Her new high school was called Casper High.
"That seems in rather poor taste," Coraline's mother commented, looking at the sign over the double doors leading into the school.
Coraline, slumped against the passenger-side window, shrugged. Watching students pile in through the double doors, she felt as though the omelette she'd eaten that morning might make a reappearance. There were entirely too many letter jackets and pom-poms in that crowd. But what worried her more was the gigantic crater in the school's front lawn, cordoned off with neon orange snow fence. Two men in yellow hard hats were sitting on a front-end loader behind the fence, eating sandwiches. As Coraline watched, they turned to look at the little blue Bug, then, uninterestedly, turned away again.
"Well, 'twere best it were done quickly," Coraline's mother said, and opened her door. Coraline sighed heavily, and pushed her door open as well.
"Might as well get this over with."
Her mother looked briefly up at the sky. "Coraline, I'm sure you'll be just fine. You put up a huge fuss about your other school too, and look how many friends you made there!"
"Two," Coraline muttered.
But she let herself be dragged down seemingly endless locker-lined hallways, smelling of sweat and old lunches and stale school spirit, past classroom after classroom, her footsteps sounding oddly loud in the hush of the hallways during class. Her mother didn't seem to notice, barrelling ahead towards the office, pulling Coraline helplessly along in her wake.
The office, at the very end of the hall, was entirely enclosed, without a single window. Coraline took one look at the football trophies and the certificates framed on the walls, and groaned silently to herself.
The principal was not quite what Coraline had expected. She'd expected a former gym teacher or possibly ex-Marine, maybe with an impressive moustache. She hadn't been prepared for an aging, out-of-shape beatnik with an utterly ridiculous goatee.
"We'd like to see the principal," Coraline's mother said, without a greeting.
"I'm afraid Principal Ishiyama is in a meeting. Come in, sit down." He smiled too much, Coraline decided. "I'm Mr. Lancer, the vice-principal of this fine establishment. You must be Caroline," the vice-principal greeted her, and Coraline reminded herself not to glare. First day. New school. Good impression. Right.
"It's Coraline," she corrected him. "Coraline Jones."
"Coraline. Right. And you would be Mrs. Jones?"
Coraline's mother nodded. "Can we just get her registered? Not that it isn't very kind of you to welcome us in, of course, but I have an interview in ten minutes."
"Of course, of course." Coraline crossed her arms and slouched down in her seat. It was taking real willpower not to roll her eyes every time her new vice-principal spoke. He rummaged in the filing cabinet drawers for a moment, then triumphantly pulled free a slim folder. "Here we are. Now if you'd just sign here, Mrs. Jones, and here and here and here…"
Coraline's mother took the pen she was offered and began to scribble her signature on the dotted lines. Coraline looked around for a window, remembered there wasn't one, and settled for shifting uncomfortably in her chair.
"Well, thank you, Mr. Lancer," Coraline's mother said, dotting the last i with a noise like a gunshot. "I've got to run. Coraline, have fun, learn lots, and stay out of trouble." She stood up, ruffled Coraline's hair despite Coraline's protests, and left, pausing only to wave from the doorway.
Coraline slouched further down in her seat, realizing again just how alone she was.
"So. Caroline."
"It's Coraline," Coraline corrected him resignedly. She knew she'd be repeating it for at least a week.
"Coraline, right." Lancer made a few what he probably thought were surreptitious notes on her file. "Coraline. We're very glad to have you here at Casper High, and I'm sure you'll fit right in."
Coraline nodded, and tried to smile easily and winningly. It turned out more twitchy and suspicious than charming and reassuring, and she stopped.
"In fact, I don't mind telling you that Casper High is one of the finest schools in the country. And I'm sure you're eager to become part of our proud tradition of excellent students." He smiled rather hopefully at Coraline, who grinned back awkwardly.
"Well then." Lancer flipped through the file, pulling out a few pieces of paper. "Here is your schedule, a map, your locker assignment, and of course your list of unpaid fees. Have your parents get a cheque to me as soon as possible for that last one." Coraline shuffled the papers together until she had a reasonably good grip and could actually see in front of her. "Any questions?"
"I was wondering," Coraline began, a little apprehensively, "what happened to the front yard. Why is there a massive hole in it?"
The smirk did a quick 180 and became a frown, which quickly upswung again into what would have been a smile if it had reached his eyes. "That? It's nothing to worry about. One-time freak accident, once-in-a-lifetime occurrence, couldn't possibly happen again and endanger anyone at this school."
"Yes, but what happened?" Coraline pressed. She could tell from the look on Lancer's face that he would rather not be having this conversation, but she wanted to know.
"Oh, nothing. A meat truck making deliveries to the cafeteria exploded."
"Exploded?"
Lancer stared at a point just above her left ear. "Oh, look at the time. Did you have any other questions? No? Well, you'd better get to class. First period's about to end." And, before she knew what was going on, Coraline found herself out in the hall, clutching an armful of papers, as the office door slammed shut behind her.
A bell rang loud and shrilly, and classrooms up and down the hall burst open, unleashing a flood of students into the hall. Coraline let herself be carried away by the prevailing current. She'd worry about going where she needed to go once the halls were a little emptier and she actually had room to breathe.
…
Somehow, she managed to stumble through the morning, and she only got lost three times – once looking for her locker, once looking for a class, which led to her coming in late and having to explain to the teacher in front of the whole class that yes, no matter what it said on the attendance sheet, her name really wasn't Caroline, and once looking for the cafeteria. Oddly enough, her locker was the easiest to find.
The cafeteria had that universal smell of cafeterias everywhere – the one that you couldn't be certain of whether it was coming from the food, or if it had wandered in from the locker rooms. Coraline stood in line and was rewarded with a plateful of greyish-greenish mushy stuff. She did her best not to make a face as it slipped out of the ladle and onto her plate with a splortchy plop, and wondered vaguely if her father's 'recipes' might not be so awful after all.
With that hurdle vaulted, she turned to the cafeteria and faced the part of the first day in a new school that she dreaded most: finding somewhere to sit. Sitting alone would either attract a few kindly souls, or label her automatically as a social pariah. But just plunking herself down with a bunch of people who'd known each other since first grade was not an appealing option either.
"Here goes nothing," Coraline said to herself, and began the long, slow, agonizing trek across the cafeteria.
"Oh my gosh. Blue hair?" someone said, from a table to Coraline's left. She glanced over, and counted two letter jackets. "Oh no, they're multiplying!"
Coraline wasn't sure what the speaker, one of the two girls at the table, meant by this, and wasn't sure she wanted to, either. She rolled her eyes and kept walking.
"I mean, one goth-geek was bad enough, but two?" the girl complained. She had a lilting accent that Coraline couldn't quite place.
"Hey, as long as those losers stick together and don't bother us," was the good-natured reply.
It was then, belatedly, that Coraline noticed the picnic tables outside. Someone up there must like her, she thought, as she headed for the doors. Now, if she could only find her way outside.