Survival

Chapter 1

We fear the unknown. We push it away. We want to push away death, yet we must eventually accept that we cannot. It is definite. It is inevitable. It is what consumes us all as we unwillingly surrender to its hold.

I play with this thought as I push open one of the doors to the school. The lobby was somewhat silent-- the time only being half past seven in the morning. Only a few people were hanging around, either on their phones or in some kind of conversation with a friend that had arrived just as early. But I didn't pay any real attention to them. Although I did overhear how they school's WiFi crashed again.

There was a silent moment in my mind when I looked at the art displays. It was a bunch of impressionistic art, my favorite type. The students had just done Monet and Van Gogh redraws, hardly any creativity in their drawings. Not like it was my place to judge or anything. I guess it was important to learn the techniques.

I made my way towards the school cafetorium. It was much quieter than the lobby. There was no noise other than the quite humming of the AC and my footsteps against the cold ground. Very few people were inside, all sitting alone or refusing to speak to those in front of them. Most of them were people I didn't know and honestly didn't want to. Each and every one is just another person who'll bump into me and ignore me like I'm not there when the bell rings and nothing more. The only people in this school I truly knew and cared for sat at the center of the room. I smiled as I tossed my backpack down beside them.

"Wassup bitches."

My friends looked up. There was David, with his short curly hair and beady brown eyes and pudgy figure, always reminding me of a sheep. We met at the beginning of last year. I had just moved and had to go to a different school than all my elementary friends. My first day of school here was the first time I had even gotten a glimpse of the inside of the school. David had recognized how alone and lost I was, so he assisted me in finding my way around the school. He showed me where all my classes were and where other important rooms were. By the end of the week, I had a clue of what I was doing and a new friend.

Sitting beside him was Joan. Joan was always a little . . . odd. He had the classic 'emo' look -- dark hair swept over his face to cover he pale, sullen skin and lifeless red eyes -- and the persona to match -- dark, silent, and antisocial. We still loved to death him though. We had met halfway through this school year. He had recently moved to the U.S. from Slovakia a few years ago. By the time we met, he had already learned how to speak English. After that, he had been getting expelled from private school to private school. His parents ultimately decided to move him to a public school --- this one. Joan was placed in my science class. I had no lab partner at the time, so Joan became mine. At first, we never spoke. We were just two strangers doing the same work at the same table. It was until nearly a month in that we became friends. All I had done was scribble down a bad joke in the margins of my notebook ("C₁₂H₂₂O₁₁ we're going down") and it all spiraled from there on. But even then, he was clung onto his backpack the way he does now.

And then there was Wendy, my best friend. Her round, childish face was framed by her abnormally straight red hair and her light blue eyes that lit up when she saw me. We've hardly known each other for a year, but we're close as two friend could conceivably be. It was only two months into sixth grade that we really became friends, though. Both of us had had the same backpack --- light grey with pink cherry blossoms. So when leaving our final class of the day on a Friday, we both accidentally took the other's bag. I had gotten all the way home before I recognized that the backpack wasn't mine. I remember clear as the day how I had reached in for my math book, but pulled out a book of fairy tales instead. I returned the backpack to Wendy as soon as possible on Monday. I couldn't help but bring up her book of fairy tales and she couldn't help but bring up the dank memes I had scrawled across the covers of all of my notebooks. Five minutes later, I had made another friend.