An unforgiving blast of icy January wind greeted Pogue Parry as he stepped out of the gym. He took a refreshing breath of the cold air and exhaled a cloud. He shoved his two hands in his coat pockets and made his way across campus towards his next class.
A minute outside was enough to make his long hair freeze in small sections that scraped against the side of his face. He managed to reach the door to the main building before said sections started chipping off, and while he was putting his coat in his locker and rummaging through it to find his biology book he noticed the familiar face grabbing the same book from the locker beside him.
"Caleb? Where the fuck were you?" he tugged on his chemistry manual, releasing it at the expense of four other books that tumbled to the floor. "You were supposed to be at practice this morning!"
"Uh, yeah, sorry about that." Caleb closed his locker. He sighed. "I just wasn't feeling it this morning. My head was pounding, my muscles hurt… pretty much anything that could physically feel like shit did."
"Don't worry about it." Pogue said sympathetically, putting his books back in his locker. "I'm sure the coach can let our star captain off the hook for once."
"Thanks, man." Caleb said.
The two walked silently towards their next class, arriving instants before the chemistry class began. Pogue took his usual seat beside Tyler and Caleb took his beside Reid.
The Teacher walked in soon after they did, pushing a cart full of jars.
"Dissection time!" He chimed after a few seconds. Many groaned, some turning pale at the thought of cutting through an animal, some not reacting at all.
The dissections, like every other biology experiment, was done in a group of four. As the class divided into sections, Tyler went to find a frog corpse and a foursome of scalpels.
"Now that's what I call a nice specimen." Reid said, looking at the approaching Tyler.
Tyler blinked and looked down at the frog, who's stomach was turning grey. Reid motioned at him to move over, and continued looking past him at another blonde girl.
Blonde wasn't a common hair color at Spencer. Out of the three hundred students, barely fifty of them had blonde hair, and little over a dozen students could say that blonde was their natural hair color. Five of these natural blondes were present in this science class: Reid, the cheerleader from the pool, the girl he was observing, a studly football player and a quiet wallflower.
"Is it just me, or have all the girls suddenly matured and became good-looking over this winter break?"
"Probably just you, Reid." Pogue responded with a laugh. "Or the fact that since its winter they make it impossibly hot in here, so the girls pull their skirts up higher and undo more buttons."
Indeed, the girl Reid was examining had four buttons undone at the top of her blouse, and her skirt was just as short as the cheerleading uniforms.
"Hmm… that might be it." Reid said, his eyes fixing on the legs of the cheerleader that just walked past them.
The dissection of the adult frog was going to be used as a study of the lungs of amphibians, so the four boys sliced open the animal, removed its lungs on a metal place, sketched them and replaced them back in. Tyler was on delivery boy duty, so he had to bring and bring back all the supplies. As he headed over to the teacher's desk to return the frog, Reid stood sharply to look up the skirt of the cheerleader who had bent over and shoved him.
Tyler stumbled a few steps and knocked some books out of the blonde wallflower's arms, who was busy taking off her latex gloves. The books fell to the floor.
"Oh, shit, I'm sorry…" He cradled the frog on its plate under one arm and bent down to help her pick them up.
"Its ok, really, its fine…" She knelt down beside him and picked up some of the books.
They both stood, and Tyler handed her the two books he had picked up. His bare hand brushed against hers and he saw her eyes widen. She jerked her hand back and yelped in fear, accidentally pushing Tyler back. The frog, thanks to the push and transferred momentum, flew out of its plate towards the girl, who had one hand on her mouth and was staring at Tyler in fear.
"Shit." Tyler panicked. His eyes flashed black and the frog dropped a few inches from the girl's uniform. She had dropped her books again, and was picking them up without looking up at Tyler.
"Hey, you ok?" He put out his hand to try to help her up, but she jerked away from it and got up by herself.
"Yeah, fine. Sorry about your frog." She spun around and quickly made her way back to her seat. Tyler just blinked.
"Tyler! What the hell, man?" Reid said angrily from his seat. The commotion had blocked his view of the cheerleader. Tyler took a step towards him to retort something and stepped on their squishy experiment, still lying on the floor, turning what used to be a frog and a possible A into a flat green and red mess.
Someone somewhere screamed.
A girl with short black hair busied herself examining the youngest son with great interest.
"Way to go." Pogue said sourly.
Tyler was kept after class to clean up the mess, and all four of them stayed even longer to redo the entire destroyed dissection. Alone in the science lab when they could be eating lunch and having a joyful chat with their friends, the four drew the last line of their new sketches. The biology teacher left a while ago, trusting the four boys not to cause too much ruckus.
Tyler was the last to drop his finished report on the counter, making sure not to step on the wet patch of ground he just cleaned. He didn't bother replying to Pogue, it would just start an argument he wanted to avoid.
"Whatever." He mumbled instead. He had been reprimanded enough on his clumsiness in the past hour, he didn't want another speech. He waited for his three friends to finish packing up their bags and leaving the lab before leaving himself. On his way out he passed by the blonde girl's desk, subconsciously analyzing her seat, her table and anything else there was. He was still wondering what had scared her so badly when he walked out the door.
"Hey."
He jumped and dropped his bag.
The girl with short black hair was standing, leaning against the wall beside the door to the lab. She had her arms crossed and was staring at him intently.
"Hi." He said in reply, leaning over to pick up his bag.
"I'm Fae." She said, grinning. "Fae Renfield."
"Nice to meet you." He said stoically. "What do you want?"
She curled her lip, and laughed.
"Clever little Tyler Sims. How did you know I wanted something from you?"
"You finished class an hour ago. And you waited."
She laughed again, louder this time. Her hair was jet black and cut roughly just below the ears, and fell loose but straight in uneven layers. She had eyes the same color, surrounded with dark eye makeup and long lashes. She had a single jewel pierced through her nose, and was wearing the mandatory uniform like everyone else with the addition of shiny black boots that rose to about knee-length. Since he first saw her she had an annoying smirk on her face that since then broke into a wide grin showing rows of shiny whine teeth.
"Of course. How strange of me." Fae said. "It is only polite that I explain to you why I waited." Here she stayed quiet, the annoying smirk back on her face. She waited in silence for a minute, then started up again.
"I was wondering what the quiet, shy and frankly boring Tyler Sims, who happens to be the least popular of the Sons of Ipswitch, could have done to scare the shit out of wallflower-of-the-year Maddie Sparrow."
He stared in awe at the blatant insults she just politely hurled at him.
"I didn't do anything."
Saying so immediately caused Fae Renfield to begin rambling again.
"That's bullshit, you must have done something, this girl is pretty much impossible to scare. We went to see a Saw marathon a while back and we invited her out of pity and she didn't even twitch during all three of the movies. The girl isn't scared of anything, but I saw it she looked like she had seen the devil when she looked at you..."
Tyler sighed. Fae had just called him boring, shy, unpopular, non-intimidating and the devil. He was wondering if she was planning on stopping any time soon.
"I mean unless you used some sort of magic then I don't see how you could have scared her…"
Tyler winced at the remark about magic, and Fae had noticed it. She smiled, satisfied and picked up her bag by her feet.
"Maybe you could tell me over a coffee later on?"
Tyler grunted.
"Cool, I'll meet you at the coffee shop on Shaw avenue at six tonight. Bye!"
She strutted off and disappeared behind a corner, leaving Tyler standing in the doorway of the silence lab, wondering what the hell had just happened.