Otherworld

The Beginning

The bell rang and I was startled awake. I heard a few people laughing, no doubt at me, but I didn't care. I learned to not care very quickly. I'm not very attractive, though my features can be attractively described, and I'm not particularly athletic, which is why I'm completely ostracized from the entire student body. Though, I suppose saying the entire student body isn't quite accurate, because there is one group of people that actually bother to acknowledge my existence.

Even though they're, you know. Bullying me.

Sad but true, I'm an intellectual in a jungle of chest pounding, low browed, muscular dolts with so much school spirit if you inject a twenty ton elephant with it, it'd die. The school has started a new program to get rid of the bad blood between my old school, St. Peter's Academy for the Intellectually Gifted or PAIG (one of the hardest high schools to get in-my mom went there, and went on to go to Harvard and she said Harvard was easier) and my current school, The American Institute for the Athletically Gifted or AIAG (one of the hardest muscle head schools to get in-whoop-dee-freaking-doo).

I honestly couldn't care less about the bad blood between these two schools. PAIG is a total brain on steroids, and AIAG is a total muscle on steroids (excuse the fact that a brain is a muscle too). If I had any choice in the matter, I would have gone to a college specializing in the music industry. I've got some real pipes-not to brag, I'm just saying. I've seen a lot of people enter the music industry that aren't even half as good as me.

Enough with the buts and the whining, though. This is where I am and I've got to deal with what's in front of me instead of complaining and fantasizing. Usually this is where the looser girl of the school would probably introduce her best friend, or even the hottest, most popular air head in the school as her secret crush, and afterwards, the story gets pretty predictable-she ends up falling for the bad boy or the looser, and there's a happily ever after, or maybe she gets with the guy who's popular and sticks it to the Mean Girl.

Well, lucky for you I don't have a crush. I don't have a mysterious past either, or some kind of pained, mysterious side of me. And unlike most protagonists, I'm not white. I'm what my only 'friend' in PAIG liked to call me-a mutt. I'm an Irish-Latina with some Italian thrown in just to make sure my lineage is mutt-y enough. If you still think this is a predictable story, give it another guess, tinkle top.

As we speak, I am being shoved into a locker. I guess you can say I'm the 'smart aleck nerd who knows her way around eloquence and literacy'. You can now scratch off any possibility that I'll have a prince charming, too. Because, really? Real life bites it. I am no bad ass either, but relief be to you I am a total hardcore rocker.

In the shower.

But you can relax and rest easy, because not only am I going to find out something life changing by the end of the day, I either have ESP or I'm just plain psychic. Literally, I kid you not, I have not one clue what I'm going to find out because I was woken up when I was having one of my dreams, but I know it's going to be big. The most I can hope for is that I'm actually adopted and my real parents are huge rock stars, or even rich people.

But, before that happens, I've got to get out of this locker. Jimmy is cool and all for someone who doesn't mind shoving a fifteen-going-on-sixteen girl into a locker, but this boy can peel paint I tell you. Instead of making a big fuss like the people you see on TV do when they get shoved into lockers, I waited until the laughter, mockery, and the smell of month old chilly fries and doughnuts faded. I reached into my pocket, this time not worrying about school property.

I clenched my army knife tightly, leveling it with my wrist, and thrust it through the locker door. If the principle or the dean didn't want me destroying school equipment they shouldn't allow the monkey jungle to throw their metaphorical poop at me. An eye for a locker, I always say. I slid the knife easily to the edges of the locker, marveling at how stupid some of these people can be.