Chomp

I had always been a decent student. While my report card had never been straight A’s or anything, I had also never gotten anything worse than a B minus. For me, school was actually enjoyable—learning was enjoyable.

Maybe it was because I had been homeschooled for a large portion of my life that I was actually able to enjoy it more than most teens did. While other kids groaned about how much Miss-So-and-So assigned over the weekend, I was over the moon about learning new formulas, words, writing techniques, but especially science practices.

If science wasn’t in school, I don’t think it would have captivated my attention like it did. Everything from the smallest atom to the largest things in solar systems—all of it fascinated me and kept me both physically and mentally busy.

The one horrible thing about school, however, was starting.

Movies don’t do the moment any justice. There’s always some attractive kid starting school, they get stood in front of the class and introduced, maybe get picked on for twenty minutes in the movie, then go on to be a huge success.

My experiences starting this school and the last were mirror images; neither of which were like the movies. There was no attractive protagonist since it was me, no introduction, nothing. I was happy there wasn’t any teasing, but if I was already zero-for-three, I was probably out of luck with the whole success thing.

But it didn’t matter.

Success was self-measured and self-valued—as Brian always said, anyway. Maybe that’s why he was such a successful stay-at-home dad.

I almost walked right past my new high school on the first day. It was hard getting used to all the high rises and multi-storey buildings.

Besides, at first glance, the school looked like a prison.

The building was narrow, like most of the surrounding ones, and must have been five or six floors. The dull, grey-bricked exterior looked like it may have been painted navy originally, but the colour had long since been washed away. It made sense that the building was thin; the neighbouring one couldn’t have been more than a foot and a half from it. No doubt, scrawny kids like myself could slip through to avoid having their lunch money stolen, though all my mind could think of was the terrible fire safety problems.

Maybe I was like Brian.

The inside of the building didn’t improve my first impression. The school had the type of old, linoleum floor that looked as though you could scrub at it for weeks and still have the same result. The fact was, I would have been able to ignore the floors if the hallway lighting wasn’t so strenuous. I had learned to get used to bright light years and years ago, but I still had to squint for the first few minutes of being there.

“Did you forget your glasses or something?”

Still squinting, I turned. The smell of baked cornflower something, spicy beans, and peppers hit me before I saw who it was. A tall boy stood with an opened Dudley and locker in his hand, frowning slightly.

“I—no…” I answered, trying to force my eyes open. It burned more than I liked to admit, but I ignored it. “It’s just really bright in here. Are these fluorescent or something? It’s really harsh.”

He smiled painfully, showing brilliant white teeth. “Something like that. You should have seen what we had before,” he replied bitterly. He reached down and pulled a packaged stack of lined paper from his backpack. My heart sunk a little; it was the type of backpacks the cool kids had. Suddenly, my Batman bag felt a little foreign on my shoulder.

Still, there was no harm in trying. “Do you know where class R177 is? It should be on the first floor, right?” I asked, pulling out my folded schedule from the pocket of my jeans.

“You’d think. But no. Top floor,” he laughed. He extended a long, tanned arm to me, flashing his smile again. “Nice to meet you. The name’s Kevin, by the way.”

I reached to take his hand which smelled even more like green peppers. Whoever Kevin was, he was into Mexican cuisine—big time.

“Same,” I blurted happily.

“Same? You’re also Kevin?”

“Oh god—no, no. It’s Sam. Sorry,” I replied, my words slurred together. There it was; the bell hadn’t even rung for classes, and I was already a nervous wreck.

“Well, Sam Sorry,” Kevin laughed, closing his locker. He clicked the lock into place and spun the dial to zero with a lazy flick of his index finger. “We need to head to class. I’ve got English in R177 too, and it’s a fair bit from here.”

We.

“Okay, great. Where’s the elevator?” I asked, looking down the hall for one. It was packed with hundreds of teens scrambling about on their first days, but there was no sign of an elevator.

Kevin just laughed.

The second bell rang just as I collapsed into my seat in homeroom. I had made a mental note on the fourth—or was it the fifth?—flight of stairs that Kevin laughing ended in pain and misery.

I grabbed my notebook from my bag and tossed it on my desk as I ducked down to find my pencil case that had somehow gotten lost in there.

“Is… Is that a cat on your notebook?”

The voice had caught me so off-guard that I knocked my head on the bottom of the desk. The resounding thud was nothing compared to the stars that spun in front of my eyes. I rubbed the spot on my head tenderly as I sat back up in my seat.

Kevin must have grabbed my notebook when I was down there and was staring at the cover. An amusing smile played on his lips, and I leaned over to see what he found so funny.

And died.

Socially, I mean. Unfortunately, not literally.

In an attempt to be thoughtful, my parents had offered to go out and buy all my school supplies while they were grocery shopping. Evidently, that was a bad idea, because not only did they buy a notebook with a cat on it, they must have gone to a specialty store to get a notebook with our cat superimposed on the cover with a speech bubble that read ’Meow meow! Robin loves you, Sam!’

“You know, I thought hairless cats were a myth for the longest time,” he replied, passing the book back over to me. I took it in my weak, shaking hands. “But it’s clear that Robin is real. Angry, but definitely real.”

“Thanks…” I mumbled, putting my head down on the desk. Poor Robin had every right to look angry; I was almost certain she hated being dragged out of the house for what looked like a staged Valentine’s Day-themed photo-op at CVS, only to have her image slapped on my school supplies.

Robin’s picture thankfully only appeared on the front of the notebook and the side of my pencil case, so they were easily hidden. I grabbed a pen and opened to a blank, lined page just as the teacher marched up to the whiteboard.

Her black marker squeaked along for a few seconds before she whipped around. She was a rather large woman—not fat, just very tall and broad-shouldered—and she filled the room intimidatingly.

She gestured to the words on the board. “This is English 201—that’s tenth grade English; before I start, does everyone belong here?”

There was a collective murmuring throughout the class.

“Good,” she replied, turning her back to the board again. A few more squeaks later, and she returned to facing us. She pointed to the new word on the board. “My name is Miss Verucia. Got it? Vah-roo-kuh. It’s on the board now, so I don’t want to get back any assignments with it spelled wrong. And now… You.”

I had just finished writing the A in Verucia down when she had barked. I looked up to see a girl in the far right corner getting to her feet.

Verucia pointed to the back shelves. “There should be twenty-eight copies of ’To Kill a Mockingbird’ there. Pass them out so every student has a copy.”

Collective groans rang all around. Meanwhile, the novel’s cover had long since been worn out on our bookshelf at home.

After the bell went, finally releasing us from our last period, the class stampeded to the door. Students clamoured over one another to leave, clogging the halls and backlogging the classroom doors.

The sudden smell of green peppers hit my nose again, and I spun around in my seat to see Kevin standing at my desk. He had his bag slung over one shoulder, just like the popular kids in the movies.

“Did you ever get your locker?” he asked.

I threw my notebook in and zipped up my own bag. “No... I thought you had to rent them.”

“Nah. They’re cheap here, but not that cheap. We can swing by the office if you want. There’s no football practice until after tryouts, and those aren’t until next week, so I’ve got lots of time.”

“I—sure…” Smiling hesitantly, I told myself I would have to get used to this foreign feeling of someone going out of their way to be nice.

Other students must have had the same idea as Kevin, because there was a large lineup all the way out the door of the main office by the time we got there.

Kevin sighed deeply and rubbed his temples. “I kind of forgot about this part,” he admitted. “We get to be stuck with all the firsties.”

“Firsties?” I asked, moving up in the queue.

He nodded. “Ninth graders. First years.”

“Oh.”

We stayed silent for a while, moving up every few minutes as the people in front of us got their stuff sorted out. The office seemed to be a general one, both administrative and disciplinary, unlike at my old school that separated the two. As the line finally slimmed down a bit and allowed us into it, I could see that there was a roped off section for ’hooligans and down-right trouble-makers,’ as Tanya would have put it.

It was the first day of school for everyone, so I was surprised to see that there was someone already sitting there. While there was no strict dress code at the school, her clothing certainly would have raised eyebrows. A small, black and purple corset covered her chest and most of her stomach, but with no sleeves. Her short leather skirt was lined with lace and left very little to the imagination; her tights were even a daring lace that provided little in the means of coverage.

My face went hot as I stared at her. Her painted black lips were pursed and her arms were crossed in a way that said she didn’t care she had landed herself in the office the first day of school.

“Did Hot Topic throw up again?” Kevin called. The girl whipped her head to look at us both and I felt the blood drain from my face. Her eyes were lined heavily with sparkly black eyeliner framed by a whirl of ginger hair; it made her blue eyes pop when she snarled at us.

“Fuck off, asshole,” she hissed.

“Did you bring a weapon to school again or something?” he asked, brows raised.

“I said fuck off!” the girl screamed. The office went silent and all eyes flicked to her. One of the office staff stormed up to her from out of his private office.

“You’re already waist-deep, young lady,” he growled. His voice was really low, and it matched his huge stature. “Let’s have a chat.”

She kissed her teeth and got to her feet, flashing a pair of black lacy underwear as she did. I watched as she stomped haughtily past the giant of a man. The two disappeared into his office and the door slammed harshly behind them.

“That’s Agnes,” Kevin said sourly, breaking the silence.

I looked back at him. His pulse beat in his neck furiously, though he didn’t seem to be very upset. Instead, it looked as though he had taken pleasure in the whole situation.

“You… know her?” I asked, not sure what to make of the scene. I never was, really.

“Yeah. She’s a bit of a weirdo—not even the good weirdo, either. I’m sure you saw what she was wearing, for starters.”

“Oh.”

Clothing hardly seemed like a standard to judge someone by; there were so many other key indicators of being worth avoiding. If anything, that girl was probably more normal than I was, though I wasn’t about to tell him that.

“Last year, she actually brought a scythe to school. With all the school shootings, it’s not exactly a funny joke. I mean, who does that? And where the hell do people get scythes from in the city, anyway?”

I had to admit, it did seem a little strange. “Y-Yeah… Is she… Is she okay, though? I mean, I’d feel bad if she was slower, you know. It’s not people’s fault if—”

He shook his head as we moved up in the queue. There was only one more person ahead of us now. “Nope. She’s got all her marbles, apparently. I think she’s just obsessed.”

I was midway through opening my mouth to ask when I was cut off by the secretary at the desk.

“What can I help you with, dear?” she droned. She probably had to ask the exact same question a hundred times before she got to me; I couldn’t blame her for her lack of enthusiasm.

“Um… I’d like a locker, please,” I began. “And… and a lock?”

“Name?” she asked lazily.

“Sam,” I answered dumbly. I knew it was poorly answered by the look of sass I received from the grizzled old woman behind the counter.

She kissed her teeth and rolled her eyes. “Full first name, full last name, and student number,” she managed.

“Oh… right. Uhh—Samuel Adams, student number 100978585,” I croaked, feeling the shame creep up on me. There was quite a bit of giggling from behind me, including Kevin.

The receptionist’s expression changed from sassy to angry in a flash. Her loose, wrinkled lips curled in disgust. “What? Do you think you’re funny? You think I don’t drink beer or something?” she snapped. “Stop wasting my time and scram.”

Panicking, I fished around in my pocket for the temporary student card that had been mailed to me. “I’m sorry,” I mumbled, avoiding her eyes. The giggles from the other students still rang in my ears. “I didn’t mean… I’m not trying to be smart or anything… It really is my name…”

Raising an eyebrow, she snatched the card from the counter. She couldn’t have read anything other than the information I had provided, but she still looked very angry when she tossed it back to me. I dropped my eyes back to the floor.

With a few clicks of the mouse, she printed a small paper from the tiny printer on the desk. It looked like a late slip.

“Locker number two,” she drawled, shoving a Dudley into my hands. “Next!”

I took the slip and scurried out of the office.

Kevin kept up with me easily, his long legs taking easy strides. “She gave you the second shittiest locker number,” he mused.

“The second?” I whispered. “W-What’s the worst?”

“Locker number one.”

I looked back down at the slip. The number was a little smudged from my nervous hand, but it was still pretty clear. Locker number two was mine.

“Listen, my little sister texted me while we were in there—she needs a ride to her ice skating practice I forgot about. You’re good to find it yourself?” he asked. I heard the pounding of his pulse quicken as he said it; he was lying.

“Yeah, sure,” I replied, avoiding his gaze. I didn’t want to think of why he was lying, and I didn’t want it to matter.

He cracked a smile. “Thanks, man. See you tomorrow!” I had barely raised a hand in a wave when he turned on his heel and sped off toward the door.

“Bye…”

It took a while for me to get an idea of where my locker might have been. For whatever reason—my guess was poor planning from the education department—rooms starting with one were on the top floor, but single-digit lockers were in the basement.

The smell of mould was overpowering even before I had opened the access door or descended the stairs. The rats that scurried in the walls on this floor were well-fed; they thumped around and made happy little hums here and there. Part of me wondered if any other students had heard them because they were so loud.

As I slid my lock around the loop of my new locker, I heard the faint sounds of footsteps. I froze.

The sound hadn’t come from above, but they had stopped as soon as I had turned around. I felt my skin prickle, unsure of why I was even this off-put in the first place. It was hard to smell anything but the damp and the rats, but there was a hint of something else, something… sweet?

The footsteps resumed, this time more lightly. As they drew nearer, the sweet smell did the same. It was like a mixture of flowers or spices—whatever it was, I couldn’t place it. Not yet, anyway.

I took a calming breath. Whoever was down here had every right to be; it was a school, and schools had staff and students. The other fifty or so lockers down here were definitely proof of that.

“What are you doing here?”

I whipped around to see the ginger girl from the office, still wearing the glare she had on earlier.

“I—I’m just…” I pointed to the locker number that was etched into the door instead of on a plaque like the ones on the floors above. “I’m number two. See?”

Her expression didn’t change. I gulped. Kevin had said she brought a scythe to school; clearly, she wasn’t someone to be messed with.

“I’m sorry…” I whispered, trying to hold her gaze. Her eyes narrowed, and she stepped toward me, causing a large gust of incense to waft my way.

The dark circles that surrounded her eyes were a mixture of makeup and being tired—or angry. Her lip curled. “I know what you are.”