Exceptional

The Pencil

        "He never came back." Kira's words struck some kind of chord within me, something that got me thinking. "He," whoever "He" is, may be just a background character in my story that is my life. But in his own life, his own story, He was the main character. His story ended there, ended here! Right here, beneath my feet, is where his story took him. His story is done. And he never came back. I shook my head to scatter the thoughts. I don't even know who he is! I told myself. I don't know his name, I probably never met the guy! This is creepy. Stop. And just like that, as soon as I ordered my thoughts to stop, a voice cut through.

        "You are extraordinarily quiet. This is slightly unnerving." It was Arthur, casting a skeptical glance over from his date with Kira.

        "Yeah. No, yeah, fine. I'm fine," I said, in that stutter that usually occurs after your head is cleared from all those weird thoughts.

        Arthur looked at his watch. "We should probably get going. We have Jonason first period, and we absolutely do not want to be late."

        Whoa. I'm missing something here. "We have classes?!" I shouted.

        Safirah burst into laughter, which helped nothing. "Are you ill?" she asked through giggles. "Of course we do! We have all our A Bloc classes, just shortened. Honestly, what rock have you been living under?"

        "The public school rock. Now who's Jonason, where is he, and where did I leave my stuff?" I asked the world in general.

         Arthur sighed. "Follow me," he said, after excusing himself from a pouting Kira. He led me back to the dorm room to get our stuff. We packed in silence for a bit, then Arthur spoke up. "You looked like you were thinking pretty deep back during lunch there. I thought you lacked what anyone could classify as a brain, but I dunno... what were you even thinking about?"

        "Was it that obvious?" I asked embarassedly, dodging the question.

        "Call it intuition," he responded. "Now answer."

        "I don't know..." I said, trailing off. "I mean, do people really disappear every week here? What even happens to those kids? Is this just normal for you guys now? Is that really allt here is to the human psyche, just adapting and moving on, over and over until nothing ever strikes you as weird ever again?"

        Silence. For a while. Then a snort of disbelief, or, quite possibly, derision. "A questioner, aren't you?" he asked.

        "What?"

     "A questioner. As I've noticed, there are two types of people in the world- questioners and answerers. Everybody comes into the world with different sets of either questions or answers. And when you find someone who matches your set, you solve the problems you once had with yourselves and each other. And we call that love."

        We finished packing in silence after that speech. I think it was about then that we realised we could actually stand each other.

        Arthur showed me to the first period classroom. We weren't really late, but by the time we found seats and got settled, it was about time to start, anyway. There were only a few seats left, but I sat behind Safirah, which was cool. Her hair smelled nice. Not in a creepy way! Just... it did.

        The teacher stood up, and declared himself as Professor Jonason. He was the one with the scars from lunch. He was tall, really, quite, very, very tall, like, six-foot-or-more type tall. But he was very thin, the almost-scary thin of "Hey, I didn't eat for a year!" His hair was very long, dark, and constatntly in his eyes, but when you could see them, they were piercingly blue, just a few shades darker than white. But they were also sad, like someone who had seen more than could be told.

        It was then I realised I was zonking out, just staring at this guy. I do that sometimes. I tried to get a sense of what was going on in the world around me as I came back from Sean-world, which is like SeaWorld, but with an 'n' and quite different actually. We were taking notes, as it seemed, but there was a bit of a problem. I did not have a pencil. Oh well. Guess I'll just have to mooch one.

        I poked Safirah in the back of the head. Hard. She turned around, glaring. "What do you want?" she hissed.

        I made a little scribbling motion for pencil. She turned back around, then threw a pencil right at my face. Can't people die from that? Anyway. I got my pencil. Problem solved.

        That was about the only interesting thing that happened today. Sure, I met some of the other teachers, like spiky-hair-guy, whose real name is Professor Hobbes, but he'll always be spiky-hair-guy anyway. And the woman with the blindingly purple hair whose name is Frost. And Bones, who apparently still teaches even though he runs the school. I was right. He is crazy.

        So now I'm here, ready to settle down for the night. I'm not used to sharing a room... I hope Arthur doesn't snore. ...I hope I don't snore.