Won’t Go Wrong a Second Time

The lights of the sirens barely filter through the dirty and broken windows, the echoing voices of the adults arrive muffled by the thick walls of the cubicle. The former supervisor's office of this dilapidated abandoned warehouse is the furthest point from the entrance, and the place the cops will reach later.

Tied to a rusty chair, I am forced by some ties to look straight ahead. On the other side of the room, directly across from mine, is another chair, to which my best and only childhood friend, Anne, is attached. A smile is stuck on her sweet face, a smile that hurts more than a bullet to the heart. Tears, in fact, line her dusty cheeks, and the smell of her blood, which comes out copiously from a single lethal stab wound, almost dominates that of the mold. Ann is dead. After two days of sadistic torture and bad meals, that bastard killed her in front of my eyes. Then he escaped, where the police, according to him, will never be able to find him. He ran away, leaving me there, alone, to watch the light of the only eyes that ever smiled at me slowly fade away. "Everything will be fine, you'll see that everything will be fine" were his last words, a vain attempt to reassure me followed by a painful and bloody "I love you".

Why did I try to be happy? I knew full well that happiness wasn't meant for people like me, yet I decided to give it a try anyway. I deserved it. I did, I deserved it, but Anne had every right in the world to go on living. Go explain that to a sociopathic alcoholic dumped by his lifelong love. Yes, that's right, all this happened because any forty-year-old unemployed man decided to take revenge for his love failure on the first unsuspecting couple that happened to come within range. Couple who, as it happened, were us. Someone knocks hard, shouting something I don't understand, then the old door falls under the kicks of a policeman.

I open my eyes and sit up on the bed. The sound of the alarm clock fills the classical bedroom of the apartment that my old father bought me on Academy Island. I roll out of bed looking at the bare walls of the room that someone else would have already plastered with posters and sleepily stumble towards the bathroom. "Good morning honey", I joke in front of my reflection in the mirror.

Today is the opening ceremony, so it's best to show up a little early. At 07:30 I close the apartment door and take the lift, heading for a ceremony that would begin at least an hour later.

Being on a giant man-made island never crosses my mind, even by accident, and the giant streets that wind through the tall apartment buildings, shops, and arcades remind me uncomfortably vividly of my hometown.

Arriving at the Academy, the only school on the island, I walked through the massive gate and into the school's gigantic front yard, as big as more or less five football fields. At the center of this modest garden stands an equally modest circular fountain about three meters high and five meters wide. In front of it, hanging from a long wooden bulletin board, there are all the lists of the various classes, as they mix every year. On the left there is an area dedicated to the first year classes and, as some groups of students slowly begin to cross the threshold of the Academy themselves, I start looking for my name. 1A... No, 1B... Not even, 1C... Here it is, here is my fantastic name, Jack, followed by a surname that, over the years, I have learned to hate: Endrickson, or rather the surname of that half-scientist missed my father. Arranged in a circle around the fountain there are several benches, free for the moment; I sling unceremoniously on one of these and, once seated, I take out my phone and earphones. 07:58... There is still time before the ceremony. I put on the headphones, start the music and close my eyes.

I think it's time to start, willing or not I have to put up with at least this. I sigh, take off my earphones and get up, walking along the largest street in the courtyard, the one that leads to the school. As I walk, I thank the brilliant mind that had the idea of adding signs along the way with directions to the various school premises, since the last thing I feel like is asking someone for directions. I follow the signs for "Conference Hall" and reach a rather spartan building, on the facade of which there are two open iron doors decorated with a garland that reads "Welcome, freshmen!" It's inside.

The interior of the auditorium is as large as a university lecture hall, while the red tone that colors the seats suggests a theatre. I take my place in a more or less central row and check the time: 08:45. I put the phone back in my pocket and, satisfied with my accuracy, glance at the other students enter, some in a hurry, some more calmly, while the lights that illuminate the stalls dim until they go out completely.

All of a sudden a light illuminates the center of the stage, falling perfectly over a lady in her forties in front of a microphone. "Hello everyone, freshmen and not!", she begins. "Today a new adventure begins for many in the meanders of the Academy, the most prestigious school this world has ever known. This, in fact, is not just any school, but an academy located on the first artificial island ever developed by the man completely dedicated to boys and girls. However, not everyone can live here peacefully, given that only the best students will have the opportunity to stay here until they graduate". What I discover is the principal continues like this for about three quarters of an hour, then lets us all go to our lessons.

Perfect, as long as I perform well at school I will be able to live a peaceful life at least until the end of my studies. I reach my classroom at the end of the corridor on the second floor and open the door: although there are still ten minutes left before the first period begins, those who apparently are my classmates are almost all sitting at the desks they have chosen and I, who wanted the last row so much, find myself in the penultimate row next to the window, disappointed but not too much.

After a few minutes a gentleman as tall as a wardrobe and with shoulders as broad as a chest of drawers arrives and introduces himself as our manager and professor of motor sciences. His speech goes in one ear and out the other until he says "being today the first day, you will only have classes in the morning and you will be out at lunchtime. Also, since you still don't have the school uniform, today you will have two hours of motor sciences and one of explanation of the school rules".

Apparently, for reasons of convenience, the two hours of practice will be the last two, so the first day of school begins with the usual "no running in the corridors", "no fights or bad behavior" and so on.

After a torture that seemed much longer than it was, the ringing of the bell marks the end of the first hour, therefore, backpacks on our shoulders, we leave the classroom and go towards the gym, separate from the main building.

Contrary to expectations, the entrance hall of the building is not that big, and opens onto three different doors: the men's changing room, the women's changing room and the gym. Together with the others I head to the locker room, which consists of a long rectangular room, on the walls of which are placed enough lockers to allow almost four classes to work out together and a long bench wide enough to allow two people to sit back to back, which runs along the center of the room. To ensure the safety of students' textbooks and personal belongings during class, lockers can be locked, and the keys left with students until they leave the gym. I choose a locker at the back of the room, number 35, I quickly throw my backpack inside, close it and enter the gym.

The moment I walk through the door of the latter, I understand that the small size of the atrium is due to the exaggerated size of the gymnasium: four courts, two for basketball and two for volleyball, are arranged in two rows and make it a daunting task even get to the other side. It can be seen that this is the most prestigious school a student can hope to attend. The sound of the professor's whistle draws everyone's attention. "How many are we? Twenty-two? Perfect, ten of you will play basketball, twelve volleyball, all clear?" says the teacher, who, by the way, hasn't even bothered to let his name be known.

While ten volunteers, nine boys and one girl, make their way to the nearest basketball court, the other twelve, two boys including myself and ten girls, prepare to split into two teams. Who will be the captains? Anyone but me is fine. After a few minutes of debate, are chosen as captains Joe, the other boy, and Charlie who, judging by the looks that come from both males and females, was elected unanimously but without the consent of the directly concerned "Idol of the class". Paying a little more attention to her behavior, in fact, I notice that it is not difficult to give her this title: she is beautiful, nice, kind and doesn't take it too far. If it turns out that she's also an all-time high on tests, I have a hunch that she'll find more sticky notes than textbooks in her locker. After making odd or even, the two begin picking their own team members and I, as I predicted, am the last to be picked, and end up on Joe's team. "That's not fair, the other team has both boys!" protest one of the girls of team Charlie.

"Don't pay too much attention to it, also because that one seems rather anonymous as a boy, he could almost be a burden" replies another, pointing at me. I'm offended now, have a little more tact! Slightly hurt in my pride by the girl's words, I enter the field with all the desire to win and start the game by scoring an ACE.

"Well guys, come here all! It's almost the end of the second hour, so now we'll draw lots for two students who will put the used equipment back" the professor says at one point, interrupting both games. Well, 25 - 12 and 25-15 seem like not bad scores to me, I’m satisfied. Once all the students have gathered around him, the professor randomly picks two of us and, of course, one of them is me. And did you think? I should have expected a devastating bad luck after the good fortune of not being elected captain. I sigh, then I move away from the group of lucky guys and pick up the two balls. "Hey, you!" my fellow sufferer, Charlie, calls out to me, "What's your name? You haven't said a word the whole lesson."

"Jack Endrickson, nice to meet you" I reply. We spend the rest of the time in absolute silence, tidying up together but at the same time each doing something different.

After about twenty minutes, we finish putting all the various things in place and we both run towards our respective locker rooms anxious to go home.

Although the gap between us and the rest of the class wasn't that much, on my return I don't see a student going the same way as me. This morning was one thing, since I went out at an absurd time, but now it's time for lunch, some students will have to live in my area. And in fact, looking closely around me, I see only one student, following my same path. Ah, the cliché is going to kill me! The popular girl in class and the antisocial recluse are neighbors!? What an original find. I was joking, but actually Charlie takes my same curves and heads to my same building. Hoping it's at least on a different floor, I snap to prevent the door, opened by another condominium, from closing and I take the stairs to the seventh floor. I let out a low, frustrated breath when, having reached my floor, I find her in front of the door of apartment 41, coincidentally the apartment next to mine, 42. But what really? How I hate this kind of coincidence. I reach my apartment puffing and listlessly rummaging in my backpack to get the keys, without finding them. Impatiently, I go through all the pockets again, first with my hands, then with my eyes: "There aren't any keys" I state a little too loudly.