Dance of Time

Leo

The bell rang, causing me to jump out of my seat, it felt like I'd only been asleep for a second, but class was already finished.

"Come on sleepy head!" That's my new friend Paul. "Schools out! Kids bark, dogs shout... I mean dogs bark, kids shout! No more children, no more books, no more teachers dirty looks! No more English, no more French, no more sitting on a hard board bench!"

"Yeah... Ok Paul, don't you think that songs a little out-dated, we sit in chairs, not on benches and we don't even learn French. Plus, its lunch now and not the end of the day."

"I know that Leo, but the last class of the day is sport and the only class i'm excited about."

Paul and I have almost nothing in common; he was short and hated sports, while I was tall and actually enjoyed physical exercise. So I was a little confused as to why he was looking forward to exercise. And told him as much.

"Well," he said. "You know how I told you about the new people that enrolled yesterday?"

"Yeah," I didn't know who he was talking about, but I knew to just go with the flow, Paul seemed to always know about random stuff going on in the town.

"They're gonna to be in our Phys-ed class this afternoon and instead of doing sport, we're gonna have a get-to-know-you class thingy."

"Paul, did you ever consider that the get-to-know-you thingy might have something to do with sport?"

"Aww, Leo, dude, you just killed my vibe!"

"Yep, I tend to do that a lot it seems."

We make our way out of the classroom and into the yard where (strangely) some people are gathering in a circle around a lump on the ground.

Paul pushes his way to the front of the crowd to get a better look, while I hang back. I have a pretty good idea of what it is that has caught their attention, and of the gruesomeness that it brings with it. Also, people probably wouldn't enjoy the new kid pushing them around.

That was the way my life was; moving around from place to place when the orphanages and foster homes kicked me out (I'm already too old to get adopted- no one want's an angsty teenager), and having to move schools as well, only staying at one place long enough to make one friend, maybe two, and then being forced to move along again because they'd find one reason or another to kick me out. People never trusted the new kid in town, especially one with my kind of... uh, backstory...

I turn my attention back to the problem at hand: the dead possum.

Some people had taken their phones out and were taking photos, some people had moved forward to poke at it... And one person had made a puddle of vomit on the ground that everyone was trying hard to avoid.

That is, everyone except for Paul.

He'd made his way to the front of the crowd and was quickly beelining toward the possum, when he made contact with the vomit, skidded... Then slipped... And landed face-first in the possum, with his books falling around him.

The people around the circle collectively gasped and cringed, just when the teacher came out to see what all the fuss was about.

She walked toward the group of people and they parted like the ocean to let her through.

"I want everyone to take ten steps backward," she said as if she were some kind of police enforcement officer. The crowd was deathly silent. "And I want you," she pointed to a red headed girl toward the back. "To go to the office and tell them to ring the pest removal people." The girl nodded and ran off while the teacher made her way menacingly toward Paul and the possum, which wasn't actually dead, and was squirming and trying to get out from under Paul's face.

"Paul, can you please come over here? Now."

Paul slowly picked himself up - vomit and all - turned to face the teacher and walked toward her, while the possum scurried straight toward me.

Like I was saying about my... Uh, backstory... it wasn't what you would normally think. Usually you'd think of gangs and prison and stuff like that. But it wasn't anything like that for me. Everywhere I went the animals got weird, they'd get smarter and start to do stuff that normal animals wouldn't, like unlocking windows to get inside and using electrical appliances like microwaves (trust me, I've seen it happen- nothings weirder than watching a koala putting gum leaves in a microwave and setting them on high for a minute) and they'd always hang around me a lot, so I wasn't surprised when the possum leapt onto my shoulder.

"Paul," the teacher said, "I want you to go to the change rooms and wash that muck off." She looked at him like he was a bug she'd just squashed under her hand by accident. "I don't care if you get your clothes wet, just get it off!"

Paul nodded, picked up his books and made his way toward the change rooms, the possum and I followed him while the crowd dispersed.

"Leo," the teacher called to me, "I suppose you know where to take that creature?"

"yep." I reply, not caring with formality.

She huffs and stalks off, looking for more children to harass.

"Are you seriously gonna take that possum away?" Paul asks me.

"Nope."

"What are you gonna do with it?"

"Take it home."

Paul nods and opens the door to the change rooms, accepting my strange reasoning.

He takes a shower while the possum sits on my head and I eat my lunch, feeding it bits of bread crust.

When Paul gets out of the shower we just sit there outside of the gymnasium and recount what had happened before lunch to anyone who asked (and ignored their weird looks at the possum) until the bell went and we had to go in.

"Is everybody here?" Our P.E. teacher, Mr Diablo, never bothered with the roll, he said it was time-wasting and unnecessary.

"Yes." We all muttered, eager to see who the new people were.

"This is Stacy, she just moved here from New Zealand," Mr Diablo pointed to a tall blonde girl with braces, "and this is-" he looked over at me. "Leo, why do you have a possum in the gym?"

"Well," I said. "If I didn't bring it inside, then the pest removal people would have taken it away and maybe killed it. So I thought that it would be safer with me." People were giving me strange looks, and for some reason, the new guy that was yet-to-be-named was giving me a huge grin and a thumbs up gesture.

"What's wrong with him?" Paul whispers to me as the possum climbs down to my shoulder.

"No idea." I whisper back.

"Leo?" Mr Diablo asked. "Is that possum alright with having balls thrown at it from across the court?"

"Yep."

"Then it can join in with the game."

He addressed the whole class again. "This is Erick, he didn't say where he was from." He points to the other new kid who was of middling height with bright blue hair (I'm taking a guess that it was dyed) and was wearing some of the strangest clothes that I've ever seen, -they were cut lopsided so that it looked like they were about to slide off his body diagonally and were fluro green and orange that clashed horribly with his hair.

"I just wanna say," Erick said slowly, as if he thought we wouldn't understand. "That you guys are all awesome!" He walks over to me, puts his arm around my shoulders and pulls out what looks to be a small black stick and holds it up.

"Umm, dude," I say, "what are you doing?"

"Just play along." He turns back to the class and Mr Diablo. "I want everybody to look here." He held up the stick, and there was a brilliant flash of light.

Erick tightens his grip on my shoulders and I hear a click, then a high-pitched buzzing noise, and I was falling through darkness without any sense of which way was up or down. There wasn't even any wind.

I had just enough time for my mind to process this, before I hit a cold metal floor and everything goes blank.