Dreams // Newtmas

3. Gladers

Thomas had already taken his seat in the back of the classroom by the time Minho barged in. To say he looked annoyed was an understatement and Thomas was pretty sure Vince would have gotten an earful of it if Minho hadn't seen him sitting there.

"Where have you been, ya ugly shank?" Minho asked sitting down beside him.

"Using my eyes." Thomas replied, holding up his phone. Minho gave him a glare that could only be described as murderous. "You know, it really is amazing what you can do when you actually use your head." At that, Minho slapped him across the side of his head, a move that Thomas probably should have seen coming.

By then most of the class had made their way in. Thomas was surprised by the whole lack of anger they were showing, he had expected them to be going crazy. Maybe it was because Minho hadn't done anything. Pretty much everyone followed Minho's role.

Before Thomas had the chance to tell Minho about Newt though, Vince was calling for everyone's attention.

"Hello everyone, I see you finally decided to use your eyes." he began. Not a smart way to greet a class. Shouting broke out from pretty much everywhere in the room, forcing Vince to postpone his announcement until it had died down.

"My name is Mr. Rogers" He continued, seemingly unaware of how thin the ice beneath his feet was "I will be your new home room teacher for this year, but you should know I do things a little differently. First off, I actually believe in fun which is why I will be setting up an activity for you guys to complete once a week." 

Grumblings filled the air but Vince continued on. "Now these activities won't be completely useless. In them you will learn survival skills, teamwork and how to think on your feet. You're in school for a reason, you might as well learn something ."

"And what if we don't want to do some stupid activities?" Minho asked.

"Well then you won't have attended home room that morning and your parents will be called" Vince replied. This guy really had a death wish. Thomas could clearly see the hatred growing behind some of the other students eyes. This was going to be fun.

//

By the time lunch came around, Thomas was itching to talk to someone about Newt. Vince had spent the rest of home room just going over the basic rules and start of year announcements and Thomas had the joy of not having any of his morning classes with Minho and, therefore, no one to talk to. Minho was the only one who ever actually listened to Thomas's ramblings because what else were best friends for? 

Upon entering the canteen, Thomas picked his friends out at their usual table. There was another kid with them too. A freshman by the looks of it, with curly brown hair and bright childlike eyes. Thomas decided that he liked him already.

Before he had even made it halfway to the table, Minho was jumping up to meet him and dragging Thomas along with him. "Thomas you gotta help me out here. Teresa adopted a freshman already and I'm going to need backup if I have to try and convince her to give the greenie a chance to eat anything."

Thomas could see that from the way Teresa was speaking so quickly to the kid, her black hair bouncing as she moved her head. The kid himself seemed okay with all the attention but Thomas knew that his stomach would be telling him differently when he was in class and hadn't eaten anything for lunch.

"Hey guys," Thomas said, sliding into a seat across from Teresa and the new kid. The kid looked up from his conversation and stared at Thomas in a mixture of wonder and awe. 

"H-hi" the boy replied.

"I'm Thomas," He said, giving the boy a small smile. "What's your name?"

"Chuck. I-it's nice to meet you Thomas." Chuck said "I can't believe it's actually you."

"Oh really," Thomas was intrigued "You know who I am?"

"Of course I do," Chuck said enthusiastically. "They've been telling all the freshmen about you. The perfect example of what to do when you do exactly what you're not supposed to do. You guys are legends!"

That awarded Chuck a wave of laughter from around the table. "Great to know our legacy will live on long after we leave this place." Minho chuckled.

Good to know.

//

Once all the introductions and niceties had been completed, and Thomas had helped Minho to finally convince Teresa to let Chuck eat something, Minho leaned over to Thomas and whispered "You have another nightmare last night?"

And there it was, Minho being the best friend Thomas could possibly ask for. He nodded as thoughts of Newt filled his head. At least now he would be able to talk to someone about it.

"Was it bad?"

"I saw someone get stabbed after they came at me with a knife, so yeah it was pretty bad." He said. He had spent the entire morning thinking of ways to tell Minho about Newt and now that he had the chance, all those ways seemed too awkward or made him sound like a crazy person.

"It wasn't me was it?" Minho asked in mock horror. Always trying to lighten the mood that one. Thomas knew that deep down it was actually a genuine question though. Minho knew he made an appearance in quite a few of Thomas's dreams but they put that down to the fact that he played such a large part in Thomas's life.

"No, it wasn't you" Thomas reassured him "His name was Newt."

"Newt? You know his name?" Minho asked. Then, "It must have been really bad then."

"Yep" Thomas said, scanning the room for any sign of the actual real life Newt, but he was nowhere to be seen. He probably had a different lunch time which honestly kind of sucked. Thomas wanted to get a chance to talk to him but the guy was fairly hard to find. Just his luck.

"Have you ever met him before?" Minho questioned. It wasn't often that things like this happened and Minho was obviously interested.

Before Thomas could answer though, Teresa was leaning over the table towards them. "Kid in need of saving behind you." she whispered.

Thomas turned to see Newt walking through the cafeteria quickly with his hands in his pockets and his head down. Following him, was the human personification of bad news. Garret Wilson, the king of the jocks and therefore, the popular people, and his lackeys Daniel and Quinn. 

For anybody being cornered by them was bad news, but at least most people had an idea of what was going to happen if they were and how to keep damage, either mental or physical, to a minimum. Newt, being new, would be destroyed.

"Who is that kid?" Minho asked as most of the table got up from their seats. It was some sort of unspoken duty they had, to defend anyone they could from those guys. 

Thomas was already out of his seat and beginning to walk over to where Newt had taken a seat in the corner of the room. Without looking back he said :

"It's Newt."