One Hour To get Home.

Mise Highschool

His body hit a solid object as he tried to continue moving. He realized it was a person. "I'm so sorry." Merrick hurried out the apology, wishing that human bodies came with zippers to step out of.

"It's okay. It happens all the time. Perks of being short." A smile drew across the dainty human looking up at him, two pig-tails crisply knotted together, made an air of innocence waft from them and sprinkle into the atmosphere. "Oh!" The person beamed, shooting up to their toes, a spring wire anchoring them higher. "Names!" They again exclaimed. "Mine is Riley Delphi, my pronouns are They/them, and you?" Riley's hands whipped faster than an eggbeater on maximum speed, their grin just as ginormous. "I am Merrick Lysander, and... uh my pronouns are He/Him." Merrick's smile was slit, his lips becoming a shelf for thousand-pound books.

A petite and clammy hand came up and clasped his shoulder. His eyes met Riley's, his brow arching in a question mark. "Was that the first time you admitted to being a cis-gendered man aloud?" A twinkle of mischief tumbled out of their eyes, and Merrick knew they were teasing him. "It's okay to be a straight cis-gendered man with me. I won't judge."

Their clasp on his arm slipped -off into a balled up-knuckle nudge.

"I'm not straight, I'm omnisexual." He told them quietly, their eyes widened. "Oh me, oh my, did I just assume. I think I just assumed. You know I am always getting mad at other people assuming things about me, and then, here I go and just do the same thing."

His chuckle fell out of his mouth, like a coffee balanced in a flimsy cardboard tray, splattering to the ground. "You have a nice laugh. We should be friends, and then I can tell people what a nice laugh my friend has. " Riley told him this so earnestly that he knew there could be no mistaking it for a joke. "I think that would be nice, Riley."

As the yellow monster rolled up to their stop, Merrick couldn't move his hand quick enough, his body fast enough to halt the idea that this, maybe wouldn't be terrible. Gosh, he wished he could take it back.

...

"And this is the cafeteria." Riley pointed to a humble-looking dining area, students hoovering food down their gullets. Others, talking a mile a minute or obnoxiously screaming.

"Oooh, those are the witches of Mise High School." Riley scouted out a cluster of girls, one with lengthy brown hair, a mini-skirt, and an equally short top, not that Merrick was judging.

His mother, whenever she was lucid, spoke of the importance of people born with female anatomy getting to choose what they did with their bodies.

The girl's hair swept to her lower back,

it seemed the strands kept coming, and coming woven into her hair to make them the lengthest locks he'd ever seen in real life, and not an animated Disney movie about a princess getting kidnapped.

Merrick spotted another girl with kinky curls that curled to meet her cheekbones, a bedazzled handbag slung across her shoulder. It sparkled so intensely he couldn't keep his sights on it for long without his eyes watering like a basin sink, left on and forgotten, and lastly, he could tell she was the queen bee. The one that one pink movie was made about, Mean-Mean...Gals? Oh, forgot about it.

The girl's hair was a rich chocolate brown, it reminded him similarly of of Eloise 's hair, but Eloise 's beauty was more natural, she didn't put much effort into it. This isn't to say Merrick was looking down upon people who put effort into self-care, but that also didn't mean he was sneering at people who didn't... Merrick thought all people should... Oh Merrick, just get off your soapbox already.

The point was the girl knew how to get people's attention and

how to enhance places on her visage she liked best.