The Mysterious Tale of Wisteria Griffin

I Meet My Imaginary Friend IRL (also he's not imaginary)

I hate trains. I hate any form of transportation other than my own two feet. Or a car. So of course my parents put me on a train to go to Violet Hyacinth Academy. My car was empty. I mean who would want to sit next to the kid with white splotches all over their skin? It also didn't help that I had lots of piercings and a pixie cut with my bangs dyed bright orange. I had on hexagonal, wire-rimmed glasses, and was wearing a pink denim jacket with lots of different pins and patches on it from Sanrio, and K-Pop, to the NB flag and Melanie Martienez. Under the jacket I had a black tube top, bright pink hi-top converse and baggy black jeans with big rips in them. I was sitting in the train car looking out the window, and listening to Highway To Hell, by AC/DC. A fitting song, I thought, since I was going where I was going. Then a boy (at least I assumed he was male) around my age, fourteen, with black hair, and startling gray eyes, like a storm (which most of his hair was in), walked into my car, he was wearing a bright blue hoodie that was very oversize, with black pants, and blue converse, and he had a pair of silver and black bluetooth headphones hanging around his neck. When he first walked in, his eyes widened, and his face paled, but only for a second before he regained his composure.

"Is anyone sitting here?" he asked, gesturing to the seat across from me.

"No . . .?" I said skeptically. The boy sat down on the seat across from me, and before putting on his headphones and tuning out the rest of the world he said,

"And I'm Haven, by the way. What's your name?"

"Wisteria. Griffin." I said.

"That's funny though, I had an imaginary friend named Haven when I was, like, five." I said, then went back to my music. Haven looked stunned.

"What?" I asked.

"What?" Haven replied.

"You look like you just saw a ghost, you okay?"

"Hm? Yeah, no I'm good."

. . .

"Everyone off the train!" The headmaster yelled up and down the cars, and the students all grabbed their bags and filed out of the cars and out of the train. The school was a huge stone building with twisty wrought iron gates that reminded me very vaguely of something I couldn't quite remember.

"Oh . . ." I said. The school looked like something out of a fairy tale. Then someone put a hand on my shoulder, and I instinctively jerked away and turned around and faced Haven.

"¡Buen señor!" I muttered under my breath.

"It's only you." I said.

"So you . . ." he started to say, but then trailed off.

"'So I' what?" I asked defensively. This guy was starting to give me the creeps. Come to think of it, he looked a lot like how I remember my imaginary friend, but she was a girl.

"Nothing." Haven said dismissing the subject quickly.

"Si tú lo dices." Wisteria said.

"Spanish. For If you say so! It is you!" Haven exclaimed.

"¡Me estás asustando, hombre!" I said, turning away from him. Why is he acting like this? Weirdo.

"¿Sabes que hablo español, verdad?" Haven said, in perfect Spanish. I just ignored him and kept walking forward, losing him in the crowd.

While the academy looked like a fairy tale on the outside, the inside was a different story. It felt Victorian, but not in the fancy way, in a stuffy, isolated way. The high-vaulted ceilings and stone . . . well stone everything, was very cave like. The space felt warm, because of all the warm colors and gold, but I felt suffocated. I hated enclosed spaces, and much preferred outside. There was a line in front of the lady at the front desk, so I tapped the girl closest to me on the shoulder. The girl looked friendly enough, she had long blonde hair held back with a chartreuse headband that perfectly matched her dress.