, see if you can find the musical Easter Egg/cameo I planted in here!)
CINNAMON
This school is biiiiiig.
I follow Race out the door and down the hallway. Within a few seconds I'm lost all over again. I spin around, looking in vain for Race's and Albert's room.
"You okay, Curly?" I hear Race ask.
I shrug. "Yeah, I'm just freaked by how big this school is. I can't even remember where your room is, and basically no time has passed since we left it."
He laughs. "Yeah, it does that sometimes. It was like that for me too when I first came here. Don't worry, you'll get used to it. Love," he adds as he winks.
Great. Now I'm blushing again.
I punch him lightly in the arm. "Someday I'll get immune to that, I swear."
We walk for a while in silence. The halls look so squeaky clean I can practically smell it. After a while Race speaks up.
"Weird question, but why did you trust me about us sleeping in the same room together?"
I look at him and chuckle. "Ha, I didn't really think of that. I guess it was because you were so nice to me, and… I just didn't think. Why do you ask?"
He looks down, and then looks back at me. "Well, I've had a… reputation for not always making the greatest decisions." He itches his nicotine patch.
I'm baffled. "But why? You're so nice. I don't understand why anyone would dislike you."
He shrugs and gives no answer. We keep walking.
After a minute, even Race loses his way.
"That's it," Race mutters, dropping his arms to his sides. "We're lost. God damn."
"It's okay," I say reassuringly. "We can always ask for directions." I point over to three boys sitting on a bench in the corner of the hallway. We walk up to them. Two of them, one in a striped shirt and the other in a black hoodie, are laughing at something one is showing the other on his phone. The third guy is absorbed in his computer. From what I can recognize from the reflection in his glasses and my two years in Coding Club at my old school, it looks like Python programming.
Race and I walk up to them. "Uh, hello," I say awkwardly. The guy in the hoodie looks up, his long hair covering one eye. I can see him toying with a fidget cube in one hand. He nudges the boy in the striped shirt, whispering, "Psst. Evan." The striped shirt kid, apparently named Evan, looks up, and I can sense the nervousness in his eyes. Immediately he scoots closer to the hoodie guy and crosses his arms tightly across his chest. The computer kid doesn't acknowledge anything.
"Hello," I repeat again. "We're a little lost. Do you know how to get to the cafeteria?"
Evan opens his mouth, hesitates and closes it. He then does this again, and again. He goes on like this, mouth opening and closing like a fish. His eyes are filling with tears. Eventually, he looks down and scoots even closer to Hoodie kid, who pats him on the arm and inhales sharply, almost to calm himself. Hoodie kid looks up, and then says, "Excuse me for a moment," and leads Evan away. After they have a small private conversation, they both sit back down, Evan looking significantly less puffy eyed than he did before.
"Sorry about that," Hoodie kid said. Evan offered a shy smile, but it quickly disappeared before he became absorbed in his phone again, this time seeming more like a defense mechanism than out of interest. Hoodie kid points to himself: "I'm Connor. This is Evan." He points to Evan, who looks up briefly. "And this –" Connor gestures to Computer kid – "is Jared." Jared takes no notice.
"I'm Race," Race says back. "This is Curly. She's new."
"…Nice to meet you," comes a light and quiet voice. This voice is from Evan, who has looked up from his phone. "I'm Evan Mark Hansen. I mean, uh, I'm Mark Evan Hansen. I hope it's not too weird that people call me by my middle name. I just like it better that way." He pauses, then halfheartedly adds, "Hey, you know that if you put my initials together, it spells "meh"? Cool right?" He smiles, genuinely, but then becomes self-conscious again, wrapping his hands around himself again, but still smiling.
Connor smiles too, feeling a rather long scab on his neck. "Anyway, you said you wanted directions?"
