2So I watched Princess Anorexia walk by, leading some new girl by the arm, and left my books scattered about my locker as I steadied myself against a shudder that ran down my spine. It had been years since that splinter and smoke voice had spoken to me civilly, but today it had slid over me with a curt "Hello" as its owner whirled by, followed by a pair of frightened, green eyes. The poor thing looked as if she might be sick at the nest turn, and, although I might normally be amused to no end at the sight of Ms. Perfect bathed in someone's Technicolor yawn, I couldn't help but feel sorry for the tortured creature clutched in those manicured talons.
"Poor thing," I sighed sympathetically, and packed my book bag, jangling the myriad of baubles it had collected. With one last glance, I taped up a note for my locker-mate, Ria, retrieved my personal notebook from the floor, and slammed the poorly painted gray door, making the people around my jump. Shrugging the pack onto my shoulder, I turned my back on them and wandered my way towards class. After going to school with the same people for up to twelve years, you get used to pretty much everything.
I hadn't always been like that, though. Once I had almost verged on jock, played soccer, and been normal. Then I got sick, and for two years I didn't exist. When I cam back, my place was filled. There was no need for me where I had once been. Suddenly, I had to find myself, and quick.
"Hey dyke!"
Laughter reigned through the halls. I was used to it all by now. Dyke, goth, punk, anarchist, poser, etc. Apparently people couldn't even agree on what to call me, but they couldn't leave me alone, either. Now I was whatever they could think of in the moment, and they got out their insults when they could, because it seemed they were almost scared. Perhaps they feared I might actually react one day, or maybe it was something else. Maybe it was all of those rumors flying around about me, or maybe it wasn't even me at all.
"Dragon!"
I do believe it would be nice, just once, to have warning before she barreled into me, but I never have time. As usual, I hit the wall hard enough to jar every bone in my body. People stared again, rushing down the hallway, and causing a traffic jam in an attempt to give my friend and I as much room as possible. Something about her scared pretty much everyone, even more than I did, and when the two of us were together.
It makes sense, though, why they would be so confused. After all, we were supposedly just roommates. She was my foreign exchange student from Japan as far as anyone was concerned. Amazing how she and I were pretty much just mirror images of one another with a few color distortions. Her hair was black and her eyes gold, instead of blonde and blue, and that was all. Otherwise, we were, at first glance, one and the same.
Sucking in a breath, I struggled to wheeze a choked protest to her abrupt discontinuance of my movement. "Ryu-chan! . .ow.!"
She had one of the goofiest grins I had ever seen as she backed away. "Sorry!" was her sickeningly cheery reply, and she laughed, "Can you believe people these days? Staring like I'm not supposed to be happy!"
Not quite ignoring her, I continued down the hall with her at my side, babbling about whatever came to her mind. Maybe she has ADHD or something I thought, as she digressed onto yet another pointless topic. She didn't stop until we got to class, where she was discretely ignored by our friends until she calmed down.
I took my seat in the back of the class, surrounded by the people I didn't really mind. These were the people I had found were true friends, the ones who accepted me and helped me find my real place when my old one just didn't fit. On my one side sat Ryu, who leaned forward to jabber at the red hair in front of her. The red-head's name was Michelle, a very talented artist who I had grown attached to rather quickly. She put in a word here and there through the rambling, but mainly just sat immersed in the doodles she was currently covering a book cover with. To my other side sat Draco, my other "exchange student". She looked like a more feminine version of Ryu, with a long, black braid and the same golden eyes, and she was supposedly Greek. At the moment, she was writing back and forth with her best friend, the only guy in our regular group, Mark. He sat in front of her with his spiky blonde/brown hair and was probably one of the sweetest guys I had ever met, not to mention as bad a telephone conversationalist as myself. We could spend hours laughing at absolutely nothing.
Up front, the teacher was rattling off the roll when the new girl came in. My entire group snapped our heads up. I'm not sure why. It had just become habit, I guess. We tended to get passes to guidance more often than the rest of the class after all. Normally we all just looked up for a split second before returning to our previous activities, but this time my head stayed up.
It was the tortured soul from earlier, with bright green eyes and spiky black hair. When she wasn't threatened with hitting a locker, she looked much more comfortable, wearing a t-shirt that read "Zombie State." She smiled shyly as the teacher introduced her as Megan and told her to take a seat next to Mark.
Mark heard his name and perked up, waving her over to the empty desk. I couldn't help but keep staring, feeling a soft blush as she glanced at me while listening to my friend explain what we were doing, which pretty much amounted to a total of nothing. First block was just Leadership Seminar, where we did pretty much everything that people would normally have to stay after school to get done. Signing up for it had been my idea, and there had been few complaints thus far. Our present assignment was finishing up Homecoming preparations for this weekend, and we were all done with the things we had signed up to do. So we were just sitting there boredly, doing whatever we felt like doing, or finishing any homework we had forgotten was due. The pencil in my hand was not working on the Physics in front of me, though. It was just looming over my paper as my mind snuck away from the equations and numbers, moving on to the task of committing this new girl's image to memory.
"Hi."
I jumped. Though I had been staring at her, I hadn't noticed her turning around. "Hi," I choked back, kicking Ryu for snickering at me.
Megan giggled. "What's your name?"
"Um.I'm .Heather! Well, my name is Heather, that is, but my friends call me Dragon!"
My so called friends were laughing now, and Megan was giggling, as my cheeks began to brighten. Michelle noticed the problem first, and her laughter stopped short. Without a word, she stood, took me by the arm, and dragged me out of the room. It was something of a routine all of my close friends had gotten used to. Luckily the teacher didn't care what we did, so long as we didn't' get into any trouble. So I crouched down next to the door and covered my face with my hands until the redness went away. For most people, blushing wasn't a big deal, but for me. As if I wasn't suspicious enough, my skin always started converting into red scales when I started getting over emotional.
"You okay?"
I felt the flesh under my eyes. It seemed normal enough. "I think so. Am I still red?"
"Nope."
"Then I'm fine."
"Good," my friend smiled and hugged me. "Figured you needed out. You were starting to sprout horns."
Sighing, I felt for any unwanted spikes along the hairline about my temples. "Thanks."
"No problem."
After a couple minutes, we headed back in. Heads snapped up; heads went back down. Our little morning group had taken to their writing, drawing, or whatever they were doing. My friends knew what was going on, they were used to it, but Megan just stared at me quizzically as I took my seat. I would have said something, but I really didn't feel like explaining anything. The story was just too long to tell to someone I was developing a crush on.
I rested my forehead against the cool metal of my locker door. People were rushing by me to get to lunch. So far the day was going by without a single hitch since first block. Luckily, on our class system, you didn't have to deal with much each day. All I had left was lunch and Advanced Art, so if I could survive the cafeteria I was home free. Unfortunately for me, and my sanity, I turned from the shelves Ria and I had covered with books just in time for Megan to round the corner. Gee, I thought, wonder how I can make a fool out of myself this time. Tossing my backpack over my shoulder, I hurried into the lunch room, where Mark was already waiting at our table.
" better than this morning?" I stuck my tongue out at him and he just laughed. "Hey. It's alright. I probably would've reacted the same way. Of course, I sprout fur, not horns, . Here she comes."
I sighed, about ready to pound my head into the table. The only thing that kept me from doing so was the sight of greasy macaroni-and-cheese colored splotches. Damn it. People are such slobs. Ugh. How gross can ya get?
"Hi."
Swallowing hard, and trying to control the rising blush, I looked up at her, smiling. "Hi."
"Mind if I sit with you guys?"
"Nope."
So she took a place beside me, leaving me on the end and Mark alone on the other side. It was pretty quite as we ate our lunches. Apparently no one had anything to say. I was actually afraid my voice might crack from nervousness, otherwise I would have voiced a random conversation starter just to pop the uneasy little bubble of silence. That job was not mine, however, as Megan looked down at the table.
" .what was wrong this morning?" She wiggled her nose, kind of like a rabbit, and blushed a little herself. "Were you okay? I mean, your friend rushed you out pretty fast."
I laughed, a bit to anxiously in my opinion, not looking up either. "Oh.I was okay. I just do that sometimes. .I've got this problem with my nerves.a panic disorder kinda thing, ya know?"
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her nod. "I know how that goes."
Mark stared at us blankly, brow raised, as if to ask, "What are you doing making small talk? Get to know her you doof!" So I glanced over at her, trying to find a topic that might remove us from the mundane. That's when I noticed her necklace. It was a thin silver chain with a pentacle in a moon dangling from it. Okay, maybe we had something more in common.
"Uh.I noticed your charm," I put in quietly.
She blinked, then reached for the circled star. " ?"
"Yeah. It's pretty," I tried not to look embarrassed. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe she just thought of it as another cute trinket.
"Thanks," she smiled, blushing a little more. "It was a gift from my brother."
We were both quiet again for a moment, then I rested my slightly warming face in my cold hands. "I' .I've got one. It's not that impressive, just a regular, hand-made pentacle, but it serves its purpose fine enough."
"Oh," she laughed, barely containing a sigh of relief. "Yeah. I was just going to get a basic one, but he wanted to buy me this. Hand-made is so much better, especially if it's made by the right people. Where'd you get yours?"
"Women's Wish in Occoquan."
"Hey! I go there all the time! Arlene is so awesome!"
I grinned. "I know. There was this drum I wanted real bad the one time, and she held it for me until I could get the money together for it."
maybe we did have something in common. Actually, we had a lot in common. We were the same religion, went to the same places, read the same books, loved the same movies, bought the same comics, and watched the same shows. I was completely amazed by it all, and I thought Mark was about ready to smack me and scream "I told you so!" by the time we left the cafeteria. Once we parted ways, I had pretty much forgotten about the morning's humiliation, and I all but skipped to the art room to tell Michelle and Ria.