Taint, Time and Tangents✔️

≑ Chapter Three

To Sarah (sj_onas)  for being my first follower. Thank you so much! xoxo

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CALLIE

White Cypress Private School.

My heart was pounding loudly as I crossed the large gate of the school I would be attending from now on. This was the place where my best friend had been staying most of his life. And days--- no, maybe hours after this, I would be seeing him.  

I couldn't contain my excitement as I walked, gazing at the white building in front of me. A large clock was fixed on the exterior wall of its top floor with the big hand pointing on the space between the letters IX and X. I had to think for a whole minute before I managed to understand that it was already past 9:00am on the human world.

So I'm already more than two hours late?

Not bad for a newly transformed human... But maybe a little bad for a new student.

Well, thanks to my exhaustion yesterday night, I ended up waking an hour late to my class. I could still remember Mum's horrific expression when she saw me eating on the dining area earlier. She instantly went into panic mode and discouraged me from attending classes today to avoid, according to her, an 'unpleasant first impression'. However, after thinking it through, this would probably be the best time to look around the school and, of course, look for my best friend.

As I walked, I rummaged my shoulder bag for the school map Mum had handed me. It turned out that the girls attending this school are required to stay on our dormitory throughout the whole year.  That had left me wondering why there were only a few rooms on our dorm whereas they should have a bunch to accommodate all the girls attending this large school.

Is this school dominated by guys? Or there's another dormitory other than ours?

Wondering about all these, I scanned the map on my hand. It seemed that the building before me was only a small portion of the school. What lies behind was much more enormous. There were two large boxes printed on each side of the school with 'FIELD' labeled on them and buildings appeared to just sprout everywhere.

Using the map as a guide, I reached a tinted glass door with the word 'MAIN OFFICE' engraved on it after perhaps almost an hour. The room was cold as I stepped inside it and a strong smell of perfume was drifting on the air.

A thin, hunched lady was sitting behind the counter and, inspite of her serious look and bushy dark hair, I noticed that she has a pretty face. 

I walked towards her and a minute had passed before she looked up from the screen of a computer in her desk.

Breathing deeply, I introduced myself. "Hi, I'm Callie Boulstridge. I'm new and--"

Before I could finish talking, she grabbed a paper on her left and placed it on the counter before me. She immediately turned back to what she was doing, as if nothing happened.  

As I looked over my schedule, the lady suddenly spoke in a croaky voice. "Late at your first day... What a brave soul."

I stuffed the paper on my bag, not saying anything. I was about to leave when an idea struck me. I turned back to the lady. "Is there something, um, maybe a list of students in this school?"

She looked at me suspiciously before pointing at something on the adjacent counter. Seeing a thick pile of papers lying on it, my palms went cold.

The name of my best friend must be there--- no, was surely there. I grabbed the papers and my eyes  browsed the first page. It was a long list of names, arranged alphabetically by surname, with an eight-digit student number following each of them.