High School War Zone

1. You're Cool, Be My Friend

"My name is Drew Gedaway. I'm a seventeen-year-old Canadian, and I want to be the captain of the soccer team."

That just about sums her up.

Okay, let's rewind.

Drew walked into Homeroom, and the first thing she did was run her narrowed brown eyes over the large variety of students.

It always a major struggle.

Yes, finding cool people was actually that hard.

She eventually sat down next to a cute girl with black bangs and a gentle smile.

The teacher did some talking, passed out their schedules and a map of the school, then told everyone to introduce themselves to the person next to them and vice versa.

Drew went first, "My name is Drew Gedaway. I'm a seventeen-year-old Canadian, and I want to be the captain of the soccer team."

The girl looked surprised, "Wow! That's a really good introduction."

Drew rolled her eyes, immediately seeing that the girl she wasn't her type. She learned that her name was Cocoa Kiyomi.

Drew asked her some questions, and it turns out her first name was actually Meiji, like the Japanese food company that sold chocolate and other dairy products. Cocoa lived true to her name, because she was sweeter than a bucketful of sugar and more innocent than a baby koala bear.

It was very much possible that the girl would get seriously corrupted if Drew said the wrong thing, so their whole conversation made Drew feel like she was wearing surgical gloves.

Yuck.

But she was useful, since she wasn't a new student. Drew asked her the name of everyone in the room, and by the end of class Drew could recognize a solid amount of people.

Drew's next class, Pre-Calculus, came as a relief. Apparently every eleventh grader had math for first period, but it was split between three different teachers as well as Algebra II and Pre-Calc. She found that extremely weird, but apparently some teachers taught multiple grade levels instead of many classes of the same grade.

Drew tapped her fingers on her desk, which was directly in the middle of the room. In front of her sat some blonde girl who was reading a book, and around her were three guys: a smirking redhead, a boy Drew had ridden the bus with, and a brunet who looked too happy to be in school.

Two girls at the corner were passing notes, and the clock was ticking unrealistically slow.

Mr. Blakely was an old teacher, and he had everyone raise their hand and say something when he called their name for attendance.

The happy boy on her right—Dennis Lo, apparently—flung his hand up and said something in Mandarin, making the guy on her other side—Cyrus Lin—choke and drop his pencil on the floor.

The teacher ignored Dennis, but Drew whispered to him, "What'd you say?"

He shrugged, "Matter no. It nothing."

Drew wasn't sure whether the weird speech impediment was a joke or not, but she went back to trying to learn everyone's names.

What Mr. Blakely told them to do was next was to go over the syllabus and class rules by themselves, in pairs, and come up with various scenarios that would be breaking any rules.

What a stupid activity.

Drew tapped the girl in front of her (she'd forgotten her name) on the shoulder. "Hey, wanna be my partner?"