/ thálassa | pjo \

/ chapter two | liar, liar, cannibals on fire! \

edited.

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 Meriwether College Prep.

It is an...experience, to say the least.

It was a progressive school Percy and I attended after last summer. And that means there was no structure, and all the teachers looked like fresh-outta-college people–which wasn't a bad thing, but school was supposed to be where we learned and got graded and stuff. But they literally never graded us on anything, and most of the time, we didn't really...learn anything. Also, schools in America typically would have desks in many places, and we didn't even have those.

All in all, things like this wouldn't usually bother me, but the no-structure thing at all did. I didn't complain, though, because some days, my ADHD and dyslexia would get really bad, and I was overly thankful for the structureless day.

But today was not that day.

I was tired–suddenly the excitement of today being my last day gone. Everything in me wanted to sit with someone and talk about a book or a movie but actually have something to talk about. I wanted to talk about something that interested my peers and me, where the conversations were constructive. Then, we could do something that showed that we understood what we were conversing about.

But noooooooo. We had just finished reading Lord of the Flies and knew our final exam was happening–this consisted of us being put outside on the playground and left to our own devices. But even from that description, anyone could tell it wasn't even a real exam–it was really just a fun-bully fest for Matt Sloan, who ironically was the school bully.

He even looked like a school bully like in the movies: features like a pitbull, lousy fashion taste, long hair, and bad acne.

Everything that would make me despise a person my age was a part of his persona. But what made it worse was that the idiot had a crush on me. Or that's the vibe I got from him.

I would always catch him watching me or glancing over to see if I saw him bully a sixth grader as if that would impress me.

Like I said, idiot. And today, I almost killed him.

He was having a grand old time giving wedgies when he thought it would be a funny idea to try to do it to Tyson.

Tyson–the only homeless kid at the school–was Meriwether Prep's community service project. Apparently, he lived inside of a refrigerator box in an alley before the school "adopted" him. And as someone who has run away a handful of times and slept in alleys like that, I understood what it must have been like. Unlike him, I always had someone who came after me or had somewhere to go when I did run–but sleeping in alleys was nothing new to me.

Anyways, Tyson was one of the tallest kids I have ever seen for our grade, standing at an incredible six-foot-three. He was broadly built, looking like a quarterback, but he talked in a deep voice with the speech of a kid much younger than us.

He should have been frightening, but Tyson is the definition of a teddy bear, cinnamon-roll person.

He was just a big ol' softy.

This was one of the things that drew me to him, which led me to introduce him and Percy, and we became los tres amigos. And three of the targets for the bullying when the douchebags got bored of bullying the younger students.

I tended to ignore or chase them away with glares and sometimes small threats, but I never got into a fight. I did not need to get in trouble with another school. Not when Mrs. Jackson took me in and was paying for me to be here.