Chapter 1
It was hot. Hot as hell. Fuck, it felt like we’re taking a trip to Satan’s asshole. I was sweaty. I. Hate. Sweating. So I’m irritated.
“Listen up!” yelled my science professor, Ms.Baldwin. She was a tall and scrawny little thing with a lot of big teeth that give her a lisp like no other. “We are going to neatly file out of the bus into two lines. One line will go to the lab with me and the other to the auditorium with Professor Cladin.”
Sweaty bodies clamored off the bus in chaos, grouping up into cliques. Friends called each other over, cheering when another person joined. Then there’s me, looking around while awkwardly standing in one of the two lines.
I’ve a pretty hard time making friends. Being openly mentally ill in a school full of people that hide their imperfections will do that to you. I only have one person that actually wants to converse with me at school. Well, two if you count my lab partner, Jason. He’s an entirely different discussion that we can get to later. For now we’ll focus on Micah, a boy too sweet to me for his own good.
“Rose!” I heard his slightly squeaky voice call, “Over here!”
I scan for the blue haired boy, my eyes finally landing on him as he was the first in line to go to the lab. I begin to walk over to him, cautiously moving through the swarm of sweaty bodies. I am almost there when I run into the bane of my existence, Ms. Chelsea Cameroon. She’s just as goofy looking as her last name, but everyone here thinks she’s hot shit. The bitch annoys me, like I don’t get mad, she just makes me want to drive a piece of rebar through my skull.
“Ew this freak just pushed me!” She yelled in her ever so grating voice. “I hope I don’t catch a disease. Oh crap, I just called you a mean name, I hope you don’t kill yourself.”
The sarcastic remark barely registered in head anymore. I’ve heard it all before. But what irked me the most was the crowd’s reaction, a mixture of laughter and discomfort.
“MS.CAMEROON” screeched our professor “Leave the poor girl alone, she did nothing to you.”
Somehow her statement didn’t make me feel any better. “Poor Girl” just doesn’t sit right with me.
I continued walking to Micah in an effort to escape the gaze of everyone around me. When I reached him, he gave me a hug.
“Don’t worry about her, she’s just miserable with her own life and that terrible last name.”
I gave him a small smile, appreciating his effort to make me feel better. He was one of the few people in the school who saw me not my mental illness and he treats me like I deserve to get better not like I’m lucky to be getting better. Trust me, there’s a big difference.
We bonded over having literally everything in common, late-night conversations about science fiction and conspiracy theories. Micah is my rock during school, truly.
He started ranting about how he saw a Simpson’s episode that took place in a building like the one we were set to enter and that it ended up blowing up and giving people superpowers. I soon tuned out his ranting because leaning against the bus to my left was none other than Jason Chandler, smoking what looked like a blunt. I turned my attention to the professors in front of me.
Is no one seeing this?
I go to look at him again to make sure I’m not tripping and he actually gestures it to me as if asking if I wanted to hit. Look, I am very much 420 friendly. Smoking at a school trip is just wild. I shake my head no as Professor Baldwin started to lead us inside the building.
The second we walk in everyone including our professor audibly sighs from the welcomed coolness of the building. It’s just too damn hot outside.
The entire building is just too big for us all to explore so they split us up again, not allowing people to choose their own partners.
“As long as I’m not in a group with that freak, I’ll be fine” Chelsea not-so-quietly told her friends. I silently agreed, she makes my ass itch.
Unfortunately for the both of us Professor Baldwin wanted us to “find a way to get along” and paired us together. We each got to choose on other person for our group. I chose Micah, of course, and she chose Jason. The way Chelsea is obsessed with him should be illegal. She follows him like a lost puppy every chance she gets so it’s not surprising she chose him. There was an odd number of people with us so we got stuck with a fifth person. The one person on this earth that actually makes me want to kill myself.
Fucking Alex Jenkins.
“We always end up in a group together,” he starts while checking me out. “It must be the universe telling us to get back together.”
“No, I’m pretty sure it’s the universe punishing me for laughing at a kid tripping and falling on concrete this morning.” I say in the most monotone voice I can muster. I turn a complete 180 to walk up to Micah when I catch Jason watching me with a slight smirk on his face.
Huh. Must of been funny.
I link arms with Micah and immediately start heading towards our professor as she walked towards another set of double-doors labeled “Laboratory One.”
