Age of the Xenti: The Mirroring Realm

Chapter 1: I Flood the School in Chocolate Milk

      Rrriiiinnnnggg! I shook my head, pulling myself back into reality. Every day I drift off into wildly imaginative universes. No matter how hard I concentrated on something else, it always happened. Every. Single. Day. The educators were constantly on my case about it, and I tried to explain to them that I couldn't control where my mind decided to wander. Especially since it always felt so right. They couldn't care less. It just resulted in extra home works and being the eternal "excuse queen". I sighed and walked wearily to Mr. Castello's desk to try to give my futile excuses once more.

      "Mr. Castello, I-"

     "Hush." He blocked me off mid-sentence. "I've had enough. You can't seem to focus, even after we try everything you suggest to help you. Clearly we need to do something new." He paused to let that sink in. I'm not self-absorbed, but I definitely don't fancy it when somebody points out all my flaws. "Fortunately, you'll have plenty of time to figure that out in the following week. I've been talking with your other teachers-"

     "Educators." I quickly corrected. Our school preferred to keep things professional. And I didn't want a certain someone (aka the headmaster) to think I'm not trying to commit to our school values.

     "I don't care for formalities currently, Ivene." He responded coarsely, clenching his teeth. I ducked my head. "What I was saying," he took a moment to breathe. "Is that we have decided to suspend you. Five days. One school week. Starting at two-fifty sharp today." BAM. A bullet straight to the chest. I took a step back to steady myself. My eyes were glued to the ground. How could I let this get so out of hand? I mentally slapped myself. "Are we clear?"

     "Yes, sir." I mumbled.

     "Pardon?"

     "Yes, sir!" I practically yelled in his ears. He scowled. I smirked. In my mind, it's okay to get a little snarky, as long as I'm not bruising the person I'm conversing with. Crossing his arms, he said with a single breath:

     "I suggest you get to lunch in the next thirty seconds- unless you're looking for an extension to your suspension." Trying not to smile at his habit of rhyming when he got angry, I jogged out of the room to go on my way to my favorite class of the day: lunch.

                                                                                                ***

     The cafeteria food wasn't necessarily awful, just really, really unappetizing. So I pack my lunch. Another delicious and nutritious meal of PB&J and juice. Yay. Thoughts continued to run freely through my head, not caring what other thoughts they forced out, despite their claims of civil rights to be present. They were ignored. I was once again lost in loo-loo land, chewing aimlessly until I heard a familiar voice.

     "Ivy!" I looked up to see what seemed to be the only friendly face in the whole school. Derek Kenneker, a sweet guy with mocha skin, curly black hair, and the deepest amber eyes. He was the same age as me, fourteen. He headed over to me, with a tray of disgusting (Sorry, unappetizing) cafeteria food. He sat down, somehow not noticing the sour way people were looking at him for sitting next to me.

     "So, Ivy. I have some ideas on what we could do for our project in Language Arts." My eyes lit up. I completely forgot about it! We had a very strange LA teacher. A wanting-us-to-learn-an-animal's language kind of strange. I have no idea how she expected us to do it, but she said if we could learn four phrases in animal speak (I also have no idea how she'd know if they were valid sentences or not) we'd get a B minus. I don't know about how anyone else here feels, but that's kind of hard to do.