Sentiment of a Witness: I Ain't Ever Seen Two Pretty Best Friends

𝙵𝚘𝚕𝚕𝚘𝚠 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝙻𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚎𝚛

I spent the next hour in the library looking around, thinking, and, surprisingly, not reading.

It had started with me casually walking around through the bookshelves, browsing. There were so many history books, records, documents and, of course, books for pleasure-reading. Fantasy, dystopian, historical-fiction, futuristic-fiction; you name it, they had it.

Then I found the seats.

Although it seemed that all the walls were covered by roof-high shelves from the entrance to the library, it appeared that the shelf on the back wall was actually only built on the upper half of the wall, leaving space for window-seats underneath.

I hadn't felt like I'd been there for very long when I checked one of the clocks, discovering that I had half an hour to get to class. In senior year, I would've stayed for another fifteen to twenty minutes, but it was my first year, and I had no idea where the hell I was supposed to go.

Hence why I asked Mr Cortisone for general directions.

"Ah, Science first up," he tapped a bony finger on the first square of my timetable. "You'd be in the Science Block."

He ran his finger down the square, passed the name of the teacher and to the name of the room. "WS2F12."

I looked up at Mr Cortisone with a frown, "Do the name's stand for something?"

He nodded, "West Side, second floor, room twelve."

I clicked my tongue, "oh."

"So first off, you'd want to get to the west side of the school; we're in the north side at the moment. The easiest route is to go back past the dorms and turn down the corridor where the nurse's office is – if you don't know where that is, just look out for an... interesting sign on the door."

I nodded. Why did the school have to be so damn big?

"From there, you'll want to go down a floor, and you should find room twelve there."

I thanked Mr Cortisone for his help and walked out of the library.

To be honest, I was extremely confused. Before, I was just nervous about finding the room, but now I was anxious about never finding any of the rooms in this school. I also wasn't sure if I would survive if I got lost at Graysmark – I barely survived being 'lost' in the Forest of Somerher and the small town of Estee Lauder.

I shivered as I remembered the feeling of coldness and loneliness that had plagued my escape from my parents. It felt like such a long time ago, but I knew that some things hadn't really changed; I was still alone, and it was cold in the hallway, for instance. And I suppose some things never really changed as the years passed.

I walked back past the dorms, pausing briefly when I realised that a few of the dorms were being emptied of students. I sighed and continued walking, being lightly jostled around by the other moving bodies as we all tried to find our way to class.

As I walked on, I kept an eye out for anything that looked like it could be the nurse's office. I ended up following a group of three boys who were following a group of two. I glanced behind me, not really surprised to find a few more boys following me. So I guessed that there was a high chance we were all in the same class, and we were. Well, except for that one kid who just went the complete wrong way.

Though I can't really blame him in a school like this, he's still an idiot.

I didn't realise the first two boys had stopped walking until I nearly ran into the three I was following. The three exchanged side glances before one with curly blonde hair, who I realised shockingly was the dormmate I half-met that morning, called out to them.

"You guys alright? We were kind of following you," he spoke with a grin in his voice.

The two boys turned to look at them, nearly jumping when they realised there were more of us behind the first three.

"You all have Science?" one asked, running a hand through his red hair and watching as we all nodded, one by one.

"Right. Well, um... my brother said to look out for the nurse's office, and I think this might be it," he gestured to the door beside him.

The door had a sign on it that read: "Tripped down the stairs and twisted your ankle? We got you covered. Slipped down the stairs and broke your wrist? We got you covered. Tried to jump down the stairs and broke your spine? You're an idiot, but we still got you covered."

"Yeah... that's gotta be it."

"...are the only injuries people get here from falling down stairs?"

"Have you seen how many stairs there are in this school? I think it makes sense."

I suppressed a grin at my classmates' wariness. I wasn't too concerned myself by the... passive-aggressiveness of the nurses' sign – I was convinced by that point that no one could be worse than my parents or Trollis Trotters.

"Soooo, are there stairs somewhere, or are we supposed to dig a hole in the ground?"

"..there should be stairs-"

"Heh, don't try and jump down them like an idiot!"

"Aww, you're no fun."

And sure enough, to our left and down the hall a bit was a flight of stairs leading downwards. We walked down them and then out into another corridor with doors on either side with little plaques above them reading from 'WS2F10' to 'WS2F20.'

The bell rang just as we found WS2F12, making two orderly lines outside the door. About a minute later, a teacher walked out of the door, smiling broadly at us.

"Good morning, gentlemen. We'll just wait a few minutes for any late-comers. Graysmark is a tough school to navigate."

A few minutes passed, and about fifteen more boys rocked up, unsure whether they were where they were supposed to be.

The teacher looked down at her role as the last few boys rocked up, checking if all twenty-seven students were there.

"Right then! Good morning boys, I'm your Science teacher, Mrs Tessra. I will call you in by the seating plan I've arranged for you," she smiled at us before looking back at the role, "alrighty, Robert Allen?"

Written: 27 December 2021

Published: 7 January 2022