The Text

0.1

The soft feeling of my converse hitting the concrete sidewalk, I try not to make eye contact with any other students and I just focus on my feet. left, right, left, right, and repeat, the sound of the music drowning out all other sounds. I take a breath of the air, the smell of rain filling my lungs. I feel a slight vibration in my back pocket, I quickly grab my phone and see what the notification was.

  Dad: 'How are you adjusting to the new school Kenith?'
  Me: "I'm doing fine, nothing out of the ordinary, I still don't enjoy the fact that I have to stay in a dorm'
  Dad: 'You got accepted into an amazing highschool, be happy, made any friends yet?'
  Kenith: 'Yea, i'm about to go see some' I reply lying.

  I put my phone away and continue walking to the on campus coffee shop, after about five minutes I arrive but something is off, there's usually less people here. I walk over to the cashier and order a medium ice coffee then take a seat. After about 3 minutes of phone scrolling I get a text.

'social media is a drug and your addicted: meet me on the ice for your prescription -The Text'

I try to brush it off but my curiosity gets the best of me, usually when someone gets a text from an unknown number they ignore it but I feel drawn to this. I stand up and briskly walk out of the coffee shop and towards the ice rink on campus.

◊

I rush into the rink to see a group of 4 other students, they all snap their necks in my direction and watch me walk down the stairs and towards them.

"so you're the new one?" A familiar male face says as I stop walking.

"He doesn't know what that means Michael, are you the one who's gonna be replacing Emma?" A girl with long black braids questions.

"Who's Emma? What do you mean replacing? Are you people the one who texted me?" I reply not with an answer but more questions.

They all exchange looks then look back at me, i get an uneasy feeling that i'm being watched and not by a group of my peers.

"I'm Alejandro, Kenith right?" A boy with perfectly placed silky blond hair exclaims as he walks toward me "It might sound insane but your in a game now. We all are, you may be new to NewHope but he needed a replacement"

"What does that even mean, and who's Emma "

"Emma i- was the name of our friend, she's gone" the girl exclaims.

"Oh, I'm sorry for your loss" I say sincerely.

"I'm Jessie. This is Payton and Micheal" The group consisted of one of the most popular students, Payton O'Brien. The schools star quarterback and hottest bachelor Alejandro Lòpez. An angsty "e-boy" Micheal Rojas, and the schools social justice warrior Jessie McClain. And then there's me, Kenith Park.

  Suddenly we all get a text and pull out our phones, I rapidly open my phone to see a a notification from that same unknown number.

   'now that you've all met, it's time for your first task:'

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bro this shit took me so long to remake, but i deleted the original version of this book cause it was legit trash.

so i remade it and tweaked the plot ALOT, and here we are, the first chapter. btw the guy in the picture is supposed to be Kenith😭