FicWad

Ugh, let yet another joyous semester of school begin. I reached out to my alarm clock to switch it off before it woke up the rest of the household and slowly crawled out of bed. The mirror had decided to be an arse to me today, as I looked at my reflection staring back.

My name is Emily, and I'm in year 11 at a shit son of a school called Glenn Park High School which is just outside of Sydney, Australia. I am your average height with long dark brown – almost black – hair and chocolate eyes. But this morning I looked like a wreck, remind me never to go to bet at 3am on a school night ever again.

I went downstairs and had a quick shower, straightened my hair and pinned my grown-out fringe back out of my face. It was already 8.52am, so I decided I'd pick up a muesli bar and have breakfast on the go. I rushed out the door and down the street, walking quickly as I chewed on the tasteless bar. I was supposed to meet my bestfriends out the front of the school so we could catch up, but unless I magically developed super speed powers right this very second, I didn't really see that happening.

I had just gotten to the gate of the school with just seconds to spare, Ms Leighton was just about to lock the gate when I came rushing through.

"Come on, hurry yourself up! You'll have to go to the office and get a note as to why you're so late, young lady!" She lectured me.
"Yes, ofcourse I will, Ms Leighton." I replied blankly.

Shit. Class has already started and now I have to go out of my way to go to the office. Great. I sped along the path leading to the office, making sure not to look like a complete tool as other people in classrooms were surely watching me from the windows.

I opened the doors to the office to see that there were a few other students lined up behind the front counter; a girl in my year named Lisa, who used to be a close friend of mine during primary school, some year 12 student with a stretchers and facial hair and a guy who I'd never seen before. He was slight, almost lanky, with light brown hair that was half pushed back, and half hanging in front of his face and roundish thin-rimmed glasses. As I lined up behind him I took note that he was slightly taller than me, and he also had an amazing sense of style. Well, even though he was wearing school uniform, it just looked right on him.

Before long he was at the counter talking the office lady, who looked to be in her early twenties. I noticed that she was smiling and laughing at completely irrelevant times, ugh, she's such a flirt. He walked away, to his class I presumed, and I shuffled up to the counter to get my late slip signed. The lady quickly scrawled her name and the date, and then beckoned for the boy behind me that I didn't realise was there to come forward. Now, for the walk of shame. Time to arrive to class 20 minutes late and have to look around for a spare seat, if there is even one left. I made my way to science class, and slowly began to open the door to room 12 to began my walk of shame.

"Sorry I'm late." I murmured to the teacher as I handed her the pink slip. She nodded and gave me a gesture to sit down. I looked around and found a spare seat to the back of the class. As I walked towards it, I saw my two best friends, Jessica and Teresa, sitting in the second row to the left. They gave me a dirty look, as if to say Why were you so late? You totally ditched us! Wow, I can't wait for recess to see what that was all about.

I pulled out my chair, sat down and scrambled for my books at the bottom of my bag. As I looked up to start copying the notes down from the board, I realised I had left the door open. God dammit, I swear I had shut it. A shot of whispers and giggling suddenly erupted from the class as I turned to look at the teacher, who was talking with a familiar face from the office just before-hand. Just then, the teacher turned to face the class and began to introduce the new student as "Michael,"

"Now, Michael has just moved here to Australia with the rest of his family from America." She continued. "Please make him feel welcome, as I'm sure this is a very big change for him. Now," She turned to him and lowered her voice, "There is a spare seat up there in the back next to Emily. Tut tut!" It had just become clear to me that there was a free seat to the right of me, and Michael began to make his way towards it. He sat down, took a deep breath and began to get his book and pen to copy down the notes on the board.

"Hey," I said, "I'm Emily. Although the teacher just made that pretty clear…"
"Hi, I'm Michael, but you can just call me Mikey. Mikey Way." He replied, then smiled to himself and looked down at his book. I smiled too, then did the same and concentrated on my notes. We were learning about Chemistry, my favourite. Not. I don't know, I guess I just don't get it at all. Like, how the hell are you supposed to get 'Fe' out of iron? I continued to write down all the information about neutrons and electrons, and those other things, protons are they? Like I said, Chemistry isn't really my thing.

The bell for recess had finally decided to ring, but as I began to pack away my books into my bag the teacher came up to both Mikey and I.
"Emily, would you mind giving Michael a tour of the school? I have a meeting to go to, I'm sorry to be a bother."
"Sure, that's fine." I said, and the teacher gave us a smile and hurried off out of the classroom.

I swung my bag over my back and walked towards the classroom door as Mikey followed, then walked up the long corridor in silence. "This is block one," I said after a long moment. "This is where all the science, maths and cooking classrooms are, and down the end here is the library."
His head shot up, and a grin appeared on his face instantly. "You like reading, I guess?" I asked.
"Yeah, I do actually, it helps me escape. Is the library here big?" He asked almost impatiently.
"Very. It's bigger than the town's local library actually. And they even have a whole 2 aisles for comics! You could easily get lost in there." I replied.
"Wicked!" Mikey exclaimed. We continued to walk through a set of double doors and into the next corridor.

"This is block two. Here are all the English and humanities rooms, and the teachers' coffee rooms and the office are all the way down there at the end. We don't need to walk down there, it's fairly boring." This reminded me of this morning, when I saw Mikey in the office.
"Why did you come to class after me, if you left the office before me?" I asked him.
"I sort of got a little bit lost…" He replied. "This school is far bigger than any I've ever been to."
"Oh. Well that's understandable. But aren't schools pretty big in the US?" I said. I mean, on all the schools on the TV shows have multiple floors and such. It couldn't be any different from real life, could it?
"Well, I lived in a pretty small town. There were only about 250 students at the last school I attended. And also, the library was crappy. I can tell already that I'm gunna like it here." He smiled. I don't know what was about his smile, but it was contagious. I smiled back and continued with the 'tour'.

"This is block three, and these are all the LOTE rooms, where they teach different languages. We'll also have to walk down here to get to the art studio." I said.
"That's cool. At my old school, I learnt Japanese for three years. I also went on exchange last year to Osaka, in Japan." Mikey replied.
"Oh, wow! That would have been really cool!" I exclaimed.
"It was! Would really like to go back one day, I love Japan. " He said.

We reached the end of the corridor and went through another set of double doors that lead outside.
"Over there is the canteen, and the oval is out that way," I pointed out towards an open space behind the canteen. "There is also a tech building out behind the canteen on the side of the oval, and a gym for the sports teams to use in their frees, although, that's kinda completely irrelevant." I explained as we both dodged students running around the courtyard, trying to run after some ratty-looking kid who had obviously just stolen something.

We turned a few corners around gardens and shaded areas with tables randomly placed everywhere packed full of students sitting around them, talking and laughing in an obnoxious manner as music was streaming through speakers spread across the area.
"This," I said, when we were close enough, "is the art centre. Here, take a look inside." We walked through yet another set of double doors and into a very modern looking building. There were drawings and paintings and photographs hanging all around the purple and green walls, all made by students. In one corner there was even a giant paper-mashe of a blue and red dragon. It would have taken weeks to finish. There were many classroom doors and little hallways leading to even more classrooms, each painted a different colour, and with a sign on the door stating the classroom number and what subject was taught within. Visual arts, sculpture, fantasy art, photography, drama, beginners basics to everything art (BBTEA) – the list went on.
"God, my brother would really love this place to death, it's much better than anything we ever had back at home," Mikey pointed at a small room with glass windows labelled 'Student radio crew', "So that's why there's music playing outside. That is so cool!" But just when I was about to reply, the bell rang, and we had to get going to our classes. We scurried off and I showed Mikey to his next class, which was English (in block 2, classroom 9) and then made my way to maths in block 1, classroom 2.