The Quiet Type (Josh Dun)

Chapter 1

I stepped away from the wall, examining what I had just painted onto it. I slid the now nearly empty spray paint can into my coat pocket and decided that I was satisfied with my work. I knew that I needed to be heading home if I had any hope of staying awake at school for more than a few minutes at a time. The word 'LIBERATE' stared back at me as I gathered my things. The word itself was a soft periwinkle color that was surrounded by flowers, greenery, and birds in flight. It was a bit cliché compared to my usual stuff, but after the night I had, I didn't really care about that sort of thing.

I hurried out of the vacant apartment building, making sure that no one saw me as I slung my backpack over my shoulder before stepping out. As much as I just wanted to take my time making my way home, I knew that the longer I stayed out, the worse it might be for me at home.

I was glad to see that everyone was asleep when I arrived. I made sure to be as quite as possible, but my efforts were made useless when I stepped on something that had clearly already been broken. I held my breath as I stood motionless in the darkness of the hallway, listening for any sign that I had woken anyone up.

I let out a silent breath of relief and made sure that my parent's bedroom door was shut before I turned on the light. I went to find a broom to clean up the broken plate I could now see. As soon as that was done I went straight to my room to change and crawled in bed. In the dim light provided by the moon I could see that splotches of pastel paint littered my arms, they were a strange contrast to my dark bruises. It was almost amusing; it was like a visual representation of the life I tried to live and the one that was thrown at me. Strange colors that didn't belong together. I sighed as I rolled over, probably only staining my sheets further from previous night's just like this one.

The next morning, I was glad that I woke up to only my alarm clock, it meant that I was alone. I rolled out bed and headed straight for the shower, quickly cleaning the paint off of my skin and out of my brassy blonde hair as best as I could. After that was taken care of and I was all dry, I grabbed a black shirt that didn't have too many holes in it and a pair of faded jeans before grabbing my jacket as I ran out the door.

"Cady! Get over here!" My best friend Ronnie called while waving at me as I approached our high school.

I dashed over to her asking, "What's up?"

"You just missed it! Louis just got expelled for fighting!" She gushed like it was possibly the worst and biggest news she had ever heard.

I rose an eyebrow and gave her a wry grin, "Seriously? Again?"

"I know, right? I told him to just lay off the kid, but no he has to have the last word and apparently what he wanted to say involved punching them in the face." She tells me with a shake of her head.

"I don't even know why you're still dating him."

Before she could respond we were being yelled at.

"Ronda Stiner! Cadence Riggs! The late bell is about to ring, get inside and go to class!" Our principle shouts from the front door.

Ronnie and I both send each other looks of annoyance as we make our way inside. The halls were nearly empty so making it to our first period was easy and even though we weren't late, our algebra teacher, Mrs. Harrison, didn't spare us from her glaring. We took our assigned seats, both in front at opposite sides of the room. It wasn't like I got into a lot of trouble, just hanging around Ronnie's other friends made me look bad.

I was moved out of my thoughts when Mrs. Harrison placed the test we had taken last week on my desk with a murmur of, "Well done."

There was a red hundred circled in the top corner of the paper. It didn't surprise me in the least, so I simply tucked it into my book with a bunch of other things I had crammed between the pages. Mrs. Harrison quickly finished passing back the tests and got up to the whiteboard right as the door cracked open to reveal another one of my classmates that clearly knew they were late.