Pricked

8. Fear

Chapter 8: Fear

I thought that the nightmares would-could only take over me in the veil of night...Well, I was wrong. Friday during fourth period I was at a curious class called Atomology for the Specially Selected. I had never heard of this class and was therefore very interested to find out what it was. Well, because of my new band of...friends I suppose you could say I was not the first to come to class. Rather the opposite actually; in fact I was one of the last, which ended up giving me a seat in the middle of the second to last row with one of the boys I had been told to stay away from sitting on my front left. He sneered at me as I walked past, I tried to keep my head down and avoided looking at him.

Just as I reached my seat the bell rang. "Alright class. settle down, settle down," the teacher claimed attention at the front of the room. "For the few of you who don't know me I’m a doctor. Or, the doctor I suppose you could say." the class chuckled, I seemed to have missed the joke. "You all may call me Dr. Maude."

A girl raised her hand a few rows ahead of me, I recalled her name being Jenny: some sort of perky blond.  "Yes?"

"What's your first name?"

"My name is James Maude. But, as I said before I would prefer it if you called me Dr. Maude. Now, if you don't mind, you may have the pleasure of knowing my name, but I still yet to know all of yours. Let's start attendance shall we?" He made his way to the front of the room where he picked up a clipboard and started reading names off it. "Dalek Nightong, Prince Newton"--and yes there was a boy in my class named prince--"Soren O'Donohue, and Jessica Patrick" were among them.  Until he got to my name, "Katherine Silver?"

"Here," I spoke from the back of the classroom. The students all started whispering none too quietly amongst themselves. This had happened a few times before in my classes, but now it seemed rather overwhelming because this time it wasn't just a few people of the side of the room, it was everyone.

"Is she one of the Silvers?"

"No, she can't be."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"See, I told you she was a Silver. But would you believe me?"

"Of all people, her-"

Were some of the snippets of conversation that I caught.

"Ahem!" Dr. Maude tried to gain the classes attention.

'Well, Mr. Silver does have a brother."

"No!" A collective gasp happened in the classroom, "I don't believe you."

"He does!" the boy insisted, "I saw him with my own eyes!"

"EXCUSE ME!!" he roared, causing a collective silence to fall of the room. "Ms. Silver, may I assume from all the ruckus that you are the new student in town?" I nodded. "Well, in this class it is customary that any new person in town stands up here to answer a few questions that their classmate have for them. So, would you mind coming up here please?" I pushed back my chair as swallowed my nervousness as I went to the front of the room.

"Now then, allow me to start with a first question, just to ease you in. What do you prefer to be called?"

I shrugged, "Katherine; but you can call me Kathy or Katie or Rin if you like." Those seemed to be what the people I'd been hanging around had been calling me, and I didn't mind any of the nicknames. As long as they didn't call me Alley I was fine.

"Alright class raise your hand if you've something you'd like to ask Katherine." Just about everyone's hands shot up in the air. "Now, we won't be able to get through all of you today, but I'll pick on a few of you. Meredith."