Calipatria

Calipatria Part 2

Chapter 2

I quietly closed the door behind me as I made my way out of the house. I grabbed the sleeves of my school jumper with my fingertips, trying to cover as much of my body as I could; it was cold this morning. I supposed I could hardly call what I was wearing a jumper, it was more like a woolen vest with scratchy sleeves.

The closer I got to school, the more people I saw wearing the same uniform. I seemed to be one of very few people walking alone, and most people had smiles on their faces. Some younger kids passed by me at a run, giggling and squealing delightedly as they did so. My eyes narrowed against my will. I wasn't sure what annoyed me about them. Was it their resistance to the cold perhaps? Maybe that they had someone to share the day with? Regardless, I was jealous of some people several years my junior, and just made my mood worse.

As I rounded the corner that approached the school gates, I let out a low whistle, and my eyes widened a little. Even above the several metre-high wall, I could see just how gigantic and modern the building looked. It seemed to be at least 3 stories high, and there was a wire fence around the roof; maybe students were allowed up there.

I knew nothing about the school. Its construction had only started a year before I had left town, and no 10-year-old cared for specifics other than "they're building a new school". In the last few weeks, nothing had been discussed with me. "You're going to this school." "You're doing these classes." "This is how to get there." I had shrugged everything off with a simple "yes mum", and then done my best to keep out of the house.

As I entered the gates, I made more of an effort to look at people. Finding Lyssa on the way to school seemed unlikely, but now that I was within the school bounds, I figured my chances must have gone up. Alas, the first floor of the building seemed to be completely packed with younger students, year 7 and 8s almost exclusively.

I had been told that my home room would be on the third floor. I still had 15 minutes before I had to be there, but I recognized that I had nothing better to do. The stairs were conveniently in the middle of the building.

Two wide staircases were either side of the male and female bathrooms. The two staircases faced north, and joined up after 10 stairs. I guessed that this was either behind the bathroom, or just high enough to create a low ceiling. The now joined stairs then went south, leading to the second floor. As I made my way up the stairs, I realized that the pattern repeated itself from the 2nd to 3rd floor, although rather than joining over or behind a  bathroom, the stairs joined over the stairs leading down from the second floor to the first. It reminded me of DNA.

On the third floor, I started looking at the door numbers. To either side of the stairs there was a corridor, each with 2 rooms on either side. That meant there were 8 rooms on the floor. Everyone up here looked like an older student, no longer children running around and screaming, but mature, almost adult, people discussing their studies.

As I checked a door, I heard a woman clear her throat behind me. I quickly turned around to see a student with glasses and a red patch on her blue vest glaring at me.

"Who are you?" She asked bluntly, seemingly scrutinizing me with her pointed gaze. "Are you new? I don't recall seeing you before." Her eyes seemed magnified by her glasses. I decided to call her 'Goggles.'

"Yeah I am. My name's Chris. I'm in year 11." I felt uncomfortable under her staring.

"Year 11s are over the other side. Year 12s are this side." Goggles pointed to the other side of the stairs. "What do you mean you are new? I wasn't notified of any new students." This woman spoke very quickly. She made it seem like every moment she stood talking to me was a moment wasted.

"I don't recall coming here before. I'm pretty sure that makes me new." I said slowly. So far I had talked to two people from this school, and both of them seemed rather full of themselves.

"I must bring it up at the next meeting. Very well. You may go." Goggles dismissed me, pulling a notebook and pen from god knows where and scribbling into it immediately. I opened and closed my mouth a few times, before beginning to walk to the other side of the corridor.

"Hey, Chris." I turned to see that a guy had been standing behind Goggles. He gave me a thumbs up. "Welcome to Edgewater." He pointed to Goggles from behind her back, and shrugged his shoulders and gave an apologetic look. I shrugged back and nodded once in thanks.

I started checking the door numbers in the year 11 area. My room was the 3rd one I checked, room 307. Feeling slightly more comfortable now that I had found my room safely, I pressed my back against the row of lockers next to the room and let my eyes close for a moment.

I flinched hard as I felt two claw like grips on my shoulders, and my eyes flew open. I almost instinctively pushed away, but I realized it was a girl. Her eyes were staring right at mine, her dark blue hair framing her face as she looked at me with shock.

"Chris?" Her voice was only a whisper, but her fingers digging into my shoulders must have been threatening to draw blood.

I stared at her for a few moments. Surprisingly, it wasn't her hair that seemed the most like her, no. It was her eyes. "Sup Morgan?" I tried to keep my voice cool, but inside I was bursting with joy.

"Don't 'sup Morgan' me!" Her eyes quickly narrowed, and the pain in my shoulders grew far more intense. "You can't just ditch me for six years and come back all 'haha wassup? I'm such a cool guy.'" She lowered her voice and made it as dopey as she could, pretending to mimic me.

"You need some work on your impressions. I have never said I'm a cool guy." I raised my hands to hers to try and get her to stop ripping my shoulders apart. She seemed to notice, and dug her fingernails in impossibly harder.

"Do you really think you're in a position to be making jokes?" Morgan seethed.

"It wasn't really a joke." I muttered with a sly grin.

She squeezed hard one last time before letting go. "You're really ruining my reunion with my best friend." She pouted.

"You can't complain, do you know how hard it is to get blood out of a white business shirt?" I asked, trying to look at my shirt down the collar of my jumper.

"One, do you know how hard it is to get blood out of a shirt?" She asked candidly. Then she grew serious. "And two, are you seriously suggesting that I don't have a right to complain?" She asked in a strained voice.

I raised my arms in surrender. "You're right. I'm sorry, okay? It won't happen again." As I spoke, Morgan started to walk away from me. I wondered for a moment if she had just decided she was done talking to me, or if my apology had come across as somehow fake.

"You're damn right it isn't going to happen again." She muttered. A few steps further on, she stopped and turned around to face me. "Well come on." She beckoned. I blinked a few times.

"What?" I asked, still unmoving.

"You can put your bag in my locker until you get your own. If you're in 307, we must be in the same homeroom." She was looking at me expectantly as she stood in from of her now open locker.

I was in shock. Morgan and I had undoubtedly been best friends when I used to live here, but that was six years ago. Yet here she was, acting exactly as she had back then, as though no time had passed. As I forced myself to move and put my bag in her locker, I could feel the eyes of the other year 11 students burning a hole in the back of my head.