The Secrets of Zodiac Academy ✔

1 - Bright Beginnings

Taurus looked up at the large gates of Zodiac Academy. Students that were conversing in the yard turned to look at Taurus, leaving her short glances before returning to their own conversations. Taurus gulped and took a deep breath before pushing open the heavy gate and walking in.

Taurus was the new student at Zodiac Academy. She would be apart of the gifted program, a place where the kids who got in on scholarship would go for classes. The other kids who were rich and had paid to get in would be in other classes and grades. Taurus' mom had told her that only 11 kids were in the gifted program, so it would be a small class. Still, Taurus was scared. She hadn't been in a gifted class; she had only heard that it was very hard.

When Taurus entered the Gifted wing, she opened up her shoulder bag and dug out her schedule. She had math with Mr. Collins, room 121. The hallway was lined with lockers, three openings on each side. The first opening was room 119, Language Arts. The opening on the other side held room 120, for gifted Art. The next door was the math classroom on the left & the history classroom on the right. The last two doorways were gifted Music and Spanish. A set of large glass doors stood at the end of the passage, obviously the gym. The hallway opened on the left, merging with a larger corridor. Kids filled the large corridor, but oddly enough, nobody was in the gifted hall. Taurus shrugged it off and headed to math.

When Taurus entered the room, she was surprised. Everyone was standing above desks, yelling across the room, doing whatever the heck they wanted. A tall male teacher stood in the front of the classroom, writing something on the board. He seemed either completely oblivious to the chaos in the room, or totally unbothered by them. Whichever it was, he said nothing to the class. Taurus quietly observed from the doorway.

There was a large guy standing on a chair in the middle of the classroom, yelling across the room at the top of his lungs. His hair was gelled and spiky, making him look like a total jock. The guy shouting at him was tall, but not too thin, with short blonde hair swept back and cool blue eyes. Taurus immediately thought of the cool boys in the books she liked to read. In a corner in the front of the classroom, there were two girls wearing lots of makeup, and still applying more. They were both really pretty, one with dark black hair and green eyes, and the other with dirty-blonde hair and hazel eyes. Towards the teacher's desk corner, two girls and a boy were doodling or drawing something. One of the girls had shoulder-length blonde hair and giggled a lot. The other girl also had blonde hair in two pigtails, but she didn't giggle as much. The boy smiled at the giggly girl in an adoring way, but the giggly girl seemed oblivious. At the very front of the classroom, a boy and a girl wearing glasses were looking up at the board and scribbling in their notebooks. In the back, a girl was staring into space aimlessly, and a boy was leaning against the back wall, his arms crossed and his mouth filled with gum.

The teacher turned around and looked at the door, where Taurus froze. The teacher's eyes were warm and welcoming. He smiled and waved at Taurus, beckoning for her to come to the front of the class. She squeezed her way through the desks, muttering 'excuse me' again and again, until she finally reached the front of the classroom. The teacher clapped twice, directing everyone's attention towards himself. Everyone sat in their seats and looked up at Taurus.

"Okay class," Mr. Collins said. "We have a new student in class today! This is Taurus. She's going to be joining the gifted classes for the rest of the year! Taurus, would you like to say anything about maybe where you are from?"

Taurus snuck a quick peak across the class, looking at everyone's faces. The two makeup girls looked bored, the jock guys were smirking at each other, two of the doodling kids (the boy and the girl he was looking at) were smiling sweetly at Taurus while the other girl was still doodling, the daydreaming girl was still, well, daydreaming, the mysterious boy was chewing on the gum, and the glasses kids in front were wide-eyed, looking at each other intermittently.

Taurus said, "Well, I was born in New Jersey, but then I moved to Hartford, Connecticut, till we moved here for the gifted thingy."

Mr. Collins smiled, his mustache curving. "Very nice! Well, you can choose a seat and go sit down!" Taurus made her way to the back of the classroom, where nobody was sitting. The class started, and Taurus participated a lot. She saw the big jock guy look back at her a couple times, and the front row nerd girls looked at her once, but overall, nobody gave her much attention - which she was thankful for. As the day went on, the same trend continued. All the way until lunch.

Taurus walked into the cafeteria, where lots of people sat, talking, eating, and laughing with their friends. She held her lunch nervously while scanning the cafeteria for somewhere to sit. She saw a hand waving at her, and instinctively, Taurus turned back to see if anyone was waving at the hand. When she saw that there was nobody there, she walked toward the hand, which she found to belong to the staring boy from math.

"Hi! You're Taurus, right?" Taurus nodded.

"Cool! I'm Cancer. Welcome to GT!" Cancer held his hand out and Taurus shook it. Next to him was the doodling girl, still doodling, and across from him was the other girl. She looked really excited. "This is Gemini," Cancer said, gesturing towards the excited girl. "She's always like this, don't worry!"

Taurus smiled and laughed. "Cool! Who's the other girl?" Taurus tilted her head towards the doodling girl.

"I'm Pisces!" the girl exclaimed for a split second, her eyes lighting up. She instantly returned to her drawing. Taurus looked at Cancer with an eyebrow up questioningly. Cancer mouthed, 'It's normal', causing both of them to burst out laughing.

"Sit down! We have space for another!" Gemini said. Taurus sat down next to Gemini. "I love making new friends! I'm so excited you are here, you know? When the teachers told us about you, I was super happy! In fact, you were all I ever talked about during lunch all week! Ask Cancer and Pisces, if you want. Speaking of lunch, what do you have? Do you want an extra cookie? I don't like these Oatmeal Raisin cookies but my mom still packed me them. Yes, my mom does pack me lunch but only because I'm a kinda picky eater. Picky eater reminds me of dill pickles. I love those dill pickles, don't you? They are so delicious!! And green too! That's my favorite color. Well, like all the rainbow colors, because all of them are amazing! I like art too. Do you like art? I love to watch people do art too, like Pisces! She's really into doodling and she's awesome at it too! Once, she drew a wolf from memory and the popular girls thought she traced it, but Cancer and I knew she didn't. Because Pisces is just so good. But she doesn't talk enough. Heck, nobody in the GT classes talks enough! They say I talk too much, but I don't think so. If you met my old friend Melissa from my old school, you would not think so. Cuz she talked so much.... I barely caught up with her. Speaking of catching up with people, do you think I am a fast runner? I'll demonstrate later. I'm hungry now. Say, did you want my cookie?"

Taurus looked at Gemini, wide-eyed, mouth dangling open. "Uh....sure?"

"Great!" Gemini exclaimed. She plopped a plastic wrapped oatmeal raisin cookie in Taurus' lunchbox, before rambling on about random things. And while Taurus struggled to keep up with Gemini, she wondered if maybe this new school wouldn't be as bad as she thought.

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That was the first chapter! Yes, I know, the class is heavily girl dominated, but it seemed like those genders suited the characters I imagined in my head. There will be couples, crushes, and stuff like that, just not in the first couple chapters. Really, this story is about friendship, trust, and stuff like that, while it's also kinda Teen Fiction, Action/Adventure, and Zodiac all in one!

Updates will be as soon as I finish each part. Since I also have to meet the deadline for the Wattys and work on my other complaint book, updates might be a bit slow. I'll try my best to get it in.

Thanks for reading! :) Until next time,
ThatOneGirl083