One World

Chapter 1

All of Portland High School can hear Natalie Jevani's strong laugh as it echoes through the hallways.

Needless to say, people are staring at us.

And not in a good way.

The ugly glares from the staff are the things that make me take Natalie's hand and pull her through the hallways towards her class.

"Nat, I told you. You need to stop drinking right before school." I push her towards her classroom.

Her disoriented stare washes over me. "Gabriel."

She tries to take a few steps towards me but tips herself over in the process. I catch her before she smashes her skull on our schools tiled floors, and I push her back up.

"You need to lighten up, Gabriel." Her words are slurred. "You take everything too-"

She gags and doubles over.

"Seriously." She finishes.

"Natalie." I say, taking a deep breath. "You need to either go to the bathroom and get your shit together, or go to the nurse."

She sighs and stumbles towards the bathroom. "See you in the afterlife, Gabriel." Finally, she salutes me and fumbles into the bathroom.

I walk away from the bathroom towards my first class. Gym is never a great way to start the day, but I don't feel like switching classes and certainly can't skip.

I've not skipped one day of school my entire life, and I plan on keeping it that way. I find it interesting how people want teenagers, whom are often in the worst years of their life, to figure out and make the most important decisions they'll ever make in life.

College, career, our entire future is dependent on how well we do now, when our brains aren't even fully developed and we haven't lived even a quarter of our life.

But for now, I'm just going to gym class.

-

The gym is loud and full of rowdy high schoolers when I get there. Shoving, pushing, and total horseplay are going down while Mr. Colby makes a sad attempt at calming everybody down.

After I change, I walk out and watch Mr. Colby attempting to rip apart the two girls beating the living shit out of eachother.

Eventually, he takes a last resort and blows his painstakingly loud metal whistle which makes nearly all of us go deaf for a few minutes.

"Settle the fuck down, everyone." He yells.

People stampede towards the bleachers and shove eachother out of seats until they can find them next to their friends.

I sit by myself, an unfortunate circumstance seeing as I have a large friend group, but none of them happen to have gym with me.

The rest of gym class is a combination of different workout videos. Zumba, HITT, you name it.

Mr. Colby stays in his office for most of the time, not wanting to deal with any of us until he absolutely has to.

Smelly, sweaty, hormonal teenagers are the last thing I want to deal with, so I can't imagine being a sixty year old man who chose to do this as his career and then had to dedicate 30 years of his life.

I hope he retires soon.