Sir Weston here! Glad to see this story is already getting some love, and I hope to do it justice with my chapter. This one is in Michael's view point. And we're gonna get to meet the dean and a whole bunch of new and annoying characters. Yay!
Chapter 2 – Regretting Everything
Michael's POV
I was horrified by the man standing before us. He was the very definition of the anti-goth. I opened my mouth to voice my displeasure, but Henrietta beat me to it.
"Nope," she said in a dead pan voice. I watched with amazement as she turned and just started walking away from the school.
"Henrietta!" her mom called, "Get back here!" Her father quickly went after my friend, grabbing her around the middle, hoisting her off her feet and carrying her back to the group. Henrietta wore a grouchy look on her face the whole time.
"Come on, gang!" Firkle's overly-enthusiastic father piped up, "Let's go check in!"
All the parents led the way towards the gates and the scary man, pulling our luggage while my friends and I trudged along behind them. I let out a heavy sigh.
"This sucks," I muttered. My friends all mumbled their agreement.
"Our parents couldn't have picked a worse place to get rid of us," Pete grumbled, "It's like the sun dropped to Earth and turned into a building. And we're walking right towards it. That's how yellow it is."
"It could be worse," Karen pointed out, "That guy could have an annoying voice."
That's when the man in the yellow suit came over to greet us. "Well howdy, folks!" he exclaimed in the most over the top, high pitched, obnoxious voice, "I am Ed H. Poi or Dean Poi! Let me be the first to welcome y'all to Sunshine Academy!"
Beside me, Pete silently buried his face in his hands.
"Now, come with me, parents and students! So, that I may lead the way to auditorium! Whee!" Dean Poi did this stupid twirly thing on his heels and started dancing towards the building. What a freak.
As we followed our parents, I could feel Firkle and Pete pressing against me. Over the years, we had changed a little, but not much. Firkle was taller, of course, and his hair was much longer now. Much like Pete, he had it so part of it covered half of his face, but it was the opposite side from Pete's. Firkle and I had somehow become each other's confidents to which we entrusted our secrets, so I was the only one of our friends he told about his crush on Karen. I thought it was rather adorable and when I told him so, he kicked me in the shin, the little shit.
Pete's style really hasn't changed at all. He's updated his wardrobe and gotten taller, but that's basically it. Well, I guess his hair is longer. I can't remember the last time any of us went to get out hair cut. Pete still wears the bolero tie, though which goes nicely with pretty much all of his outfits. I'm proud to say I'm still taller than him, though.
Henrietta is the one that's changed the most. Physically, I mean. She's gotten a lot thinner, down to a suitable weight, one that's maybe a bit closer to pushing it, but definitely not a skinny conformist whore. And I have to say, she's beautiful. When she reached her weight goal a whole bunch of guys started hitting on her and asking her out. She bitched slapped them all. Her hair is a little longer, but still not much past shoulder length. She's about the same height as Pete. She of course still wears the goth make up all the time. Why wouldn't she? And she never wears anything but black dresses. I would ask her why dresses, but I don't want to get bitch slapped. But she really is beautiful. Not that she wasn't before. I've thought about maybe asking her for a kiss or something. A friendly kiss! Nothing romantic or anything like that!
Karen has managed to clean herself up over the years she's been with us. Her family's plumbing isn't so good, so we let her use the showers at our houses (we really don't mind) so she's managed to get the years of dirt and grime off her face. She's probably the only one of the five of us who actually changes her hairstyle constantly. We've also bought her more proper goth clothes so she can fit in with us and look less like a loser vampire.
And myself? Well, nothing about me had changed in the slightest. I was still taller than all of my friends (yes!) and I had pretty much kept my wardrobe the same, only updating it to a larger size as I grew older. Again, my hair grew longer, but with how curly it is no one could really tell. The cane that I had when I was a child I now needed for real as I had been shot in the leg during one of the numerous school shootings when I was eleven and I occasionally walked with a limp. Random things seemed to trigger my limp, and it would cause me so much pain that I would be walking with a limp the rest of the day.
I felt my limp starting to flare up again as we walked towards the school and Pete quickly leaned against me to support me. I silently thanked him as I had put my cane in one of my suitcases. What a good kid.
We were led into a large auditorium where hundreds of people were already sitting. We sat in the back of the of the room with our parents. I sat in the middle of my friends, with Pete and Henrietta on one side of me and Firkle and Karen on the other side. I cringed slightly as I sat down and Henrietta gave me a worried look.
"Is your leg giving you pain again?" she asked.
"Yeah," I muttered, "It tends to do that around a lot of conformists. Don't worry, though. It should settle down in a little bit." Meanwhile I could just focus on wishing I were dead.
There was suddenly a lot of clapping and the obnoxiously dressed dean came out on stage. "Students! Faculty! Parents! Welcome!" he began.
And that is literally all of his speech that I heard before I tuned him out. So did all of my friends, by the look of it. About five minutes in Henrietta fell asleep, leaning heavily on Pete's shoulder. Firkle was playing with his hair with a bored expression on his face. Karen was making various sounds with her mouth trying to entertain herself. Pete looked dead. And I was kicking the back of the seat in front of me. A big squarish guy who was sitting in front of me turned around and glared at me, but I really didn't fucking care.
By the half hour mark I was starting to fall asleep myself, also leaning on Pete. At some point I must've actually fallen asleep, because suddenly I felt Pete nudging me awake. And my leg hurt like a mother-fucker. Everyone was clapping and I guess a bunch of teachers and faculty had been introduced because there were a bunch of new people up on stage. Too bad I slept through all of that.
"Ugh, what'd I miss?" Firkle mumbled, apparently also just having woken up.
"I have no fucking clue," I muttered. I turned and nudged Pete in the side. "What we miss?" He looked at me.
"Um, those are teachers and other important people," he replied vaguely. I gave him an annoyed look. Thanks Pete.
After the stupid assembly we were finally allowed to get our rooms assigned to us. We had to line up in a stupid ass line so some stupid ass adult could slowly look up which room we would be staying in. Our parents kept chatting with other parents in line, acting as if they hadn't totally betrayed us by sending us here.
When we finally got our room assignments I was glad to learn that I would be sharing a room with Pete and Firkle and that Henrietta and Karen had the room literally right across the hall from us. So at least we wouldn't be separated. We made our parents carry our luggage since they were the ones who forced us to be here in the first place. The five of us were quiet as we walked to our rooms.
We were on the third floor of the student dorm. Instead of having separate girl's and boy's dorms, or even splitting the building in half, boys on one side, girls on the other, they simply split the hallway in half for some reason. I don't know if they were trying to be progressive or something like that, but with a bunch of preteen students in the midst of going through puberty I doubt this was a very smart idea. I just hoped the walls were thick.
After our parents slowly dragged our stuff up the stairs (there were no elevators) we finally found our rooms which were thankfully labeled with our names. Firkle growled when he saw that they put his real name, Georgie, instead of Firkle.
"Shit," I muttered when I saw there was a fourth name on the door, "I was sort of hoping we would get the room all to ourselves."
"At least you guys only get one roommate," Henrietta pointed out, "Karen and I have two." She pointed at her door and I took a look at it. Mimi and Christina. Sounded like the biggest conformists ever.
None of us could say anything more before our parents came up to us, dragging our stuff and panting. Yeah, we kind of ditched them down the hallway. What? They were taking too long. We watched with disinterest as they finally reached us.
"You know," Mr. Biggle said, panting slightly, "One of you kids couldda helped us."
"No, we couldn't," Henrietta replied bitterly.
The parents set our luggage down then turned to us, spreading their arms, as if expecting a hug from us. They were definitely not getting one. I don't know why they expected one. When it became apparent we weren't going to hug them, all of our parents dropped their arms.
"Well," my dad said a little awkwardly, "I guess we'll see you kids during break."
"If we haven't died yet," I hissed at him. I wasn't going to let him forget that we really didn't want to be here and that they were forcing us to stay.
Our parents finally left us without many more words. What did we have to say to them anyway? They sucked for sending us here against our will. The five of us stood outside in the empty hallway for a minute, reflecting on how the hell our lives brought us here.
"All right, we need to make a pact right now," I decided, "That we're going to stick together and not let this school get to us. No matter what happens, we watch out for each other, and we don't let any of these conformists break us down. All right?"
My friends all goth smiled at me. Pete reached out and grabbed my hand. "I'm with you, Michael," he said. Henrietta, Firkle, and Karen also grabbed my hand as well, and with that the pact was made.
We broke away and went to our rooms. As soon as I opened the door to our room, Pete, Firkle, and I cringed and yelled and covered our eyes at the bright, cheery, sunlight filled atrocity that assaulted our senses. Much like the rest of the school, the room was a bright yellow with happy rainbow and cloud decorations insultingly hung up all over the walls. There were four beds lined up along one wall and a wardrobe against another. Right across from the beds was a large window with the curtains drawn back letting in the offending sun. Two large desks were set up against the third wall.
"Gah! Quick! Someone close the fucking curtains!" Firkle moaned, still covering his eyes. I quickly ran over to the window and loosened the curtains, allowing them to fall and shroud the room in darkness. We all let out a sigh of relief.
"That's much better," Pete sighed. He picked up his suitcase and placed it on the bed closest to the door. I went back into the hall to grab my own bags and claimed the bed next to his while Firkle got the one next to mine.
"I wonder who our roommate is supposed to be?" I said as I opened up one of my bags to look for my cane. Pete straightened himself and looked at the name on the door.
"According to our door his name is Seymour," he told us, "I wonder where he is? We all got out of the assembly at the same time."
Before I could answer, there was a loud shout from Firkle. We turned to see that he had opened the wardrobe to put some of his clothes away and a tied up body had fallen out. Pete and I quickly rushed over to him.
Luckily the body was still alive. It was a very skinny boy who was bound and gagged, wiggling and trying to get free. The three of us helped him to his feet and while Pete and I undid his gag, Firkle pulled out his switchblade and used it cut the ropes binding his arms and legs.
Now that I got a good look at him, I could tell that this guy was the token nerd. He had large buck teeth and wore thick glasses. His face was littered with acne of all sizes and his brown hair was slicked back slightly as if that was his only desperate attempt to be cool. He was wearing suspenders to keep his pants up which I could tell were too big for him and a big polka dotted bow tie.
But his voice is what tied it all together.
"Hey, thanks for letting me out of the closet!" he said, his voice sounding like a cross between SpongeBob Squarepants and an out-of-tune trumpet, "The quarter back, Bruce stuffed me in there. Along with the rest of the football team. Yeah, they don't like me. My name's Seymour, by the way! I heard you guys talking! You must be my new roommates, Pete, Michael, and Georgie!" Did I mention he also spoke rather fast?
Firkle hissed beside me. "My name is Firkle," he growled.
Seymour seemed to ignore him. "Hey, are you guys goths?" he asked rapidly, "I mean, you must be. You're dressed in all black. This is my fifth semester here and we've never had goths here before. I don't know why. Wow, my first friends are goths! Neato!"
"We're not your friends," I pointed out calmly.
I could only hope that Henrietta and Karen's roommates weren't as annoying as Seymour was.
I didn't know how else to end the chapter, so this is what you're getting. Next time Night witch will take over with the girls. So, look forward to that. And remember to leave a comment. They're our life's blood!