Falling

three

The first thing Newt heard was the sound of voices talking softly in hushed tones. His vision was dark and swirling with bright colours on the back of his eyelids, and he couldn't feel his body.

Was he dead?

None of the words processed coherently through his mind, blurring into a jumble of colourless noise.

He hoped he was dead.

Waking up in a hospital would be horrible, screw that, waking up at all would be horrible.

He took the fact that he couldn't feel his body to be a good sign, maybe this was what death was like. He felt like he was floating, and he relaxed his thoughts, drifting into unconscious territory.
Finally he felt peaceful.

In the three days Thomas had been in school he had tried to focus and make friends, but his mind always drifted back to Newt.
Was he awake yet? Was he even alive? Surely they would've told him if he'd died.
Maybe they wouldn't have, I mean after all he barely knew the boy.
He'd have to go and ask Mrs Paige later, he thought to himself. She would know.

"Thomas? You with us?" Teresa knocked lightly on his head, waking him up from his thought. He shook his head, laughing slightly.
"Yeah, sorry"
"She asked what you thought of her idea" Minho spoke.

Thomas went a bit red, he had completely zoned out and hadn't heard a word of what Teresa had been saying.

"You weren't listening at all, were you?" the girl huffed in fake annoyance, and Minho rolled his eyes.

"I was saying, now you're listening, that tomorrow we should have a party. Get everyone together, the whole class- well all the nice people at least, and just have fun. My parents said they'll let me use the summer house, it's only a few miles away and it's right on the beach."

Thomas nodded "That sounds cool!"

Teresa was nice, Thomas decided. Minho had introduced them yesterday and they had hit off straight away, easily compatible personalities. She was the sort of girl he would have hated when he was back in America; pretty and skinny, and very rich, but for some reason Teresa didn't irritate him like those girls did. She seemed very chill and relaxed compared to other people, and despite her parents letting her have practically free reign to do what she liked, she was definitely the most responsible out of them.

Brenda was another one of Thomas's new found friends. She was the girl he'd seen in the hospital, with the broken nose. She had short brown hair and mousy eyes, she didn't look very intimidating but Thomas had decided as soon as he spoke to her that he wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of her. Minho assured him that the tough exterior was all an act and that she was secretly a cinnamon roll, but Thomas didn't believe him.

Minho himself, Thomas had discovered, was perhaps the most dramatic person he had ever met. On the first day in school they had worked together in chemistry class for a 'fun competition'. They had spilled their mixture and lost the competition and he had proceeded to fall to his knees and recite a woeful shakespearian style monologue about how his life was over, and then go into a sulk for the rest of the day.

Another thing Thomas found out about Minho is that he didn't swear. Not like a normal person at least. Instead he had developed an entire vocabulary of not-swear word swear words. Teresa told him that it was because Minho had received so many detentions for his foul language that he had come up with his own ones that weren't officially rude but still had the desired effect. Brenda had apparently picked up this habit as well, and Teresa used both real swear words as well as 'Glader Slang' as Minho called it.

The trio had practically adopted Thomas as soon as Minho introduced them, taking him into their group and making him feel very welcome.

Thomas caught himself zoning out again, and quickly focused back in on what Minho was saying.
"-and if you bring the drinks I'll talk to Aris and see if he can get some spliff or something from Sonya, just for us guys."