Project Nebula

Remembrance: I

~Xander Belmont~
December 14, 2012

    Impatience grew when I realized it was only eleven in the morning. The papers weren’t done copying and I already had to leave for lunch period. Now Chance would be surrounded by rascals trying to pick on him. I dug in my bookbag for my pad of sticky notes. I wrote out a note and stuck one on the copier: Sorry, I was called to see the counselor. But here are the copies.

The lunch room wasn’t totally packed, only a few classes that barely covered the whole grade.

    “Xander, sit over here, today!” I heard Chance call. 

A call from Chance sounds like talking while talking from him sounds like whispering. His tray was covered in every side dish they served. Personally, he wasn’t on the verge of becoming starving skeleton to me. Our table was circular, like the rest of them, but we pushed ours next to the wall with a window to outdoors, after school. It was the only place Chance could talk openly to me. The corner of his mouth curled up and he hid it with his oversized sleeve.

    “The president helped me get my bookbag out my locker,” he said. “The strap was stuck.”

I scoffed and folded my arms. “You could’ve asked me. It’s always about them.”

    “Sorry—.”

    “No, it’s fine. They help me from time to time.”

    “Um… Xander, I’m gonna put my head down.”

    “Why?”

Unnerving. It was just the worst human being with a charcoal heart: Peirson. That smirk he always made to cover how disgusted he was by lowlives and mutants. At his side, he clutched a flattened bookbag by its strap. Some rando’s. Peirson only has his handmade by his mom’s company. Yet I didn’t know what he needed from me. He cackled. “You always look so mortified when I come over here.”

I turned my entire body to him and grunted. “What?”

He took a seat next to me. “Remember the presentation we did for Social Studies? They gave me an applause, remember?”

    “You mean ‘us’? I did all the work and you were just for show.”

    “I said ‘us’!”

    “No you didn’t! But I wouldn’t be surprised if I couldn’t hear from all the background voices. Tell him, Chance.”

Chance jumped awake from his minute-long nightmare and croaked. “What?”

Peirson stood up and combed through his coal-colored hair. The flat bookbag slowly depressed on the table in front of me. He grabbed Chance’s tray and strutted for his “superior” table. “Ciao!” He waved back.

Rubbing his eyes, Chance pulled the bookbag in front of him. It had a note on it: Thanks for apologizing, but I wanted the copies in color. Underneath was another: Black and white doesn’t get students’ attention. And another: When we finally becomes presidents of the council, I’ll teach you.

And I kept them.

Another kid I recognized tripped over a few seats and bruised apples racing to our table. A mop for hair and eyeliner? No, it was just his eyes. To top it all off, Helix screamed nonsense from a table a sea and a forest away. I only knew this kid by one name: Starboy. He heaved with his hands on his knees. Patting down his dirtied jacket, he noticed the bookbag.

“Did you see Ralston over here?” he shivered every time he spoke and rubbed his hands together like lathering soap. “H-He st—”

“—Stole his bookbag, ” Helix darted behind him and shoved his to the floor. “Starboy, get it back!”

I didn’t know what to do besides take mental notes of what they did. He seemed like someone who’d apologize to a burglar for not surrendering the house keys. Eventually, after the yelling silenced, I tossed the bookbag on the floor. Starboy hugged it against his belly and stomped on Helix’s foot. But he yanked his forward by the collar and launched him back into the tiles. Head first. His tears made a tiny puddle on the floor and he sighed, “Okay.”

Chance was sleeping, so I didn’t know what was right. Or what was wrong. In the end, it’s not my fault.