Lifeline (Frerard)

Chapter 6

School was the same every single day. I was stuck in the same lockstep schedule with the same coffee cup in my hand on a daily basis. Frank and I have spoken a bit more over the past few days. He sat with me and Ray at lunch on thursday. I didn’t have a problem with him sitting with us. He’s a pretty nice guy, plus he has good music taste. I could deal with him, I guess.

On friday morning the sun rose later than usual. I’ve always loved late dawns. By the time I got to school the sun had just taken its place in the cloudy, New Jersey sky. Some jocks were roaming the halls talking loudly with their boisterous voices. My main goal in the mornings is to avoid the jocks that come to school just as early as I do.

I took my time putting my things into my locker before heading to the cafeteria to refill my coffee cup. The smell of grilled cheese filled the empty, tiled room. Apparently the lunch menu on fridays was going to be special from now on. They announced it on the PA system wednesday morning.

How can you make high school cafeteria food special?

Not make it come to life on the trays?

I refilled my coffee cup and took the first sip.

Mmm.

It was nice and warm and full of caffeine. Just how I like it. I slowly began walking to Mr. Fisher’s room. I didn’t want to be too early, but right on time would be nice. Students just began to flood the hallways. I passed a group of girls that I liked to refer to as the blonde bimbos. They’re all blonde, none of them are smart at all, and they flirt with all the jocks all the time. They wore sheer scarves around their necks all the time and always had furry boots on their feet that made a low clunk when they hit the ground. Whenever you hear that low clunk, you know two of them are arguing about something.

Usually something stupid like:

“But I wanna sleep with the quarterback!”

“I called dibs!”

Their voices could be described as high pitched banshee shrieks. Your ears bleed just from hearing them say a few simple words. They’re the kind of people that you want to yell at to shut up, but can’t  because they’re too fragile to handle it.

I got to Mr. Fisher’s room just as students began to enter.

Better than being late, I guess.

The room was awfully cold that day. I pulled my hands deeper into the sleeves of my iron maiden sweatshirt upon entering what seemed to be antarctica. It was reverse global warming. All the cold places were becoming warm. The snowcaps melted, while hell froze over. Mr. Fisher’s room being hell in this case. It’s not much different from the actual thing. I mean, it has the devil presiding over the innocent, slowly torturing them in the deathly fires of his unholy lair.

Mr. Fisher was sitting at his desk grading some work, just as he did every morning when our class was about to begin. The bell rang and like a robot, Mr. Fisher rose from his seat and walked to the board. He wrote two words on the board. “Pop Quiz.”

Fun.

Happy friday.

He passed out the quizzes, which were only one page, which was one sided.

Thank god.

“You have ten minutes for this quiz. It’s only five short questions, not that hard.” He pulled out a timer from his pocket. It was one of those stopwatches that the gym teachers use when they time us on stupid things like running for a grade.

seriously. Do they need to time us? It’s not like we’re going to be running when we work in office buildings or if we’re some kind of CEO.

What do they think?

That we’re all going to magically become olympians?

No.

The quiz was actually really easy. I don’t know if that’s just because I took a lot of notes or if the questions were just plain stupid, but it all made sense and I did it. Good for me. When I was done I flipped the paper over and took a sip from my coffee. I swear caffeine runs in my veins. I’m not even kidding. I drink so much coffee I think it’s in my blood.

The only thing that kept me going the entire day was the fact that Dallon’s party was going to be that night, and my coffee.