Destiny's Institute

Part One - Chapter Three - Destiny Was Met With The Shake Of A Hand

          I trudged through the dark, genuinely terrifying halls. The walls were narrow and littered, and that began to make me wonder about the 'life changing' staff that my father had spoken of before we left the house. I really hoped that a man in his forties wasn't taking care of this place all on his own. He might break a hip, or become seriously crippled. Though, the people that Chancellor hired as his staff were most likely on the edge of crippledness too. Anyway, I dragged my suitcase behind me, its wheels squealing across the floor, which actually seemed to be well polished, despite the trash surrounding the border of the walls. "Why do I feel like we're taking a trek down Mount Fuji?" I inquired, almost flopping down on the cold, hard floor tirelessly. "Just a little more walking, Miss Cyllis," Chancellor answered, turning around and grinning at me. His teeth were quite white. Too white. "Yeah, Lynn. We've only been walking for, like, less than a minute," Auden added. "Maybe think about actually participating in gym class?"

"Maybe think about actually participating in gym class," I mocked behind Auden's back, but he just whipped his head around and glared at me. I smirked at him. He turned back around, speaking to Chancellor, saying way too enthusiastically, "Do I have any roommates?" while twiddling his fingers, the thing he always does when he's a mixture of nervous and excited. 'Nervouscited' is a word that combines the two words together into one word. That was what I came up with when Auden began the habit of twiddling his fingers in the second grade. You see, Auden is only two years ahead of me, which means he was two when I was born. I vaguely remember him stealing my pacifier when I was, like, one, stealing my stuffed elephant when I was two, and torturing me for about three more years. That all stopped when I turned five. That's the year I retaliated. He was seven at the time, and was still into childish stuff like coloring and making macaroni art for elementary school art contests. The really weird thing about him is that when he finished with the macaroni art and had displayed it to the class, it would be eaten by the time he got home with it. So, when I was five, I told everyone in my kindergarten class that he ate boogers and macaroni with dried glue on the back. Every time one of my friends came over for a play date and Auden would walk in to ask if he could play, my friend, generally a little girl younger than me, (I liked to feel powerful over the younger generation) would point a finger at Auden and yell, "Booger and macaroni with dried glue on the back eater!" and then roll on her back with her feet straight in the air and giggle until she wheezed and gasped for breath. Of course I was too smart to ruin my master plan, so I would generally just shrug my shoulders and attempt to feign innocence... until he leaves. That's when the laughter that causes actual tears rises above, and when my father would come up and ask why Auden was crying. That's when I realized that he was going to be dubbed 'crybaby of the family' for all his existence. I mean, the fact that a four and five year old child can make that boy cry is really unacceptable. He's going to be in college, and they're going to ask him his name and he's going to burst into tears because it's going to be 'offensive' and 'insulting'. I'll make sure to laugh when we get that phone call. That's when my thoughts became coherent again and I realized Chancellor had been talking to Auden about his roommates the whole time I was behind them, my flashbacks playing like a surprisingly detailed movie in my mind. "You'll hopefully meet a few role models, ones that can stick up for you and be by your side through it all," Chancellor spoke, beginning to name Auden's roommates. "Now, you only have two, because apparently my school wasn't alluring to some. There's Maverick Elrod and Cole Madden. Maverick can sometimes tend to be... clueless. He makes random assumptions and seems to be simply guessing in all my classes, but don't let that fool you. He's got smarts that come from the street, as I hear people say often."

"'Street smarts'?" I questioned, a confused expression replacing the honestly bored one.

"Yes, that word." I rolled my eyes. This man must have been living under a rock all his forty years of life. "Anyway," he continued. "Lastly, there's Cole. Cole's got the integrity and intelligence, but it seems as though he doesn't want to use it. He could ace my classes with relative ease, but instead, he decides to feign stupidity and lands himself in detention ever so often for irrelevant answers. He wants to be the clown of the class because he thinks that's what is going to make him cool, but it's just making him seem dumber." I scoffed. Is this dude a stalker or something? He seems to know a lot about his students, though when I looked at a list that we had just passed by of our classes, Chancellor only gets to see the boys for, like, thirty-five minutes. I'm genuinely wondering how he knows this much based on how much time he really sees him during the day. "Wait..." I muttered, realizing the most minor detail I seemed to have missed. "Do I have roommates?" Please say no, please say no, please say no, I pleaded inside my head, crossing my fingers behind my back and maintaining a hopeful glint in my eye. "In fact..." Please! The suspense was secretly killing me. "You do have roommates."