Love You to Death

Chapter 2: New School

I apologize in advance for not really understanding how the British school system works. I tried to do some research but I have a feeling I'm still going to get something mixed up.

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Jimmy slouched down in his seat on the bus. He pressed the side of his head to the window and worked on a jagged hook on his thumbnail. The world outside his window flew by in a blur of grey monotony. Jimmy hated England. Everything here was dull, nothing like Ireland.

[Flashback to a few months prior, when the Moriartys lived in Ireland]

Jimmy pushed open the door to his family's flat and kicked off his shoes into the corner. "'ello, Ma," he called, out of habit, on his way to his room. Brigid ignored him. Jimmy threw his backpack onto his cot and grabbed a tattered copy of Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan from under his pillow. Jimmy walked out of the flat, not bothering to tell his mother where he was going. Brigid was sitting in the old, sagging arm chair and staring at the opposite wall, something she had taken to doing quite a lot recently. Jimmy was doing some research on her condition in his spare time.

Jimmy passed by the boys playing stickball in the empty lot and the teenagers smoking weed behind the old school building. He ran past the dockworkers sitting outside the pub and drinking beer. Jimmy didn't spot Seamus among them, and wondered briefly where his father was. Seamus had been spending more and more time away from the flat, sometimes even staying away all night. Jimmy had heard snippets of the old biddies' gossip and what they thought he did in his spare time, but Jimmy chose not the believe them.

Jimmy had a special tree. It was an old, gnarled Aesculus hippocastanum. It had been his tree as long as he could remember. The old thing was located in a big green meadow, tucked away in the corner and for the most part deserted. Everyone once in a while, some runny-nosed little kid would come by, looking for horse chestnuts to play conkers with, and Jimmy would wait for it to leave.

With easily accesses footholds, the tree was easy to climb. Jimmy sat about fifteen feet up, at the convergence of two large branches. He nestled into what he considered his 'nest', concealed from prying eyes by the thick foliage. Looking out, Jimmy could see miles and miles of rolling green hills stretching away from the docks like waves on the ocean. The land had an almost mystical quality to it, and it wasn't so hard to imagine that things lived in those hills, things more likely to be listed in the pages of The Brothers Grimm than in Jimmy's Encyclopedia of Life.

[End flashback]

But that was Ireland. Here in England, there were no magical, rolling green hills, there was just rain and dirt and monotony, and Jimmy detested it.

He glanced around the bus, quickly reading the other children. A blond boy with neatly pressed clothes and a small dog, judging by the hairs on his pant legs. Two girls were giggling together, occasionally sneaking a glance at an older, flame-haired boy who sat across the aisle. Jimmy considered telling them that the object of their affections had a bad habit of snoring and was already smoking cigarettes, but decided not too. They could find out for themselves.

The bus pulled up at Jimmy's new school and he got off, along with a few of the others. Jimmy trudged into the building, looking around for an administrative office where he could figure out what he was supposed to do here. The building was old, but not in a respected-and-established sort of way, rather a abandoned-for-something-newer-halfway sort of old.

He found the main office and pushed open the wooden door. The secretary looked up and smiled. "Make yourself at home, dear," she said kindly, "I'll go and find your file. Name?" "James Moriarty," Jimmy replied, hating the sound of his full first name. "One second, dear," the secretary said and disappeared into the back of the office.

The secretary reappeared a minute later with a thin manila folder. She winced and commented, "It's my hip. Bloody thing been hurting something awful lately." From your exotic dancing, Jimmy thought silently. "You're Irish, now aren't you?" the secretary said, leading through his file. Jimmy nodded. "Well, I hope you like it here," the woman said brightly as she handed Jimmy his schedule.

Jimmy had snuck inside the school over the summer to memorize the layout and familiarize himself with the school. It had been a simple matter, really. A few tricks, a pickpocketed key, and a small diversion, and Jimmy had the halls to himself for a few hours.

So when Jimmy received his schedule, he knew where his classes were and the quickest routes to get to them. He nodded to the secretary and walked to homeroom. Jimmy took a seat in the back of the class and waited for the teacher to take notice of him. The bell rang and the teacher stood up, motioning for the other students to be quiet. "I would like to welcome our new student, James Moriarty. Come up here, James."

Jimmy hissed under his breath and walked to the front of the room. He could feel the stares drilling into the back of his head. A small child, Jimmy had skipped a grade and was thusly even more tiny compared to his peers. He had tried to make sure his clothes were clean, but with every step he became more and more conscious of the hole in his jumper sleeve and the stain on the left leg of his pants.

Reaching the front of the room, Jimmy turned around and faced the class. Silence. "Let's give a warm welcome to James," the teacher said a little too cheerily. A polite clap. "Where do you come from, James?" the teacher asked. "Ireland," Jimmy said quietly. "Ahh, that's a nice place," the man replied, "Do you have any relatives here?" Jimmy shook his head. "Can you tell the class a few things about Ireland?"

Jimmy considered saying that it was a hell of a lot better than England, but he didn't want a detention on his first day, so he bit his tongue. "It's a beautiful place," he said, " an' there are rolling green hills as far as the eye can see. The weather is fierce sometimes, but we make the most of it. In the winter, we go sledding down the biggest hills ya ever did see, an' we build ramps to launch our sleds off." Jimmy was painfully aware of how strange his soft, Irish accent sounded.

"Thank you, James," the teacher said pointedly, and there were a few scattered claps. Jimmy took his seat and waited for the day to begin, dreading the round of introductions that would surely follow in every other class.

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There you go, the second chapter of Love You to Death.  Thanks for reading!