1 Introduction Central - Chapter One

Chapter 1: Meet Rei

Rei's POV

Thursday - 8:10 a.m.

"Yeah, that was weird. I swear on my life he was expelled." A feminine voice says while on a phone call.

"She told me she was the teacher's pet, like, uhh? Extra credit much?" Another girl giggles, my interest peeks until another story steals my attention.

"Yeah, party at my house! Invite everyone you know, just no freshmen. It's gonna kickass dude!" Some guy behind me shouts. I can practically hear the fist pump.

I listen in on the conversations going on around me. Whether it just be snippets of a conversation or a full-blown discussion. 'Someone was expelled, there's a teacher's pet, and a party's happening. Fuck, I need details.' I hastily tell myself.

Unfortunately, the bell rings just in time to foil my plans. I groan and shut my locker, calculus books and all shoved in between my chest and arm. Now the boring part of the day starts. But I guess the bell also saved me in a way, hell knows how I was going to go up to some random chick and ask, 'tell me more about this teacher's pet~?'

A blessing in disguise.

I turn down the hall and walk toward my first class, Calculus. I can already feel myself stressing out and I haven't even walked into the cursed class yet.

I drag my feet down the hall, passing each and every blue locker in those uniform rows. If it wasn't for the double hall turn a few feet away, you'd think you entered a never-ending building.

After forcing my legs to take me on an exciting adventure, I finally reach the end of the hall and take a left. Oh? A grin reaches my face when I recognize two gremlins waiting by the janitor room. I spy with my little eye, an absolute queen and a nerd...y prince.

The queen herself turns and suddenly throws her arm into the air, shaking it wildly as if she's stranded on an island. "Hey, Rei gun!" Angela, one of my best friends shout from down the hall. She continues to frantically wave at me with a goofy smile on her face.

I start marching toward them and once I get there, hear the shy prince speak his magic words.

"Thanks for taking so long." Adds my other best friend, Skye, with a grunt.

"It's my absolute pleasure." I respond with a bow. When he gives me a straight face I add, "In my defense, I never told you to wait for me." I chuckle as I motion for them to follow me.

"We weren't in the mood to hear you complain about us not waiting for you half the week again." Laughs Angela. I blush remembering. That was a one-time thing and I was just in a bad mood. They haven't left me alone from that for who knows how long.

"Then how about I just give you two the silent treatment? Since, y'know, you guys clearly don't appreciate my complaints of wisdom." I ask. They both glance at each other before Skye puts his hands together and closes his eyes, "Have my prayers finally been answered?" He asks.

"Oh shut up! No one would answer your prayers anyway."

"Really? I thought the same thing about you. In fact I even prayed that you'd be given one last chance. How do you feel about your parents knowing what you did that Saturday night?"

I scrunch my nose, "Rat. At least my parents know how to spell sky."

"You don't know how to spell sky. You gave me the nickname." He counters. Yeah, I forgot about that. Last year, when he first started going to this school, I called him Skye in place of Samuel. He ended up using the nickname for literally everything. And I don't blame him for that, Samuel is something you would name your pet dog while at a retirement home.

"Well you look like shi-"

I stop talking when I hear footsteps coming near as a strident voice comments, "It seems your parents don't know how to teach you two about getting to class on time either."

I look behind me and lo and behold, it's Ms. Baker. She's definitely horror movie worthy.

I immediately shut my mouth and silently stare at her. She still has her signature circle face with big, round glasses. In fact she just looks like one big circle. Her auburn hair is pulled into a tight ponytail. Not really doing her hairline a goodie. Actually, that's a good story. 'The nonexistent hairline of Ms. Baker. Where did it go?'

I quickly snap myself out of my thoughts and apologize. Yeah, I suck up to adults. Specifically old women. They're scary.

Skye, on the other hand, sucks up to adults in a different way. He somehow gets himself out of these situations even though he talks like some kind of royal butler. Keyword, himself.

With a clearing of the throat he says, "I'm sure my parents have taught me how to get to class on time Ms. Baker, but I'm in the yearbook committee.." wait, there's no yearbook committee at this school- "..and I ran into Rei while rushing back here, and offered to help him..." Wait, is this a Heather's reference?

I give him a 'what about us?' look as he continues to smoothly spit out lies. All he does is give us a subtle shrug while waiting for the teacher's response when he finishes.

"I don't take excuses." She growls out. Just hearing it sends a shiver down my spine. She does that a lot, and should probably get that checked out, but I never have the guts to tell her. She sneaks a peek at Angela and her expression slightly softens, "Now get to class before I give you guys an ASD." Heeding her warning, I immediately scurry inside to my seat while Skye and Angela take their sweet old time.

Once I sit down, I rest my head in my arms as the other two take a seat as well. I'm pretty sure Ms. Baker only let us off the hook because Angela was here with us this time. She has a soft spot for her 'cause surprise surprise, Angela's her stepdaughter. Angela's dad and Ms. Baker are going to get married soon, which helps out in situations like this.

The rest of class is just us doing a few worksheets and taking notes here and there. There was nothing interesting for me to overhear or look at, other than the occasional 'what did you get for number five' or 'yo, can I copy your homework?'. Angela, as always, finished her work early and is using all types of pens and highlighters to make her notes pretty and shazamed. I don't know why she does that when she never even studies them. I take a peek to my left and see Skye dozing in and out of sleep. There really are two types of people. I shake my head and continue doing my work.

2:00 p.m.

"Hey, did you know that many species of sea cucumbers have evolved to have teeth in their anus to ward off potential inhabitants?" Angelia says as we grab our food in the lunch line.

"Please get off Reddit." Skye groans.

"Oh! Most of them have a singular cloaca so they basically do everything through the same hole." She beams as she keeps scrolling through her phone.

"Wait, this is a good one." She says as we pay for our food. Skye speed walks away from her when she tries to shove her phone in his face. He doesn't struggle escaping since he's the tallest person in our friend group.

We all sit at a table near the entrance of the cafeteria with our other friends: Raine, Brooke, Gray, and Matt. Most of which are nicknames I gave them since I never remember people's real names. They're all already laughing and joking around about something by the time we sit down. Man, talk about leaving the three musketeers out. I look toward Raine, the other tea spiller of our group, who's sitting across from me.

"Hellooo Raine." I greet her while opening my chocolate milk carton. She turns to me and her eyes widen, "Oh, Rei! Hi! Okay, did you see Ms. Faulkenberry around yet?" She asks with her head leaned in. Getting straight to business I see, I like it. I shake my head in response. Give me the tea sis.

"Okay hun, so there's a boat load of new students comin' in tomorrow and it's throwing the school off its rockers, right? We just barely have enough classrooms to fit them all, but that's beside the point." She rambles on before she gets to her main point, "Since you, Xander, and I greeted the new students the past few years they want us to do it again with these students. Some of them share the same classes with you and most with me and Xander, so we'll split them that way." She explains. I just keep nodding. So no tea, just work.

"Wait, so like, are we merging with another school or something?" Brooke asks, probably was listening in, and Raine shakes her head. "Yeah yeah basically basically. I think they're merging their pack with ours or something." When I give her a quizzical look she adds, "The pack that's next door to us, Moon Si-" she stops for a second before quickly saying, "Town. I meant town. The one near this one." She awkwardly laughs the last part as everyone gives her a glare. I sit there just plain confused as I take a sip of my chocolate milk. It's not like I really care about what's going on anyways, all I really have to do is give about five students a tour and pretend to be a good role model.

"And this is happening when?" I ask. I need to know when to dress my best for this tour thing, good first impressions are great for getting people to tell you things. I mean, highering people's opinions of you. I just hope there aren't any hot guys coming to this school, it sucks enough being the only gay guy here. I don't feel like falling for another straight dude, it's too much work to stand back up after he gets a girlfriend.

"Monday morning, around seven. Right before the school opens, basically" She replies, already looking exhausted by how early that is. I give her a hum and look back to my food tray. I am enjoying this chocolate milk.

Raine goes back to her original conversation with Matt, and I've decided to turn back to Skye and Angela. They're also talking to Matt, something about dogs ruling the world in the future. I watch as Skye gets frustrated, as always, in these types of debates. He furrows his brows as he tries to explain to them that that's "not likely the case" if humans go extinct, that "octopuses would rise up" instead.

His gaze suddenly turns to meet mine, and I see his cheeks turn a light shade of pink as he goes slightly stiff. Despite his terrible personality and total lack of masculinity he's still pretty cute. He always looks like he has a high fever with those cheeks though.

"So what were you guys talking about?" I ask. Skye seems to break out of his trance before ever so slightly avoiding eye contact and answering, "Something beyond your comprehension." The nerve of these straight men. I decide to point out the passionate flames on his face, "Then who's having a red parade on your face?"

"It's just one of the many pros of being pale.." He mutters sarcastically. I give out a cow wheeze, a manly one might I add, and decide to give him a break. I've been pestering and subtly flirting with him for a while now, but at this point, despite popular belief, I can tell he's not gay. It's pretty disappointing but it's not like I didn't see it coming, I can't just do some ooga booga flirting magic to make him gay. Not that that's stopping me from trying on someone else in the future.

3:45 p.m.

The rest of lunch was just Angela and Gray playing Smash or Pass, Brooke and Raine gossiping about the party this weekend, and Skye and Matt acting smarter than they actually are. Unsurprisingly, nothing interesting happened. Last year was packed with controversies that Raine and I would dump onto the others every second of the day, but definitely not this year. It's either the fact that everyone's lives just got boring or they learned how to actually whisper for once. Either way, this year is just as boring as having a slow internet connection.

Anyways, school has finally come to end. I ran into Ms. Faulkenberry earlier, the teacher who was supposed to tell me about the students coming, and she basically repeated what Raine told me: New students, a whole lot of 'em, seven in the morning Monday. So I'll be giving a tour to about fifteen students, something I was not prepared for. She said that someone might help me, but for now it's just me, myself, and I.

I walk past the school's back doors to my bus with Angela. Monday's going to be one hell of a long morning.

-----

Thank you for reading! Constructive criticism is welcome <3