"Every book you read in this class is written by a manic depressive man trying to find his way in this manic depressive world." So said Anna's new English teacher moments after she took her seat in the back row. Her teacher, Miss Crane was sat, near lounging, on her desk up front. She was a tall wispy woman dressed in long lacy black drapes. Her gray roots eventually turned black as her long wavy hair turned the bend around her ears, past her shoulders, and gathered in the loosest ponytail Anna had ever seen at the small of her back. Miss Crane looked at her right hand and watched as her long acrylic nails cascaded till they met into a single jagged point. "It's why I wouldn't blame you for not doing your assigned reading." She then threw out her hand into the body of students as if throwing glitter over them. "But so help me God if I find that you are using one of those online 'cheat books' to cut corners on your assignments I'll fail you so hard and so quick your grandchildren will be begging for extra credit! Life is pain! Life is depression! The sooner you children realize it, the sooner you accept it, the better off you'll be."
Anna couldn't see herself, but she could certainly feel the deep-set grin on her face and the tears she was desperately trying to hold back from laughter. She looked around and found her fellow students completely unfazed. The girls who came in talking were still talking, a boy next to her was texting someone under his desk and hadn't regarded Miss Crane for even a moment despite her threatening his grandchildren with failure, and the kid on the other side of Anna was already faced down on his desk sleeping.
Anna watched as Miss Crane slithered her strange narrow body off of the desk and wrote a few random words on the whiteboard behind her in black ink. It took Anna a little while, but she eventually caught on that they were discussing the book 'All Quiet on the Western Front.' At least they were until it somehow got twisted up into some sort of one-way discussion about how much of a misogynist Alfred Hitchcock was on the set of 'The Birds.' A couple of girls and at least one boy sat front and center, all similarly dressed in ratty black clothes as Miss Crane, looked to write down every single nonsensical word that fell out of her mouth as if it were gospel.
The bell rang simultaneously too soon and not soon enough. After navigating through the packed halls, Anna found her next class, Algebra, with not a moment to spare. She found another seat in the back and watched as a man in a crisp white button-up and khakis walked his way into the room with a measured smile. Below his cursive written name on the whiteboard, 'Mister Joe', the man wasted no time discussing the night's homework and picking up presumably where they had left off the day before. In contrast to Miss Crane, the man was like a bath of icy cold water. Every word he spoke was even-keeled and well projected towards the back of the room. He left little room for misinterpretation as he explained the formula's on the board and answered questions in turn. One boy made some sort of joke that Anna couldn't quite hear, and the room of her peers had a round of laughter. All except for Mister Joe who only smiled, waited for the room to settle down, and continued on. By the end of class, Anna was 98% positive the guy had to be some sort of robot. All straight back and no-nonsense, she was sure that if someone were to ask him to 'quantify love' his ears would start smoking and a spring would fly out of his neck.
Seeing now both ends of the crazy spectrum, Anna was curious where this 'Mr. McCoy' guy would end up in U.S. history. His room at least was cozier than the others. Its bank of windows along one wall overlooked the school's concrete courtyard. The room itself had an eye-pleasing gold banner stretched along its upper corners and below hung a number of portraits and posters from history. She recognized a couple of posters sat side by side, one as Martin Luther King Jr, and another guy she was fairly sure was Malcolm X. Caty-cornered at the front was a ratty old-looking desk with a sickening green metal kick-panel front, and its weather-beaten dark wood surface was covered in little knick-knacks. A few of the little desk toys included a tiny model of a steam engine train, another was a tiny funky-looking American flag hanging out of a pencil cup, then a miniature wooden ship roughly the size of her thumb, and at the very edge of the desk was a small dusty looking football trophy.
All the seats in the back of the room were filled, so Anna picked the only empty spot she could find by one of the windows. She was just beginning to pick out a fresh notebook and pencil from her backpack when felt someone looking over her. She looked up and found herself looking into the face of a girl with the porcelain face of a doll, her thin lips drawn to a cutting line.
"You're in my seat," The girl crossed her arms over her chest and lifted her chin.
"Uh-" Anna looked around the room, her eyes flicking to the students casually chatting before dropping her eyes back on the girl. "None of the other classes have had assigned seating."
"Yeah, there is no 'assigned seating.'" The girl air quoted with her long flawless fingers. "But everyone has picked their seats and it's where we sit every day, and you're sitting in my seat. So-" She waved her hand once as if flicking away a fly.
"Well," Anna straightened up in her seat. "Since - you just admitted there are no assigned seats - and I got here first, looks like this isn't your seat anymore. So why don't you-" Anna mimicked the other girl's hand flick, her eyes drawn to slits.
The features of the girl's face tightened. "What's your name, new girl?"
"'The chick who sits where she wants.' And if you don't mind, I'd like to live up to my name's sake." Anna bent back down to pull a notebook out of her school supplies when her backpack was suddenly and viciously kicked out of her reach and across the room. She blinked and saw a tiny foot with long pale blue socks connected to the girl standing above her. The girl righted herself, crossed her arms again, and said nothing as she stared Anna down from above.
Anna rose to meet her. "The hell is you're problem, bitch?"
"I already told you my problem! Now get out of my seat." The girl hissed through clenched teeth.
"I was here first! You can go find a different seat and get the hell out of my-"
"Ladies!" A man's voice boomed from across the room. It wasn't a yell, but a sort of natural baritone that had the resonance to shake walls. Anna looked and saw a man who was built like a brick house walking through the doorway. Standing well over 6 feet tall, he was hairless aside from a tastefully trimmed goatee. His skin was a dark chocolate and his soft blue eyes stood out in deep contrast. A red polo strained against the muscles underneath his shirt and biceps. "Ladies, please!" His arms were held out at his side and he wore a defusing smile. "There is no need for all this shouting and fighting." He held his arms on his hips. "What seems to be the issue here?"
The girl wasted no time turning to face the man, her pretty long hair whipping Anna's face. "Mister McCoy, this new girl forcibly took my seat from me and called me the 'B' word!"
"Forcibly?" Anna said under her breath, then suddenly became aware of all the eyes on the pair of them. Every inch of the room was filled with students, and no ounce of attention was spared from the situation at hand. She felt all the air leave her lungs so quickly that she wondered if she was going to throw up her lungs along with it.
"Forcibly?" The man looked past the girl and at Anna. Apparently, something on Anna's face caused the man to grimace. He was about to open his mouth to speak when he paused, glanced at his desk, then looked back at the girl. "Is that right, Taryn? Well, under no circumstance would I condone any sort of violence in my classroom." He let the words hang in the air as he walked toward his desk.
"Right?" The girl swung her backpack in her hands as she gestured. "So, she should get sent to the Principle's office or something then!"
The man knelt down at the foot of his desk and picked up Anna's black backpack by its nylon handle, a couple of notebooks split out the side like gushing blood from some gaping wound. "And I take this backpack with-" he paused, examining the side of the pack. "What I believe is the Anarchy symbol carved into it with silver Sharpe, is yours?"
The girl looked at the bag, and for the first time since Anna met her, the girl zipped her mouth shut as she clenched her bag at her side.
"Right." The man said as he collected the remainder of the split contents and gently pushed them back into Anna's bag. "I'm going to give this bag to you. Then you're going to give it to that girl and apologize. After that, I'd like you to take the extra seat near the front next to the door." He held the backpack towards her.
She plucked it out of his hand with two fingers - like it was a dirty diaper - and craned it towards Anna. Anna then heard her mumble the most venomous and cold-hearted 'sorry' she had ever heard in her life as the bag was dropped in her awaiting palm. The girl then stalked off towards the open chair, avoiding eye contact with everyone, and plopped in the seat with her arms crossed.
Anna looked back up at the man who smiled down at her, then nodded, turned, and walked back towards the whiteboard. "Alright class, chapter 24 in your textbooks. Today we start the American Civil War!"
***
Lunch couldn't come fast enough. Sure there was no Jess to sit with and it was crappy school cafeteria food, but at least it was a break from the hackneyed academia of High School. Thankfully it seemed the lunchtime routine was relatively the same, even all the way across the country. Line up, get some slop, and find a place to enjoy your slop for the 20 minutes allotted to you to eat it. It seemed too, like her old school, there wasn't really a hard set rule where you could and couldn't eat either as long as you got to class on time. So she scoped out a nice shady corner near the library to eat her muck in silence when she heard halfway across the courtyard -
"Anna! Hey, Anna!"
She held up her hand against the bright sunlight and spotted - who else - but blue boy Kurt waving her down from under the shade of an umbrellaed table in the middle of the square. Next to him was - who else - but Evan with his face concealed by a laptop. Across from him, in her bright pink top, was none other than Kitty whose nose was so close to her phone she could have been dialing someone with it.
Anna was half tempted to pretend not to have noticed Kurt's call, but so many other people in the courtyard were already looking, it would have been too obvious she was ignoring him, so she walked towards the table.
Kitty only noticed Anna when she was within arm's reach. "Oh - hey!" Kitty lowered her phone but didn't put it down. "How's it doing? Oh my god, girl, you look like you've been through a wind tunnel with that hair. But I guess its a windy day but it's not too windy, though it is humid, so you know my hair is frizzing, but it's not too bad though I can't do wind which is why I have to live the hair tie life-" Anna already felt her ears and eyes glaze over looking at Kitty's mouth flapping in front of her. It was a tug at her sleeve from Kurt that brought her back to earth.
"Come, sit!" He gestured to the open bench in front of him. She didn't argue as she set down her tray and slumped her heavy pack off her shoulders. "How's your first day been so far?" He asked, the gentle lilt of his German accent licking at the peaks and valleys of his words.
"Long." Anna unspooled her plastic utensils from their flimsy napkin and poked the calcified brown mass of refried beans on her tray with the fork. "Bayville's got a real cast of characters."
"You had Mister McCoy before this, yeah?"
"Yep." She brought a small sample of the bean goo to her nose, sniffed it, and set it back down on her tray.
"Well? He's cool right?"
"He's fine. I mean, dude loves his history I guess." She rubbed her forehead with the back of her gloved hand. "I don't know, I kinda had a hard time paying attention. There was this class 'A' bitch in that class that kicked my bag and kept mean mugging me the whole time."
"Kicked your bag?"
"Oh my god let me guess." Kitty put down her phone and pushed her fingers together. "Taryn Smith?"
Anna shrugged. "I guess." She paused. "Yeah, I think he said her name was 'Teran' or 'Turian' or whatever you said."
"Ohhhh.' Kitty held her hands at her side. "Say no more! She's a super 'C' word!"
"'C' word?" Anna quoted. "Why don't you just say cunt?"
"I mean," The corners of Kitty's eyes wrinkled. "I don't like the sound of that word. But it is absolutely what Taryn Smith is. She's the Captain of the cheer squad and sucks up to every teacher to get them on her side."
"Didn't seem to work on McCoy. Dude seemed to see right through her bullshit after she kicked my bag."
"Like I said," Kurt added. "Quality dude."
"I can't complain. Never had a teacher actually stand up for me before." She picked at the edges of her rock-hard burrito. "Normally that kinda crap goes the other way around for me."
"I know what you mean." Kurt pushed his own tray, which had been picked clean, to the side and rested his elbows on the bench's hardwood top.
Anna looked at him, then over at Evan who had his face hadn't emerged from his computer. She looked at him a while, then over at Kitty who had her eyes glued on her own screen. "Do I need to ask where the King and Queen are?"
"Jean usually has some club or meeting," Kitty said from beyond her phone. From the little beeps and boops, it sounded like she was playing some sort of game. "Who knows with Scott."
"I know he has the same lunch as us," Kurt answered the unasked question. "We all do, but I think he goes off campus or something."
"Do these two just avoid us, or what?" Anna looked between Kitty and Kurt.
"Jean is really cool, but she is just busy all the time." Kurt rubbed the skin under this heavy-looking watch. "Scott… I think he just likes his alone time. Like, we are on top of each other a lot at home."
"Are we? Because the only time I see Mister Sunshine is during dinner, and even then he dips out as soon as he can."
"Count yourself lucky," Kitty mumbled. "We have to deal with him during drills."
"But," Anna leaned over the table and racked the space between her eyes with her thumbnail. "I'm not the only one that thinks he's a prick, right?"
"Ugh, he's just - like -" Kitty set down her phone. "He can be cool, but then sometimes he gets - like - all in his head or whatever, then he's super duper annoying."
Anna looked at Kurt who seemed to wither under her gaze. He shrugged with his hands. "I think he's got a lot going on. Like all of us do."
Anna then turned toward Evan. "How about you? You got an opinion on any of this?"
Evan didn't answer immediately. He tilted his head forward and then looked at her from over his laptop screen. "I don't know - he's loud sometimes, I guess."
"Yeah, speaking of loud." Anna looked at Kitty who was already back at her phone. "You were freaking icy this morning."
Kitty made more blips behind her screen. "Was I?"
"Yeah, normally you have a hard time shutting up, but this morning you'd hardly look at any of us."
"Oh." Kitty poked at her phone hard enough that it jiggled in her hand. "I didn't have my coffee yet."
"You need coffee?"
"Uh, duh." She lowered her phone. "When I would wake up in the morning back home I would start the coffee maker and get it going while I got ready for school, or my weekend, or my holiday, or whatever. I made it my routine or my ritual, or maybe a mixture of both. So anyway, moving over here, well - we have a coffee maker - but it's weird so I don't know how to use it and I don't know how to ask. Because, who would I ask right? Like, Xavier might be up in the morning, but I don't know. Then Storm is usually out watering her garden, and Logan is a caveman who has never seen an electrical socket plus he would totally tell me something like 'I don't know, figure it out, squirt.' Or something just as stupid. And later in the day, I don't remember because I'm not thinking of coffee because usually, I've already had my cup -"
Anna waved her hands. "Okay! Okay, got it. You need your coffee."
Kitty's mouth drew to a wide line, like a frog. "Yep." She then ducked her head back behind her phone.
Anna looked back at Kurt who was fiddling with his watch. "Hey, uh, I didn't get a chance to thank you earlier, but thanks for showing me around."
He looked back at her and gave her a thumbs up. "Yeah, for sure! This place is weird. I know it would have taken me forever to get around if Evan didn't help me out."
"Yeah." Anna looked at Evan, who was already back behind his computer, then back to Kurt. She noticed even Kurt gave Evan a subtle look and his ever-present smile faded ever so slightly. "Listen-" He said, his voice a little lower than normal. He looked down, puckered his lips, and relaxed his face before looking back up at her. "I know it may not always seem like it, but we are all family. It's just… we're all still really new, you know? Everything will click, I know it will."
Anna felt a hint of a smile crack her lip.