Never Change

1 - Harry

"Who can name the answer to number 7 from the homework?"

He blinked, flexed his left hand and felt the denim from the jeans against his fingers. He blinked again hoping to understand why the feel of denim jeans felt foreign to him.

"Mr. Wales?" He startled, looking to the right. A girl, no more than sixteen, with red hair in a pony tail was starring at him expectantly. He looked to his other side looking for who the woman at the front of the room could be referring to and saw eyes starring back at him. Was that him? Wales? He had no clue.

He stared at the teacher searching his brain for his name. A name. Any name. Nothing. Blank. He had no idea what his name or the name of anyone in the room was. A class full of eyes stared at him. In fact, the only person not starring at him was a girl one row to his left and one seat up. She was looking down at her paper and looked about ready to throw up or run from the room. That was a feeling he understood.

"Harrison? Number 7?" A hand shoved his shoulder from behind and his head momentarily pushed forward. He had paper in front of him. Not just any paper, but a notebook opened to 14 problems in scrawled print. Was that his handwriting? Was this his homework? The teacher cleared her throat clearly waiting for him to read his answer to number 7. He could read the paper enough to see it said -6 but he couldn't find a voice. Was he mute? A mute with no name maybe...

The teacher pursed her lips, clearly in disapproval of his silence and turned her attention to pestering someone else for an answer. He immediately shifted his attention to the most magnetic thing in the room. The girl...

Her hair hung down about midway down her back. Was it chestnut or maybe that was caramel? Either way it glowed even under the unflattering lights of the classroom. Her hair stood in contrast to the light blue sweater loosely hung around her shoulders down to her wrists. She adjusted it slightly, like she could feel his eyes, but her gaze was laser focused on the back of the chair in front of her. Her right hand was gripping a pencil. In fact, it was gripping the pencil tight enough that her knuckles were white. He noticed their paleness and a silver ring on her ring finger he couldn't make out from here. Was that a stone on it?

Her head snapped up, and at first he thought he had said something aloud but he felt the movement of all the people around him. He stood up and made a move to get her attention, but she grabbed the notebook and binder off her desk and was moving towards the door without noticing him at all. Darn.

"Dude, grab your books and let's get going," he noticed another boy staring at him expectantly. He looked down at the desk and back up at the kid. "Harry, hello? Earth to Harry? We need to get to chemistry, genius."

He picked up the books and nodded. "Yeah, let's go," a deep voice responded and his steps faltered when he realized that voice was his. Harry? Harrison? Wales? He had a voice, and a name. But he had no idea who Harrison Wales was. What the hell was going on?