It's been a minute.
•••
It's been hard on Karl to adjust to his new life in the middle of nowhere North Carolina. His life in the big apple was practically stolen from him when his dad got a better office at his job and moved his whole family to the forgotten town of Alkali Bridge.
"It's going to be fun!" His mother said
"We'll get you a dog" His father bribed him
So far Karl has not had any fun or gotten a dog. He wasn't surprised, it wouldn't be the first time his parents lied to him.
Only one more year of lies, and then Karl would be out in the world making his own decisions and lying to himself. At least the new house is nice.
He used to live in New York City with his parents in an apartment complex too little for the high rent. It had a nice view to the city, his favorite was going out into his balcony after a long night of playing video games and observing the pretty dawn.
His father recommended to return to basketball to make friends. Karl had no choice but to listen, it was either that or get a job. In a way Karl made some good friends with a group of boys from his team.
They were loud and seemed to get energy from draining the others around them, but they weren't all that bad. Your typical basketball team friend group. They picked Karl to be a part of their friend group and haven't let them go since.
Sitting in his Spanish class Karl had a rough time trying to understand the warm up his teacher had up on the board. He sat next to one of his teammates, Alex. He had a clear understanding of what was going on and sometimes he tried to explain to Karl the lessons. But you can do so much for a non native speaker that had no interest in using his Spanish outside of the grading scale.
Alex was Karl's favorite friendship he's made in his time at Alkali North High.
"Switching gears to our unit on 'El Museo Vacio' (the empty museum) I think it's time to get into our groups to get started on the final project" The teacher Ms. Taylor announced.
Their Spanish class had been in a reading unit for a while now. They read a mystery thriller short story for a few weeks. During that time students had the opportunity to practice reading the story out loud and after every section there was a quiz to test their understanding. Karl hated that unit.
Karl loved to read but it was hard to love it when he could understand a 35% of what he was reading.
"Hey wanna work together?" Karl asked Alex, safely ensuring an A plus on the project.
"Sure man" Alex nodded, but then he turned his head to the projector in the room. "Oh wait. She picked partners. No easy A for you pal" Alex teased.
"What?" Karl turned his head to the board, seeing a table with groups and names.
"So I went ahead and picked the groups there are five groups of three and one group of two. I want everyone to go to your groups and then I'll explain the assignment" Ms. Taylor said while students began getting up from their seats and moving around.
"Shit you got with the baddest girl in the grade. Lucky bastard. Have fun with Bunny" Alex sighed getting up from his seat and leaving Karl alone.
Karl was confused at first he wasn't sure if he heard correctly. Were you a furry?
"Hi, are you Karl?" You asked, your backpack hanging from your shoulder and iPad held onto your side. You preferred to use your iPad for school.
Karl looked up and for the first time in a while he had nothing to say.
