Hero

Hero 1

                I scuttled down the tightly packed hallways like a marble in a pinball machine. Every time I took a step I managed to find something to bump into that sent me flying in another direction. It’s not like I’m a clumsy person or anything. At my old school there were several more hundred kids in a graduating class and I never had trouble with getting through the hallways there. The smaller hallways here make it seem like there were more kids in this school than my last, which was completely untrue.

                I was aiming for their little library that was quite pitiful in quantity and quality of books. When I entered the room, it was rather small compared to what I was used to, but at least it wasn’t stuffed with as many kids. I paused for a moment and took a sigh of relief to escape from the buzzing chatter that circulated through the hallways like a plague. I had heard news about how peoples’ summers had gone, who was going out with who, which teachers didn’t care if you texted and which teacher gave you a detention for simply having ear buds sticking out of your pocket. With all the information I gathered, I could probably fit in just fine.

                I swept through the silent room, now with only the papery noise of some active reader flipping a page and the thrum of someone typing at one of the computers to keep me company.

                Brushing my finger up against the bindings of old hard cover books I began my search for the non-fiction section.

                Fiction was one of the worst things this world had to offer. I hate fiction. I’ll admit there was a point in my younger years that I admired stories about young wizards and haunting ghosts, but now I look at fiction to only be used with children. An old friend of mine had a thing for those types of books, and one day she asked why I wouldn’t read them.

“Because it’s a load of bullshit. All that stuff doesn’t exist and thus could possibly never take place. There’s no point in reading something that is utterly and completely fake.” I said simply to her.

                And of course she pouted for a few minutes more or less before acting on as if I hadn’t said a word on the matter, talking about how much she wished she could have a vampire boyfriend to watch her sleep at night.

                When I finally reached the Non-Fiction area, I began searching for a few books on this little city’s history. There really wasn’t much to offer, but I managed to find three books, one being quite recent, while the other two were practically primeval.

                After I checked out the three books with the slightly distracted librarian whose face was stuck in a romance novel, I put on a brave face and prepared myself for the pinball machine that was this high school.

                The hallways weren’t nearly as full before, and I soon realized why, because seconds after I stepped out of the door, a metallic bell echoed down and around me, and people shuffled to their classes, leaving me and a few stragglers left behind. 

                Isn’t that bittersweet?

                And so began my pitiful little jog, keeping the three books wedged between my arm and my side, holding out in front of me my freshly printed schedule and a small map of the grounds. I was so focused on trying to decide if a left or a right would shave a few seconds off my mad dash to homeroom when I found myself ramming into something quite large and rather sturdy.

                The two papers flew into the air, and gently sank down to the floor while the three books I was holding scattered in front of me. Immediately my first assumption was that I ran into a wall or a door or even perhaps a water fountain, but when I saw a pair of large shoes in front of me, I didn’t have to look up to know it was a teacher.