HOLY FUCK HOW DO I START THIS IM GONNA KMS
Mmmmmmmmmmmkay.
I walked to my new school with my head down, like always. Seriously though, the pavement is, like, super interesting. Would you know? Uhm nope. Why? Because you may have seen it before, but I don't think you spend quite as much time looking down as I do.
Just don't talk to anyone, Kellin. You can do this.
You know, I really enjoy my pep talks. It reminds me of how terrible I am at encouraging people.
I made it to the school without anything particularly interesting happening, although I did have to step over a stick. Like at least one and a half of them actually. Once inside, I found that I was rather early. I made my way to the front office to check in and receive my schedule.
"Hey darling what can I do for you?" I looked up to see a short asian girl behind the desk. She looked to be about my age and I wondered if she was doing like community service or something. I had already written the thing I had to respond to her on a piece of paper and I handed it to her. She looked at me like I was crazy insane, but I was used to it and didn't respond in any way to her questioning look. Nonetheless, she gave me my schedule and a terribly printed map of the school. It seemed pretty simple, though, just two squares stacked on top of each other so I figured it was safe to just discard the thing.
My first class was math, which was fine by me. I've always been good at math so I like it. It was a good start.
I got to class pretty early, the teacher wasn't in there yet, but their stuff was. There were also three other students in there, who all turned to look at me. "Hey, you look new," one of them started, and they all stood up. They looked perfectly friendly, but I still took a few steps back. They could hurt me, there was no teacher around but I still wasn't very scared. No one could hurt me as much as I got hurt at home anyways. So it was chill. "I'm Mike," the kid held out his hand and I actually managed not to flinch. His skin was tanned, but that wasn't surprising since it was just barely the end of summer. Still, though I was pale as fuck. "Mike Fuentes." Okay yeah he's Mexican for sure. No one with that last name isn't Mexican. He gave his own hand a little shake, urging me to take it. I did, made my grip as firm as I could manage, then pulled away quickly and took another step back.
I knocked into something warm, spun around quickly to apologize but was soon shoved into the wall. "Get outta my way, idiot," the person growled. For a moment I was quite taken aback. This kid looked a lot like Mike and I was so confused at the change in events. I wondered how Mike had gotten behind me but then I saw the way that he was looking at the guy. A harsh glare. They had to be brothers. That was an I-hate-you-but-you're-my-brother look.
"Back off, Vic," Mike said calmly, still a fire in his eyes. Vic chuckled a bit,
"Mkay Mike. Whatever you say." His voice was lazy, uninterrested. It was clear that he didn't give two frick fracks about Mike and his warning. He made his way over to a desk in the middle, shrugging his bright blue back pack off and flopping into his seat with a sigh. It occurred to me that he might not like math, like most high schoolers.
"You okay?" I blinked and looked at Mike and his other two friends. I shrugged and gave him a look that I hoped expressed how little the shove had affected me. I honestly didn't care much about school bullying anymore. I was pretty used to being pushed around. Mike smiled apologetically, "Vic can be a little feisty. Sorry about him. He'll warm up to you I swear. Come over here and sit with us," he offered. I nodded a bit uncertainly and followed him to the cluster of desks where he and his friends had their stuff. It looked like they had been studying. Mike dragged over another desk and a chair for me while his friends, Jaime and Tony introduced themselves. I was happy when they let me get away with just a small wave instead of a handshake.
They all took their seats, but I just kinda stood there awkwardly as they rapidly discussed their recent math test. Someone put their hands on my shoulders and roughly directed my body into the chair Mike had brought over for me. "Take a seat loser you look like a lost puppy." I recognized Vic's voice. Mike gave him a glare,
"Hands off, Vic. He's mine."
Vic immediately let go and took a step back, a smirk on his face, "Calm down, hermano. I'm just trying to be nice."
"Well you can do it without scaring the shit outta him, can't you?" Mike snapped.
I frowned. Was it really that obvious that I was scared?
"Hey, you never did tell us your name," Jaime piped up and I felt all of their eyes on me.
I grabbed Mike's pencil and wrote it in scribbly letters at the bottom of his paper. "Kellin," he read out loud. "Did I pronounce it right?" I nodded.
Tony looked at me, "That's a cool name."
I gave him a small smile of thanks. I didn't really think it was all that cool. I really liked Jaime's name, if I was being honest. In my name you pronounce all of the letters how they look. For Jaime's it was different. Unique.
A loud, dull bell sounded, making me jump. The noise was so weird, it wasn't like a ringing, it was just a woooooo kinda noise in c#. Mike and his friends matched pitch with it, everyone laughing after it had ended, including Vic. The teacher walked in, chuckling a bit.
"I knew you guys would be in here early," he said to them. I made eye contact and he did a little double take. A look of confusion passed over his face and I stood to go meet him. I took yet another prearranged paper out of my pocket and showed it to him.
'My name is Kellin Quinn. I'm new here. And I don't like talking.' There was a smiley face at the end of that last sentence. I was hoping maybe he'd get the hint and never call on me for anything. Public speaking wasn't my thing, and also, there were some pretty strong vibes that came from certain influential figures indicating that I should never speak. Ever. It was best to practice 100% of the time so no one would get angry. Besides, my voice was shit. I hated it and so did everyone else so yeah.
"Good to meet you Kellin, I'm Mr. Page-"
"He can sit with us!" Tony shouted from his seat.
Mr. Page chuckled. "You can sit with them, Kellin. Hopefully they'll treat you right." With a final laugh he turned around and started shuffling around some papers. I took that as my queue to go back to Mike and his friends.
"Mr. Page is super cool," Jaime said. "And he's a really good teacher, too, so don't worry about falling behind. There's always extra help." He gave me a smile but I just nodded. I didn't really think that there was anything worth smiling for so I found it difficult to carry out the simple act for something so trivial.
A few other students filed in but there were considerably less of them than I would have thought. Mr. Page started handing out packets of papers and everyone took them without a question. Tony leaned over to tell me what it was about, "It's Wednesday, which means that we get a big packet to try in groups. It's a challenge packet." I nodded.
"But don't worry," Mike added, "there are only a few pages to it and it's not graded."
Again, I just nodded. I turned to pull out my ipod and headphones. I turned on the music I had recorded with my band last month and plugged in. Geez I missed those guys so much. Listening to them always made me feel more comfortable, though, so that's all I ever did. I nodded thanks as Mr. Page gave me my packet. He touched my shoulder and I pulled one headphone out just as I heard myself scream on the other end. My heart swelled at the sound of my guys beating away at their instruments behind me. I had never really cared about my voice but they-
"Just do your best, these three can always help you if you need it. It's not graded."
I averted my eyes and plugged back in, giving him a thumbs up as I got to work. Looking at the problems I figured out that these were just calculus problems on the squeeze principle. I got right to work, remembering teaching myself these kinds of things a few months ago. I would love to consider myself a genius but that's just not it. I want to be an engineer, but I know that I'll never be allowed to go to college. So I might as well get as good at math as I can in high school. James Dean and Audrey Hepburn came on after awhile and I closed my eyes at the memory of making it. My parents had been gone for the weekend and that gave me a break from the usual torment. The guys came over with their equipment and we banged the whole song out in one weekend. We even did an acoustic version then, too, but only because they insisted I sing with less distraction in that background. "Let the audiance hear your talent," Zhenya (A/N It's a russian name pronounced Jen-ya k thanks) had said. I just frowned at him.
I'm glad that he liked it, though. He left the band quickly after that to return to Germany. He was Justin's exchange studant and he was pretty good on the guitar.
I didn't like the acoustic version as much. Like I said, my voice was just awful. I really enjoyed how they played behind me. It was so calming, even if some people would consider it angry.
A few more songs went by, all of them putting me in a great mood. I flipped to the next page, only to find the packet empty. I blinked, looked at the clock. It had only been half an hour. I looked at Mike and the other two, finding them all huddled over at Jaime's paper, pointing and with confused looks on their faces. I looked behind me, pulled one headphone out, then, ever so slowly stood, refusing eye contact with anyone. Not that they were paying attention to me anyways. I walked over to Mr. Page. He looked hard at work, but when I stood in front of him he looked up.
"Kellin if you have any questions ask, one of your classmates. This is supposed to be a group effort."
I nodded, and he looked back at his work, but I just kinda lingered. Slowly, I placed the packet on the corner of his desk, realizing that my hands were shaking, then stepped back. I didn't look back to see if Mr. Page had noticed. I went back and sat at my desk, feeling a set of eyes on me. My back tingled, but I didn't want to seem obvious. Instead I turned towards my bag, forcing my eyes to stay down until I got what I wanted. My lyric book and a spare piece of paper. I let my eyes wander up. Vic was staring right at me, hunched over his own work. I caught a look of confusion on his face before it turned to a hard glare and he looked away.
Ooooookay . . .
I turned to my paper and wrote, 'What do I do now?' then passed it to Tony, who was just turning back to his own work.
He read it, looked at me in confusion, looked at my empty desk, "You finished?" His voice was too loud for the almost silent classroom and I felt everyone's eyes turn to me at once. Involuntarily my music turned up and I let it take over the one ear I had still plugged in. I just hoped no one else could hear it.
"You finished?" Mike and Jamie echoed at the same time.
I nodded, wide eyed. I hadn't done anything wrong, but I still felt a little scared. My hands were shaking. I felt a hand on my shoulder and nearly jumped out of my skin. I heard a slight chuckle from the center of the room, but it sounded to be only one person. Probably Vic. Of course he would take pleasure in my unfomfortableness.
Mr. Page handed me my packet back. It had a red 100 circled on it. "Well since you missed our test yesterday," Mr. Page said, "perhaps you'd like to have this be your first grade of the semester?" I looked down from his smiling eyes, then nodded. "I uhh . . . guess you could just read or something." He turned to Mike, pointed, "No copying him. Do your own work." Mike just laughed, and then Mr. Page left, back to his own work.
I expected Mike to turn to me and ask for help but he just gave me a huge smile and a thumbs up. "You know that I hate you, though," he said, a serious look on his face. I frowned, but couldn't help that it was inevitable. I felt like I had to respond somehow, though, so I grabbed my paper and pen in front of me, starting to apologise or something. He was quick to stop me, though, placing his hand over mine. I tensed, but managed to let him keep it there.
"He's kidding," Jaime said before Mike could. And they all laughed at my expense. Mike drew away and I relaxed. They went back to their papers. I figured that was my cue to just plug in and zone out in my book. I scooted my chair back a bit, wincing as it scraped against the floor. I didn't think anyone noticed, though. I placed my book on my lap and turned the music up a notch, pulling both out to make sure no one could hear it. Then, I went to work, scribbling furiously across the page, word after word until the bell rang.
Mike, Jaime, and Tony did their weird bell pitch match thing and the whole class laughed as they packed up.
Wow, I'm terrible at keeping track of time.
"Hey," Mike said to me as I put my book away, "where's your next class?"
I pulled my schedule and an ear bud out, turning the paper around so that he could see it. "Awe you poor soul I hate her," Mike said sympathetically. "She's a terrible teacher. It's just down the hall though, we'll walk you there."
I didn't know how I really felt about that, but I packed my stuff and went with them anyways. They chattered about some stuff, asked me what kind of music I was into. As an answer I just pointed to my shirt, a Bring me the Horizon umbrella. "Oh cool," Tony said. "I've only heard a few of their songs, though."
Yeah, me too, I thought to myself. I'm more into my own band . . . It still made me sad to know that we were apart. Would they find a new singer? Justin had mentioned sending some of our demos out, but I didn't really think anything would happen. Besides, a band without a singer couldn't get signed.
"This is you," Mike said, snapping me out of my thoughts.
Jaime gave me a frown, "Good luck man," he said.
"Yeah," Tony nodded, "good luck. And see you in music." They smiled, then waved and left. It was then that I noticed Vic was with them. It made sense I guess, for him to be hanging out with his brother. Still though. I didn't think he'd want to be near me. It was just a vibe I got from him. And maybe because of the way he glared at me as he went past.
To be honest, I was super confused that they were actually talking to me. It hadn't really occurred to me that they weren't just being nice until I walked into english and took my seat. And Mike had said that Vic would 'get used to me.' Did that mean they wanted me around? It made me nervous to have friends. There were a lot of things that I couldn't do. Secrets that I had to keep from them and on top of that, we couldn't even communicate like normal people. I didn't speak. Next was lunch and I decided to just spend it in the bathrooms or something like I usually did. It would spare Mike and the other two from being around me. I was pretty sure that they didn't really enjoy my presence too much. Especially after I finished that packet in math. It made me a little proud, though, to be doing so well in an advanced class. I had never been in any before but the school saw my previous grades and I guess they put me in there.
And then there was Vic. I was still pretty confused about him, too. Was he going to be my new bully? Was he even a bully, though or had he just been in a bad mood this morning?
I didn't know, but it also wasn't like I could figure it out anytime soon. I wasn't one to ask questions.
The bell rung and I felt the urge to match pitch along with it. I frowned. Mike and his friends were just being nice. They seemed cool enough, but they for sure didn't want to be friends with me. The thought made me sad, but I just brushed it off. Did I really expect anything else?
The teacher, Ms. Perry stood up from her desk. She looked old, a little wobbly on her feet, but her eyes were strong. And from then on I learned exactly why Mike and his friends hated her.