Killed Killers (NaNoWriMo 2015)

Chapter One

    "I'm seriously beginning to think that the teachers just sit around during break scheming up ways to make class more and more boring." Zo complained, to Ere. "I mean, why don't we all just use Khan Academy or some other online resource to learn our stuff? I barely have any homework ever just because I do it during the hour of school that they have the nerve to call class. That time is no more 'class' than my-"

    "Zo, I'm going to have to ask you to refrain." Ere cut her friend off before she could say something that she would later regret. Zo scowled at her, and Ere smiled innocently back. They turned down a back hallway towards where their lockers sat at the very end of the building. The ugly green tin that the school had thrown in haphazardly five years after the building had been built could hardly be called lockers; all you had to do to unlock them was bang a knee or a fist against it and the door would swing open.

    "Seriously, though. Are you even listening to me, Ere? Just do your homework in class and then you'll have more free time at home. What do you even do with your home free time anyways?" Zo cocked her head, shooting a side glance in Ere's direction

    "Anime and books." Ere muttered. Zo did know what she did in her free time, she just didn't approve. She found at least one way per day to knock Ere's anime obsession. Her favorite way seemed to be finding a bunch of other girls who didn't like anime and asking them to tell Ere exactly how they felt about it. Thinking about it now, Ere wondered why Zo was even still her friend. She didn't like any of the same things, she was an extreme extrovert where Ere was the opposite, and she hated school where Ere didn't really mind it. Maybe it was because they had known each other practically since birth. Their moms had been best friends back before the mistake.
   
    Finally, they reached their lockers. Ere had the misfortune of being the half locker directly underneath Zo, and as a result had to put up with thing being dropped on her head every single time she went to her locker. Zo's locker items found their way out of her locker daily, and since gravity was a thing, that meant that they also found their way directly onto Ere's head. She managed to avoid any serious injury due to falling objects this passing period, using her acquired ninja skills to dodge the hail of freshly sharpened pencils that made their way out of Zo's locker.

    Five minutes later, she found herself in her seat in the back of her first period class, health. The health classroom was her favorite room. Floor to ceiling glass windows surrounded two sides of the room, allowing a lot of light and the sun's warmth into the room. Her favorite time to be in the room was when the sky was grey, as though it wanted to cry. When it rained during that kind of weather, Ere liked to think that it had gotten its wish, and was finally allowing itself a moment to just cry.

    This period in health they were studying various different mental disorders, all of which Ere knew about already and many of which she'd had to study already in middle school. She stared out the window as the teacher at the front of the room rambled on about multiple personality disorder and how exactly it effected the people who had it. The sun was shining, and it looked like a beautiful day outside, but Ere knew better. The middle days of August had a deceitful nature to them. You would wake up in the morning and look outside, finding the sky bright and the day promising, so you would throw on a t-shirt and shorts and run outside, only to find your toes were about to fall off because of frostbite.

    She watched a squirrel jumped off of one of the top branches of the tree right outside the window and land gracefully on the one right below it. Another scampered playfully behind it, and although she could not hear them, she could imagine their joyous squeaks as they chased each other through the branches of the oak tree. A bluebird flew past the window, and she jumped as it almost ran straight into the uneven brick wall right by the glass.

    "Ere, are you paying any attention at all?" Her teacher, Mrs. Hanes asked, putting her hands on her hips and looking at Ere with clear disapproval in her eyes.

    "Yes Mrs. Hanes. I was just wondering what the most personalities found in one person would be." Ere had learned all of her tricks to avoid getting in trouble about not paying attention in class from Zo. If you had to avoid trouble, Zo was the person to go to, because she never got in trouble but was one of the worst students at their school. Not that she got bad grades or anything, she was a hardcore crammer the night before tests. She was pretty good at it too, but personally, Ere thought that paying attention in class was a better option, even though she rarely put her theory into practice.

    Mrs. Hanes was already submerged in answering Ere's question, the woman didn't have an ounce of suspicion in her. If she did, she would have figured out long ago that most of the questions that Ere asked she already knew the answer to and only asked them so that she could seem like she was engaged in health class. The answer to this particular question was actually way more than one hundred. She didn't actually know the exact number, but she wasn't interested in the answer.

    She looked back over to the window, expecting to find the squirrels back to play, but the tree branches were empty, showing no signs of life. Her gaze drifted back along the length of the tree branch, following the swirling patterns of the bark until she reached the trunk. Suddenly, she caught a movement in the corner of her eye, towards the right side of the windows. She glanced over, and nearly jumped out of her seat when she saw a face in the intersection of a branch and the trunk of another tree.

    "Wha-" She started, standing abruptly out of her seat and pointing over at the face, but before she could even finish the word that she was on it disappeared. She was left standing in the middle of the classroom staring out the window and pointing to a tree. Mrs. Hanes gave her a worried look. What with being a health teacher and all, she must have been very, very worried about Ere's sanity at that point. Plus, Ere was a very introverted student, so for her to pull a stunt like this would not have been within character.

    "Ere, are you doing alright?" Mrs. Hanes asked, snapping Ere out of her daze.

    "Uh, I'm fine." Ere mumbled, promptly sitting back down and proceeding to glare at the papers scattered over her desk.

    "Okay..." Mrs. Hanes replied, sounding as though she wasn't quite convinced. She looked like she wanted to come over and feel Ere's forehead to make sure that she wasn't running a fever. She shook her head as if to clear it and continued on with her lesson, slowly at first until she picked up a little bit of speed and moved on from multiple personality disorder to bipolar personality disorder. Ere couldn't stop looking at the window where she had seen the face, expecting it to reappear at any moment. She tried to remember what it looked like, but all she could really remember with any clarity was the beautiful icy blue eyes that had stared back into her own. She could vaguely remember short, sandy blonde hair above them, but she couldn't be sure that was what she had seen. She sat through the rest of health in a daze, trying to make sense of what had happened and what she had seen.

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