This ain't a diary, this is a - mirror?

Chapter 22: What does 'DT' even mean?

Vivian was silent for a few seconds. Finally, she nodded. "I see. What are they like?"

"You mean... you believe me?" Samantha stared, wide eyed, at Vivian. Vivian said nothing for a few moments. "Perhaps." She replied. "I don't see any proof that they don't exist, so why not?"

Samantha beamed, her mood suddenly lifted. "Well... I don't know too much about how they act, but they can speak the same language as..."

Evan abruptly stood up. "It's almost time for class," he growled "I'm leaving."

Vivian stood up as well. "It's been a pleasure chatting with you, Samantha," she said with a mysterious smile. "I suggest you get to class soon, too." She trotted after Evan, who surprisingly didn't say anything to her following him.

Samantha watched the two leave. "Huh... Elena hasn't showed up yet. Maybe she's just late and ate a granola bar in the dorm before going...  or something." She decided not to ponder it, picked up her tray and carried it to the box of used trays. She dropped it in and checked her timetable. "DT... with Ms Derin. Uh... what's DT?"

When nobody answered her, she shrugged and trotted to class.

---

She leaned against the wall outside the classroom and pulled out her phone. She tapped in her password and checked her texts. There was one from Elena which read: "Took longer than anticipated so I won't be joining you at breakfast. I have DT next... but from what I remember, you have a different class to mine. Oh well. See you later!"

Samantha sighed. Oh well, another class without Elena, she thought, looking around at the students that were scattered around the door to the classroom. She saw a few she did recognise - she waved at Alexander when they made eye contact, but he quickly looked away, almost... afraid, which was slightly strange, and Evan and Vivian were standing near the back door, with Vivian doing most of the talking. There were a lot of students she didn't recognise, too, such as a beige and grey blue dog with medium length black-to-brown hair and in glasses, a very short dog that looked like a pup and had brown fur that almost looked like a fawn's, and...

Samantha's eyes widened. Standing farther away from everyone else and humming softly as she braided her hair - Abbey Peters. Near her was Kiera, who was looked rather nervous and was braiding the other side of Abbey's hair too.

Samantha's frown deepened into a scowl. "Abbey Peters..." She growled under her breath. Anger rushed up within her as she recalled the events of her 'sorting', but she forced it down and looked away. Don't want to show her weakness.

She took another deep breath and decided to engross herself with staring at the various posters of food that lined the corridor. Apparently they were 'student work' and was the final topic assessment of a few senior projects... well, none of her concern.

The door opened and a pale brown dog with a dark brown underbelly and violent eyes peered out. They looked around at the students before unfolding their yellow wings and stretching.

"Welcome, class. My name is Ms Derin," she began, "and I'll be your current DT teacher for this unit, Food Tech. We will learn about safety in the kitchen before moving on to making simple things like pancakes and cupcakes, then our end of topic assessment will be making and decorating a cake." She smiled and stepped aside to let the students past. "Please sit wherever you want, but try to choose people you know you can work with."

Samantha sighed as she followed the line of students past the smiling teacher. She snuck a glance at the teacher - Ms Derin folded her wings back again to reveal a set of magenta spikes running along her back. Only then Samantha realised she also had two, mismatched spikes on the end of her tail. I wonder what power she has. Samantha thought.

She sat down at a mostly empty table and watched as the table filled up. She could almost feel Abbey's glare boring into the back of her head, but she tried her best to ignore her and turned to face Ms Derin.

Ms Derin padded over her desk and collected a stack of papers. As she passed them around to the students, she continued to talk: "I hope you aren't too disruptive. Last year's class was terrible - one of the students accidentally - well, I hope it was accidental - caused a fire, but luckily, we had a water elemental with us. Ah, what was their name again...? Anyways, that's not important..."

She finally padded up to the whiteboard and picked up a whiteboard marker. With shaky paws, she scrawled out a wobbly message: "1. Stick in the papers in the first page of your book. Pink paper then the blue one."

She sighed and put down the marker. "Oh dear, my arms and legs are a bit rusty. I haven't been using them in a while, huh?" She smiled as she turned back to the class. "So, I'm just going to say the instructions since I guess you can barely read my handwriting. So, first, stick in the papers in your blue DT books... the pink one goes first, then the blue one. There's glue on the shelf if you need it. Afterwards, stick in the white sheet - the one with your design brief - on the third page. I'll give you five minutes to do so."

She sat down heavily at a chair and massaged her arms, mumbling something under her breath. Samantha watched her for a few moments, then reached for her pencil case. She ran the tip over the backs of all the papers, then stuck them in sloppily.

She looked around at all the students. Most of them still seemed to be cutting off the sides of the paper to make it fit in the book. Samantha looked back down at her papers, which still had bits sticking out from the sides of the book. She shrugged and decided to leave it there - it wasn't like she cared anyways.

She looked up at the clock and rested her head on her paw to wait.