“Dude we're gonna be late" Hunter said as he glanced back at Josh who was walking slowly behind him.
"I'm walking as fast as I can right now. Don't push it" Josh replied, huffing and puffing his way to school.
Hunter scoffed at Josh who was waddling like a penguin, his geeky glasses slightly askew on his face, a sheen of sweat glistening on his face. He reached briefly into his shirt pocket, took out a pristine white handkerchief and swiped it across his face.
Josh had a thing with neatness, he couldn't bear being dirty. He didn't play like normal children, act like normal children or ask questions like normal children.
Like yesterday, he told his mother that if the ozone layer was depleting the way it was, wouldn't it be better if they went and lived in the North Pole so the tremendous change in heat activity wouldn't affect them all that much. And of course, he chose to use words incomprehensible for his mom to understand so she didn't even catch half of what he said.
Josh, his best friend since seven was a little overweight and wasn't helping matters at the moment with how slow he was walking, they'd surely get to school after the morning bell.
"Hurry up. Look Zoe's waiting". Sure enough Zoey Chase, their other best friend was waiting impatiently for them.
"What are you guys? Ducks?" Zoey asked, tapping her foot on the sidewalk. She was wearing headphones and bobbing her head to a K-pop song.
Zoey was shorter than Hunter, had hazel colored eyes and was African Asian. She had pale, milky skin and a really serious death glare. She had jet black hair and it was almost flowing down to her shoulders
"Josh caused it" Hunter pointed out. "I mean, look at him"
Josh huffed and panted his way over "Was...late...sorry" he breathed out.
"Whatever. Let's just go, the buses is gone now" Zoey said.
Hunter, Josh and Zoey trekked silently under the blinding rays of the sun and made it to school six minutes before the bell rang.
The school courtyard was filled with all kinds of kids. Some were congregating in a corner telling their friends how they spent their weekend. The truants were using spray paint to tattoo the school again.
The nerds were arguing about the fluidity of the quantum theory and the cool kids were sitting on tables and all had their phones out using social media and doing stuff all cool kids do. The place was crowded and noisy so the trio quickly stepped through to the stairs of the building.
'Thank God for headphones' Zoey thought
The school building stood proudly were it had been occupying the last 24 years or so. It was a massive three storeyed structure and peeling paint could be found here and there in the sides of the building. On the front of the school, H.G Wells Junior/High School was spelt out in huge block letters.
They pushed the heavy doors and entered inside the school. The once pristine white floor tiles now lay defiled by scuff marks and chips of the edges. Bright overhead lights were spaced apart on the ceiling about 10 feet from each other.
Josh could see one very stern hall monitor standing at the end of the halls, apparently looking for the bell to ring so he would give the late comers detention.
They all went to their lockers, Hunter's and Zoey's were three lockers apart while Josh had his near the end of the rows of lockers in the hallway. Zoey threw her headphones inside, picked some books and placed them in her backpack.
Josh took out his Biology notes and the project he spent all night working on, and shoved his backpack inside his locker. As he slammed the locker shut, he could sense someone or something towering above him.
He gulped.
He didn't need two guesses to guess right.
He turned around and towering over him was Brent and his clique who did all his biddings and all but worshipped the ground he stood on. Brent was a tenth grader and his parents were high profile lawyers. They threw huge piles of money at fundraisers and donations hich basically meant Brent could do anything he wanted and the school management couldn't do anything about it. They would just threaten to stop their generous donations or sue the school.
In simple terms, he was basically invincible.
"If it isn't little smarty pants" he smirked.
"I wanna ge...get to class ppl-ease" Josh stammered. Knowing Brent, he'd probably push him around a few times, trash his lunch food or something equally worse.
"Hey, what’s that?" he asked, pointing at his biology projects sticking out of the cover flap of his brown leather bag.
"My science project" Josh said, hoping he'd get bored and eventually leave him alone and bully another middle school kid.
"Gimme that" Brent snarled as he snatched it away from backpack, ripping a piece of it.
"Nooo" Josh pleaded "please, I need it for class" Josh had never skipped class, gotten lesser than a B and always turned in his homework. He wasn't about to ruin his perfect streak.
Brent handed the handwritten brochure to Cory, one of his minions while Josh tried jumping around to take it but Cory just held it above his head and avoided Josh's flimsy hand grabs.
"Here, read it to me". Cory launched into a self acclaimed speech about frogs and their oscillatory behavior of their pharynx producing special sounds and signals vibrating inside the water to attract mates for reproduction.
Brent mock yawned. "Boring. But, I'm keeping it."
Josh whined. "That's not fair, then what will I submit in class? You're not even in my grade"
"I don't care"
"Make do with this". Another disciple, Jake, thrust a ratty piece of paper at him.
At that moment, the bell rang for first period, and the boys ran away. At first, he thought it was because they were eager to get to class but looking back, he was wrong.
So Josh did what curious kids do best and when he opened the paper thrust forcefully at his hands, he was dumbfounded.
"Clear the halls people. Principal coming through". Sure enough, Principal H. Rockwell
Nobody knew his first name but they were guessing it went in the ranks of Dicky
barreled through the few lingering students loitering the halls and stood beside Josh, brandishing a megaphone.
Then he yelled in Josh's ear. "Why aren't you in class!!" through the mega phone.
Josh jumped and his books and the sheet of paper fell to the ground.
"I'm really, really sorry, principal, I was-". His heart skipped ten beats and flew into his mouth as the principal crouched and picked the paper up.
"Well, well, well, what do we have here". He said, scanning the paper showing the anatomy of a naked female species of the Genus, Homo sapiens complete with sketchy labels including "tits"
seriously, what the hell are those
and other things which an eight grader shouldn't be seeing...yet.
"Holy Incarnation" Principal Rockwell screamed, his eyes wide, saucer-like.
"Where did you get this?"
"I uhh, i-" Josh gulped.
"Doesn't matter. Young man I want to see you in my office ASAP". The principal yelled in the microphone right in Josh's ear, who was standing next to him.
"What are you all looking at?" He screamed at some ninth graders who hurried away as fast as they could, away from the principal's sharp tongue and even worse: detention. They whistled to themselves, sure of their next object of ridicule at lunch.
Josh found his way to the principal's office, a tear slipping away from his eye.
Meanwhile...
################
In class, Hunter was casting what he thought was discrete guesses at Ashley. He'd liked Ashley since she transferred schools to H.G Wells Junior/High school.
Ashley was white, had enchanting blue eyes and shoulder length blonde hair which she curled.
Ahh....
If I could just bask in her heavenly presence, he thought.
Why is it that she never glances my way? Hunter sighed, frustrated. What do I even feel this way? What is this?
All his questions went unanswered as his mind was blank.
Mr. Bryant cleared his throat. "Ahem, Hunter, if you're done looking at Miss Ashley over there, can you answer the question on the board.
Hunter turned bright red and kept his face straight so Ashley who was seating at his side wouldn't see.
Unfortunately she already had.
This is not just my day.... Hunter thought