Volume I Chapter 5

"And where did you get such lies from?" In the midst of taking a small break from cleaning up the dusty green room, Nora came in to ask about my mother's whereabouts. "Really? I thought it was a legit info though?" The blonde girl with a French braid scratched her head, confused of my answer. I stood next to her, my height just below her ear as I grab a hold of her left shoulder. She paused for a second, thinking of what exactly I was doing when I reached above to twist her ear, left and right.

"Wha-Ah!"

"Who told you to eavesdrop on my phone call last week?" Last weekday, my mom called me on the phone when I was working at the small sci-fi themed internet cafe. I told David that someone was calling for me, so he took over my station for a short while. I then went around one corner of the cafe's employee's quarters for some privacy, and talked to my mom about the day that I'll fetch her by the airport. I thought that since Nora, a huge fan of my mom, wasn't there, I could talk freely on the phone. But who would've thought, that this older girl would eavesdrop yet again on my conversation with others?

"Noooo! I-I just happened to pass by! That's all-Ah!" I snorted at her attempt to excuse herself and threatened her to fix her bad habit or I won't be talking to her again. She looked at me with her puppy dog eyes and I ignored her by taking the trash that I compiled on one plastic bag, out of the room.

Going outside the back-alleys of the city, I heaved a large breath and organized the things that I will be doing for the next couple of days in my head. I needed to rehearse the other report on math class, plot for the story on the stop-motion horror project, edit a video commissioned by my online employer at the internet cafe, go to the coffee shop near the neighborhood for my other part time job, and fetch my mom from the airport next week. Too much work but still manageable.

I headed back to the cafe, ending my shift with a reluctant and sorry Nora on my heels. Kai was already waiting by the doorstep when I got home, and we talked about each other's day for the meantime.

"Kai, can you lend me your scooter for a while?" I asked him as he washed the dishes on the sink. We were currently at the kitchen, cleaning up our eaten dinner while I was doing advance studies by the table. "What would you use it for?" He turned around, wiping a porcelain plate with one hand and setting the finished one on a drawer. I waited for him to finish wiping more breakable plates before slipping out the fact that my mom was about to go home from her two months inspiration trip.

"Well, mom's about to go back next week, so she told her busy daughter to fetch her from the airport." As expected, a plate nearly broke but I caught it in time by setting two pillows earlier bellow his feet. He was silent for a while, and I let him brood over the fact that mom had probably never told him about her date of arrival. He was her best friend, but she never bothered to rely on him of anything other than her daughter.

Sheesh. They're like, more of a teenager than I am with this love hardships and quarreling that they've been giving each other.

"Anyway, I'm borrowing the scooter whether you like it or not." I told him again, hinting that he should come before me with his car so that mom wouldn't nag me when she sees him earlier than I am. I went and put the plate back into its rightful place. My self-study, already done for the day as I push him out of the house to go back to work.

The next day arrived and I woke up from the couch again. Going to school never felt more of a drag than ever as I went early to get a nap done before class. When I reached the room, a few of my classmates were sleeping in their own vices so I joined them in their sleep party. I woke up when Jill harshly slapped my back and gave me my breakfast for the day.

"Hey, hey. Want to go to the arcade after this?" Jill asked enthusiastically, her short wavy hair bobbed up and down from the energetic movements she was doing early in the morning. I gave her a glare and shook my head no, knowing that she keeps asking me for hangouts when I have a job to do every day.

"Aww, come on! Just one day. Can't you like, apply for a day leave or something?" As if you could do that in a part time job. I ignored her and continued eating the takeout burger she brought from a fast food restaurant near school as Ms. Callaghan went inside the room to start homeroom for today.

"Wake up you lazy brats! I'm here to announce something that greatly concerns your future and not mine." With her hair in a bun and uniform extremely formal, she told us about the mock-up college entrance exams that we were required to take before letting us go back into idle chatter. I couldn't care much about it when it was scheduled months away, but I kept it in mind to revise some notes I had last year for the taking.

Math soon came and this time, I took up some of the mantle from our dearest Clementine in the room. We took turns, explaining and catching each other's words about how someone would solve the equation with basic operations in calculus. Explaining something with someone who was smarter than you never felt better as we breezed through the questions thrown to us by our ass hat of a teacher, Mr. Gandley.

"Applause, everyone! Looks like they've put the bar up higher with the presentation! Too bad I didn't give more topics for you to handle but..." I zoned him out as I play with the set of keys on my pocket for a small distraction. He was only looking at the smartest girl in our group anyway, so why bother listening to his empty flattering words. We finally get the chance to head back to our seats and make way for the other group to take over. I let the smartest girl in our class go first before I went to the seat behind her and took-out my notes to do some self-studying again.

It wasn't that much tiring doing self-studying sessions every day, it only becomes tiring when I keep being reminded of how stupid I am for not understanding it quickly like some genius on a fantasy novel. But that's how life works.

Break rang, and Jill and I quickly went to the library to continue studying about the lessons we didn't get today. Perhaps she couldn't help but be scared from the announcement earlier for Jill didn't actually pester me, and instead, studied her notes by her own efforts. It gave me the peace that I was looking for, and help me push through the things I didn't quite get earlier. The magic of the small library was surging through both of us as we study with never-ending energy until the bell rang.

I stretched my limbs, feeling dizzy about the information that was soaked in my head. Jill was in the same state as I was but had her head down on the table like some dead drunk on a pub. We stood up and went for Ms. Ysa's class for the next hour of Technology and Livelihood class. When we reached the class upstairs, we saw Fabio next to Ms. Ysa's table, talking to the teacher about something that made her laugh. She saw us, and beckoned for us to sit quickly for class to start. I sat beside the only vacant seat that I saw, beside Jill. But before I could fully sit down, someone took over the seat before me.

"Steven?"

"Pearson."

"Do you mind? I was about to sit there." I couldn't understand why he was trying to pick a fake fight right now, but he only gave me a smirk and nodded in the direction of his old seat. Collins? We stared at each other's eyes more but I was the one who firstly pulled away. I gave Jill a look of good luck and went off to sit beside the Clementine girl at the front.

"What was that about?" The girl beside me spoke in a murmur.

"You tell me. You haven't forgiven him yet from yesterday's teasing, have you?" I responded as she fixed her glasses with a smile. We were the only ones sitting on the four chairs of the first row, and I knew why. "Do you happen to know why they've been avoiding me since yesterday?" She said as we silently glanced at the front, giving the onlookers at the back the impression of us not talking at all.

"Maybe they're intimidated, yes?"

"Why would they be, when there's many more of their kind in the room."

"Who knows what all block headed devils are thinking when I don't even know what I generally think about you."

"Really? Not even a single adjective or noun?"

"Should I have one to describe you for?"

"Tell that to the person who wrote judgement and its meaning in a dictionary."

"Okay, so where could I find Merriam to talk to? Have any ideas?" She looked at me with a sarcastic expression and I only smiled back.

"Anyway, I think that I finally found at least one sentence that I could describe about you."

"What is it?" Her eyes darted to mine and I shifted my body to lean towards her in a whispering manner.

"That is, you really look good with glasses." I grinned and went back to looking at the front.

"So..." History's substitute teacher, sir Owen was handing out assessment papers to everyone in the room. "How far have you gone?" Steven asked me in a whisper to which I rolled my eyes into. I showed him my paper that was marked with a 97 and smirked at his expression of utter betrayal.

"I thought we were the 95's kid!"

"Well I got a 97 now. So, we're disbanded." He snickered at me with dissatisfaction as he glared at the score that he had gotten with disdain. I silently laugh at our small banter. Competing with grades in history class, was always the thing he was most proud off to be tied with me throughout past school years. While we were teasing each other, Gian went to exchange seats with Charles, my other seat mate, and compared his test answers with my paper as well.

"As expected from the ever-hardworking Toyota. Tell me, what gasoline have you been secretly drinking to reach this amount of success?" He took my paper away with him and distributed it onto the boys at the back like a paper made for all to look at. I shook my head, my expression turning into amusement as I saw everyone disregarding the teacher at the front because of such small matters.

"I was quite sober when we took the test thank you, but, I'm the wrong person you should've been interviewing on this matter." I was talking about them looking for our usual top scorer named Patricia. Who, in the mention of grades, looked at me yet shook her head in an awkward manner. I was puzzled at the fact that she signaled me that she didn't score much higher than I did. Does that mean I have really scored big time?

The new teacher of ours thought that it was his cue to butt in on our conversation and said, "Yes, I, very much agree with Ms. Pearson's words here. And that is to consult Ms. Collins regarding your tests as well." I gave out an awkward expression, not expecting that the situation would dip into this area of being who's better than who. The seat in front of me was the one who took the full blast of the said words of condemnation. But even if that did happen, her posture of upright nobleness tells me that it wasn't affecting her that much.

More lectures arrived here and there when the teacher finally seemed to notice that he had done something irreversibly wrong. He quickly talked about some history on legends about demons, changing his way of approach in complimenting people. But even though he tried to salvage the neutral atmosphere from before, everyone knew that it wasn't going to come back for a very long time.

As time passed in the white walled and green classroom, I had received a dart full of daggers from one douchebag's way. I couldn't face him. Not when I know that he'll convince me of bringing the girl in front of us in the same level as we had. Social constructs are much of a pain in the ass, and no one knew better than Steven who only wants to discreetly help the poor girl out.

A note was passed on my table when I was daydreaming. It had the words, 'Comfort her.' in the front to which I had to stop my eyes from rolling over. He could've worded it better, honestly. So, I wrote under his words a sassy reply and passed it back to him in a hurried manner. I got back the note for a little while, but the words 'I didn't know that you swung that way' made me look at his direction completely. I only wrote that I wasn't her pay-to-rent-for-comfort girlfriend but it seems that the topic has gone out of its original context. Without hesitation, I wrote back a sarcastic remark on swinging ways when I'm not on a playground to play around. He gave me a look afterwards.

After the high-strung History class was over, the girl in front of me stood up and left the room in a paced manner. Steven went on to invite me to have lunch with his guys, disguising his intentions on making me someone's babysitter. Luckily, Jill caught on his whole act and shoved him out of the way, dragging me to lunch. We went on to the cafeteria. Sitting with some girls in our class, and continued on our day's work.

Well, I did. Not them.

"Way to go saying that all devils are dumb am I right?" Marge, a girl with huge stature complained to the group.

"We can be smart too! We're only using it on different areas of our life." Anna, a lanky girl of the group, tries to uplift everyone's spirits on the table.

"Ugh. It's not just Gandley the gay teacher, but Owen's disciple as well! Gasp! Do you think that they're secretly dating or something?" Jill gossiped and Faith, a girl who I always see reading comics in the room, couldn't help but squeal something about making a ship out of the two.

"As if they'll date each other. I heard that Mr. Gandley has a girlfriend from the main campus." Wency bit on her ice cream sandwich as she pointed to each of them about a certain gossip she got from last year's seniors of the school.

"I thought I've heard a rumor that they've broken up." Jill countered, swirling a cup of coffee by her hand.

"But someone in the secret files forum said that the girlfriend thing on main campus was a farce. It was conjectured that the secret lover is in our school instead." Marge brought up about the secret chat group that contained rumors about the whole school.

"I suspect that the girlfriend is from a certain axed section that started those rumors." Wency told her, sipping her coke.

"You can't possibly mean the Clementine's started a bunch of nonsense, can you?" Anna doubted.

"Oh, I do. My sources say that someone in the Clementine's was always being watched by Mr. Gandley. The said student was apparently a great beauty that even the principal dotes on her. I suspect that the same student is connected to Mr. Gandley's secret lover, cause, how else would they be axed if the teacher didn't have problems with the students." I didn't understand how this little conspiracy of theirs was going, but it seems that they're trying to make it seem like the axing issue was because of a teacher's over dramatic love life.

"Oh, oh! What if Gandley's lover is a student in the Clementine section?" Jill looked like she was struck by lightning when she concluded the whole thing based on everyone's own deductions. Gasps erupted on the table while I slowly question the reason why I'm sitting with them at lunch.

"Is that why he's sucking up to the Clementine girl? Because she might know and blabber about his secret?" Someone in the group asked.

"Who knows? But I probably wouldn't talk to her if our grades will be constantly compared to one another."

"Only a selected few can approach her, Marge. You're not alone." Anna comforted the girl as everyone snapped their heads on my direction for the same reason. They couldn't possibly mean it's me that they're talking about, could they?

"What?" I asked and Wency rolled her eyes at my dumbfounded expression. "We're talking about you, Pearson." I bit back an 'I know' expression and only gave a consigned expression towards their accusing gazes.

"I'm talking about what do you guys want. Do you need tips on talking to a harmless girl of our age? Or do you need me to introduce you instead?" Even if I did bite back those two words from coming out of my lips, my blunt mouth couldn't take being labeled as one of the chosen beings that are allowed to communicate with a normal and smart girl.