Chapter Text
Prologue 1:
“Hey after School today, do you want to walk home together? You forgot your textbooks in my living room yesterday. Come and pick it up. Ughhhhh you always forget your shit at my place”
“Why didn’t you bring them to school and give them to me?” I retorted to the aggravated complaint I heard at the very last moment coming out muttered as Alex was saying it under her breath.
“You know you’re lucky I had some early morning coffee from the cafeteria this morning, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to deal with your crap today. So are you gonna come by my house today, Rusticus?” She was wearing a fake innocent smile knowing damn well that she said something she shouldn’t.
Without missing a beat, looking up from the pile of assignments that were due tomorrow that I was procrastinating whether to do them and get it over with or go home and hope on my favorite game, The Last Solace, I replied back. “Excuse me, what did you just call me, now?”
Clearly faking sincerity Alex said, “Oops my bad. I didn’t mean to call you by your legal name, Rux. Well are you coming or not? If you don’t come, I'm going to throw away your new expensive textbooks.”
“Okay Okay, fine. I will leave school with you today.” I let a heavy sigh out. I was leaning on going home to play videogames, but now sadly, I won’t have the time tonight to hop on because Alex’s house is about thirty minutes away from my home and it will probably be really late when I leave their house because they always seem to have an excuse on standby to keep me at their home.
“Now why do you seem so disappointed that you have to go to my house? How could you use me and throw me away like garbage as soon as you no longer have a use for me?” She stated while using her water bottle to make FAKE TEARS, pretending to cry, and lowering her head in a way to try to guilt trip me.
“My lord whats it with the water works.” I asked with an annoyed tone because I was suddenly interrupted from my “work.” “Why are you even like this?”
With a condescending tone Alex struck back with, “Well somebody gotta keep this conversation interesting and me and you both know that you aren’t going to be that someone.”
My mouth drooped in awe at the foolishness that was coming out of her mouth. “You are being really mean to someone that you desperately want to come hang out at your crib later.”
Suddenly the classroom teacher came in and everybody started to shuffle quickly to their seats, to get ready for the fifth period class. Also because everybody knew how the teacher clearly had some type of unresolved issues.
The teacher slowly walked to the desk and almost collapsed as he was placing his laptop and class materials on the desk. In the most sad ,slowed, and depressed sounding voice I have heard from a teacher he mumbled “Alright Class settle down,” white waving his energyless hand signaling to the class to quiet down and prepare for class. “open up your um… ah right, Physics textbook to page four hundred and fifty three… Tonight’s homework will be to complete this guided reading” He proceeded to pull out a worksheet that looked like it was ripped straight out of google images and looked pixelated. “It belongs to chapter 22 of your textbook… how is a piece of paper able to belong to something before me… and uhh wait give me a minute I’m forgetting something.”
The teacher proceeded to start becoming teary eyed and mumbling somebody’s name under their breath. After what seemed to be ten actual whole minutes the teacher finally remembered what he was going to say.
“I remember it now, the homework is due by next wednesday and I’m checking chapter 21’s pages today.”
I started to rummage through my bag to find the Physic textbook and the homework that was also in that bag. For some reason I couldn’t find the textbook, so I emptied out the backpack. I came to the realization that the Physic textbook was one of the books I left over at Alex’s house.
‘This day just keeps getting longer and longer’ I thought to myself as I was preparing for the incoming lecture I was about to get for forgetting my homework and about in the real world there are no second chances yada yada. This teacher was way too excited at the chance to discipline children than actually doing his job of teaching Physics.
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‘Thought that class would never end. How can a teacher be so spiteful?’ After the whole textbook debacle, the teacher kept on shooting me some dirty disgusted looks and targeting me with questions I, obviously, wouldn’t be able to answer.
I looked up at the lunch bulletin board to see today’s menu item. ‘Looks like it's going to be chicken bone soup with green beans today.’ I knew the lunch would probably not be too appetizing, but this is actually ridiculous. They have been using the same chicken scraps for lunch for the last three days. First pulled chicken with gray, next chicken salad, then chicken pasta, now chicken bone soup. It wouldn’t have been a problem if the lunches they made were actually good, but usually they are like half way thawed out or dry. Like how do you manage to even ruin a store bought salad, the lettuce in that meal was actually full of dead bugs because they did not wash out any of the veggies.
But beggars can’t be choosers now. It is not like that I can just go get a different lunch now, I didn’t have the time or the money to go eat out. After waiting in the food line and receiving a tray of food I went to find a seat in the cafeteria.
As I was moving down the tables. People were moving their belongings onto an empty seat next to them and giving rude stares towards my direction. I could also hear some people whispering things from behind my back.
“I would be embarrassed if that loser were to sit with us.”
“Yeah, we would also become the laughing stalk of the school.”
“Please, god, don’t let him sit here.”
“I second that, but at the same time it would be nice to have an errand boy too”
The group of students at the circular table all started to burst out laughing at the last statement that was said with a tone of indifference to the victim, me. Aftering hearing those comments I started to now speed walk to my destination with my head hung low to avoid eye contact with anybody else. I didn’t have the confidence to stand up for myself, as surely, they would also retort and my life would just become just a bit more tiring. The best thing to do now was to just ignore it. This single thing was the only advice I have ever heard to my problems.
Sooner than later I arrived at the small table in an isolated corner of the lunchroom. Along with Alex waiting with a smile. I started to smile back as I finally met somebody that was happy I was there. But that smile soon disappeared as soon as her mouth started to move.
“Do you think glass would taste good?” She asked with a serious tone of voice.
“What, why would you need to know the taste of-” I looked down at her tray and stopped in my tracks. The food was missing on her tray and I was puzzled by this as lunch just started. Probably around five minutes ago too. How could she eat her food so bad, like the food wasn’t even that good to begin with. On my personal tray the bowl of soup had some hair in it already, but on closer inspection of her tray of food, in place of where the bowl of soup would have gone was an ACTUAL piece of eight by five inch glass that looked like it came off of one of those photo frames at Walmart. I was just flabbergasted as my mouth hung open.
After a few moments my mind was able to recover from the state of shock and I asked a different question. “Why the hell is there a piece of glass on your plate, EXPLAIN.”
Without skipping a beat Alex replied with no shame whatsoever and replied in a cautious manner. “Well you know summer break is about to start and I’m planning on going to the beach, so I wanted to try to get an hourglass figure. I heard an hourglass diet was a great place to start, so I went out to buy some pieces of glass to eat, duhhhh.”
Wow, her stupidity never failed to disappoint me. “I can’t even with you right now. You wanted to have an hourglass body so you bought a piece of glass to eat it.” How did Alex even manage to get into the eleventh grade will remain a mystery to me because what even goes through your mind to think that eating glass is healthy. ‘I swear you can not become more stupid than this.’
Flustered Alex snapped back, “Well you are what you eat, that’s how the saying goes. So if you eat glass you become an hourglass.”
‘I stand corrected, it is possible to become even stupider than that’ There is no way somebody could actually be as simple minded as Alex in the current moment. Trying to overcome the complete absurdity of their statement, I tried to give out an argument to show the flaws in her statement. “So you are basically saying that if I eat some green vegetables, you will also become green.”
Alex’s eyes started to shine, as she thought I finally started to understand her logic, then in a confident tone she replied, “Exactly, that's completely correct plus you will get the added benefit of becoming skinny too.”
My mouth dropped listening to that statement being said in such a serious and confident tone. I had to try to dig deeper to even try to find an ounce of logic behind those words. “Why would they also make you skinnier?”
“Well because… um if you look at most green vegetables they are kinda long and not really that big, like take a cucumber and lettuce for example.”
I replied, “Well if that’s true why didn’t you start with eating vegetables instead of actually dangerous pieces of glass,” with a very confused expression being written all over my face.
“... I didn’t think of that…” Alex’s face was wearing a dumbfounded expression with her mouth hanging slightly open. Quickly recovering from that attack on her argument Alex face snapped back to normal in an instant and sayed in a quiet almost mumbling voice, “Well I don’t actually have any vegetables at home though… I know after school do you want to stop by the corner store really quickly. Guess I need to buy vegetables now too from there.”
“Fine, but let’s only stop in there and stay for only thirty minutes at max. And you better only buy some vegetables, I remember the last time, where you said you said that you were only going to buy some gum, then two hours later and about one hundred and seventy eight bucks down the drain we finally left.”
The corners of Alex’s mouth started to curve downward and her eyebrows became sharper. She retorted, “Well that was a different situation because I really needed those cute little squishies and I might as well get my groceries done at the same time. On top of that I had to look for a necklace cleaner.”
I slowly started to develop a cold gaze on my face, from constantly listening on and on to her excuses. “Yeah, but at the expense of my time. You went around asking every single store attendant the same question about where you could find necklace cleaner and every single time they told you they didn't sell such a thing. That’s quite literally the definition of insanity. I wasn’t even able to get to my home until 1-”
I was suddenly cut off by the loud high pitched ringing from the school bell. My lunch period was now over. I would only have two more classes after this. This lunch period was way too late in the day almost being at one : forty five everyday was taxing on my body. But at the same time I thought it would be better to not switch as if I did I might have to encounter those people again.