Time Change (bxb)

One

Time P.O.V

School is, for sure, the last place that anyone would want to be. Most teens only attend because they are forced to by parents who do not wish to spend time in prison for their children's absence. That is why a lot of teens in today's school system feel as though the place is its own form of hell. This place is obviously a curse placed upon the newest generation to kill hundreds of pre-pubescent children and teenagers by trapping them in one building in small rooms for multiple hours on end. I never said school was a good thing, and I don't think I ever will in the future.

I personally hate school.

Which is why, sitting in Algebra II, I am seriously considering skipping school for the rest of my high school life. At this point, I am no longer learning anything that I will take with me to the next stage of my life. It doesn't help that everyone in the classroom is, without better words, ignorant. The teacher is asleep against the board, his head slowly slipping the longer he used the board as his pillow. The rest of the class was quietly using their personal devices or whispering with each other softly in order to not wake our teacher back up. Unlike my classmates, I was sitting at my desk quietly, thinking about waking our teacher up, but his dream kept throwing me off guard.

'Oh, the bunnies, jumping little bunnies, soon they will grow their beautiful wings. They'll grow if you know mx+b, and you'll ride the slope to the wing shop and buy yourself cotton candy wings~.'

Every so often, I would feel a strong sense of concern for the sanity of my mathematics teacher. Not only is did he decide he wanted to teach children math, but he also has dreams that overall make me question more than his intelligence. I mean, he's dreaming about bunnies growing wings flavored like cotton candy mixed with hints of Algebra I. I think I'm more concerned because dreams involving bunnies are typically the dreams of a child, not a thirty-or-so-year-old man who has all but given up hope on life.

At this point, it was making me want to give up on life because what this man was going through, could be me in maybe twenty years.

Of course, I knew why my teacher was dreaming about that specific animal, but it was still kind of weird. He was a bunny shifter, you know, a human who can turn into an animal, in this case, a bunny, although dreams aren't explicitly based on one's ability to shift into an animal or not. It still made my teacher look beyond crazy or humorous without better words.

'You're majesty! We must escort the pregnant bunnies and the overlord of carrots out of the city; we can't lose this war, it is an alliance we can't sacrifice!' I would have laughed at his crazy dream, but I would get weird looks from everyone else in this classroom. Not only was I sitting alone, but I was also the only person who was overhearing our teacher's dream. I've learned with experience that it was better to keep what I overhear to myself. Laughing at what anyone would have found funny would only get me weird looks that made me seem crazy. I was more than used to the whispered comments about me. I would have to be oblivious to not notice. They think they are sly about it, but they really aren't.

It is bad when I can figure they are talking about me when the nicknames, 'the weird kid in the front' 'the creepy kid' or something close to those, are muttered.

There was a reason that I never tried to make friends with the kids in this school. If anything, in the past, I tried too hard to make friends, but that blew up in my face when the labeling of the weird kid formed. I didn't always attend this school, nor did I always think I was weird. It all started back when I was six years old. When my peacefully normal life, all but fell apart.

When I was six, I heard someone else's thoughts in my head for the very first time. It had been my mothers, and it had involved a word that I didn't know.

I had asked about that. Little six year old me had gone to my mother after an argument between my parents finished, resulting in my father storming out of the house. She had been slumped on the couch, her face in her palms looking defeated, tears threatening to fall, but when she noticed me standing there, in my little overalls, she seemed to hold them back.

My eyes had dropped to the little wooden toy elephant grasped tightly in my smaller hands. It had been a toy that my father had gotten me. Most boys my age had gotten little cars or trucks, but I never received the typical gender assigned toys. My father had been big on the gender-neutral toys and seemed quite proud when I never asked for any toys that seemed too-boyish by his standards.

When I was six, the mere thought of my parent's marriage falling apart wasn't something that I pondered. They had argued a bit, but I never thought it would tear them apart. Dad had wanted another child, and after a couple of years of trying, mom seemed unable to conceive another child. Who would have thought not having children would be enough to break a family apart. It made the sparks that they created falling in love, dim into nothing.

'is the divorce going to work out for the better?'

That had been the first sentence I ever heard in my head. I didn't know what divorce was or what it meant. I don't think any six-year-old should have to know what that means, but that innocence had been ruined for me by the voices I didn't understand.

"Mommy?" I had asked her, getting her full attention. Being a naive child, I didn't know that I shouldn't know what that word meant. Up to that point, they tried to hide the arguments and all the paperwork and were quite successful. "What does divorce mean?" I wish I never asked, because mom immediately stepped off the couch and pulled me into her arms, running her shaky fingers through my hair.

"Where . . . where did you hear that baby?" Mom had asked, baffled by me knowing the word. They never said it out loud, at least, I couldn't remember them actually saving the word.

I didn't answer her question, nor did she answer mine. We stayed in a comfortable silence until she got up to make what would be one of our last meals together as a family.

After the divorce happened, custody became the next issue. By that point, my parents all but resented each other. They would miss pick-up days, and it got to the point that neither one of them seemed to want to take care of me. We didn't have any other family, so I was put into the foster system, something they both agreed on. Although, thinking back on it, my father had seemed hesitant to sign. My mother, on the other hand, did not.

I stayed at a group home for a couple of months before a young couple took me in, something I think started out as a temporary thing became a permanent one. I've been with them ever since, and the house has only gotten fuller.

Since then, though, I've gotten used to it. The voices in my head that belonged to others. I know I'm not imagining them, and I can't tune them out. They stuck to me like a migraine that never goes away.

I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be happy when the bell rang or saddened. My teacher snapped awake, looking around in shock. My peers jumped up, retreating before the teacher could question us. I followed their suit; only I took a more civil amount of time to do so. It wasn't as if I was going to be late.

I'm never late. It is something I take pride in. It was because I didn't have anyone to go to after classes, no one to socialize with, so I'd go to the next class immediately. I just liked being on time; I just think it is super rude to be late, especially if they are doing you a favor.

This was going to be one of the rare times I didn't immediately go to class because someone was going to do me a favor.