Little Weirdos

Chapter One: The Light-Up Gym Shoes and the Roll of Tape

~ An amazingly special thank you to snowdecahedron for making the cover! <3 ~

At Cranberry Hill Consolidated, the teachers and administrators always tried to keep everything in order.

The term "consolidated" means to combine a number of things into a single more effective or coherent whole. In a school environment, it usually means to combine two grade groups into one building. Cranberry Hill Consolidated was a combination of elementary and middle school, from grades kindergarten through eighth.

So, in a big building like this, consisting of children of nearly every young and adolescent age, it would be nearly impossible to maintain order.

Mrs. Pepper's third-grade class was absolutely no different.

She was a kind teacher. She was roughly 30 years of age, newly married, no plans to have children of her own as, being an educator, the children she taught she considered her own. One of the youngest teachers in the school, she wasn't nearly as strict as the others. In fact, Mrs. Pepper craved the chaos that a classroom of bright-eyed children brought in.

One of her pupils was a boy named Benny.

Benny was a young boy of ten, who normally was just like any other kid in school. He had a smaller build, was of Korean descent, messy black hair, and enjoyed things like Pokémon, and being outside. Recess was his favorite, so he'd usually breeze by the classes during the day.

He sat in the back of the classroom, where, if you'll remember during your school days, children would be able to get away with just about anything. That was where another student sat next to him.

His name was Mason. Mason was also ten years old, with spiked up blond hair, emerald green eyes, freckles that decorated his face, and was of Caucasian descent. He was what you'd consider to be the naturally popular kid in third grade, and this author says that because the kids in his class would fawn over him and write his initials with their own because it was the popular thing to do.

And, just like a regular day, Benny and Mason sat in the back of the class, during a rather lengthy English lecture that neither of them cared about because, in Mason's own words, they already knew English. As Mrs. Pepper talked about a subject that even she found herself being exhausted by, Benny and Mason ignored it with their own conversations.

"And these are the new sneakers my mom got me when we went to the mall!" Mason twisted his feet, brandishing his new sneakers.

"Wow. Those are really nice. Are they for gym?"

"Mmmmmno. These other ones are for gym." Mason pulled another pair from his backpack, which were dirty and scuffed. One of the shoelaces were also missing.

"Oh." Benny looked in his backpack for his gym shoes, planting them on the desk once he found them. "These are mine. They light up."

"Mr. Gym Teacher said those weren't allowed on the court."

"I'm putting tape over them so he doesn't see the lights."

"What kind of tape?"

Benny yanked out a roll of see-through tape. "These."

"Oh. That's smart. He'll never see that."

Benny set it next to the shoes, starting to unravel the tape. "You have scissors?"

"Yeah, here." He put big fabric scissors into Benny's small hands.

"Woah--these are huge! I can't use these! Mom said I can only use safety scissors!"

Mason shrugged. "I don't have anything else. I grabbed these this morning from my dad's office."

"Alright, can you help me, then?" Benny passed the roll of tape to Mason. "Unroll that and stretch it over here."

"Okay." Mason stretched the tape out. It stuck to the desk. "Wait, hold on--"

"Oh, man." It got stuck in Benny's hair after trying to stretch it out even more.

"Wait, hold on, it's tangled in my fingers!"

Thumping and rummaging echoed from the back of the classroom, to the point where the scissors were being used to cut pieces of tape away. From Benny's hair to Mason's fingers, there were just squares and strips of tape all over them both.

Mrs. Pepper looked away from the board, watching Benny and Mason stand up and wrestle with tape, knocking over both their chairs.

"Benny! Mason!" Mrs. Pepper set the chalk down.

Mason and Benny looked up, wide-eyed, and frozen, tangled in a web of their own mistakes. The shoes still remained untaped, and the chairs still remained on the floor.

She squinted, unsure how it even happened, and hesitantly pointed her fingers in opposite directions. "...Separate."

//this first chapter is a little short! it's just to introduce you to the world and give a little anecdote. anyway, have fun!//

To Be Continued In Chapter Two