Remains (ON HOLD)

chapter one

 Mornings, as many may agree, are horrific. Well, for me, this one was particularly ugly: the first day of junior year. In my defense, it was the first time I’d woken up before ten in the past two months, so suddenly reverting back to the old alarm-clock, sleep deprived days was, to say the least, jolting.

After waking up, bleary eyed, at 7:15 AM in the morning and stumbling to the bathroom, I did the speed round of my morning routine (guaranteed to be less than seven minutes!), and quickly pulled on my school uniform. Before leaving, I realized I’d forgotten to pop in my colored contact, and immediately reversed to hurriedly to go through the process of sticking the damned thing in my eye. It was 7:25 AM.

I locked the door to the apartment and sprinted to the elevator and power-walked/ran/skipped to the closest subway station (which was thankfully very close), all within eight minutes.

By the time I got to Brewer Preparatory School, it was 7:50 AM, a few minutes later than usual- I obviously needed to get used to the three block walk from the station to school. I had ten minutes to grab my schedule and get to class. Fair enough. I quickly adjusted my backpack and went to the large table at the center grabbed my schedule, while expertly dodged through the mass of students scurrying to their first period classes. Let see… I had History first period, then English, Math, Science, Spanish… I sighed. So many classes.

I huffed across the campus and up the stairs and sprinted to the classroom with the sign announcing, “2C”. I estimated it was 7:58 AM. I glanced down at my schedule then back at the sign. Yup, this one.

I pushed open the door and sat down at an empty seat just as the bell rang. A mere second later, a tall, balding man in his late forties strolled into the classroom, whistling some classical piece. He stopped at the podium, which resembled a small, Greek-styled pillar, at the front of the classroom.

The man cleared his throat, quieting down most of the students, and began. “Hello, I’m Mr. Anderson and I’ll be teaching all of you History this year,” he paused when he noticed a group of students at the back of the classroom who weren’t listening. “If you would please listen,” he said, raising his voice, but still able to maintain his quiet demeanor. Finally, having captured the attention of all of his new students, he began again. “I’m Mr. Anderson, and I’m your history and advisory teacher.”

I sort of tuned out the rest of what he said, and observed my surroundings. At the front of the room, next to the podium, was the standard laptop and document camera that both were connected to the projector. The projector hung right over Mr. A’s head, and a touch-sensitive projector screen lurked behind the tall man. Money does wonders for school equipment.

Colorful posters surrounded the classroom, each with a quote from a historical (fictional and nonfictional) figure- there was Yoda, Lincoln, Atticus, and plenty of others. Windows opened up on another wall, shades covering most of it to shield the students from the blinding effects of the summer sun.

For the rest of class, we just did the usual beginning-of-the-year stuff: passing out syllabuses, textbooks, introduction to the unit, and all those fun chores. Mr. Anderson joked along, and there was always someone chuckling at something he did or said earlier. He was generally well-liked and most of his students warmed up to him immediately.

The rest of the morning was more or less average: the glares, the cutting remarks meant to insult me- I shrugged it all off, like usual. It wasn’t like I didn’t provoke it. I went through the rest of my morning classes in a similar fashion of the first- all of my teachers for my classes so far were generally pretty likable and easy-going… Except for English, which was taught by an ancient dragon, Mrs. Gallak - she’d already assigned a mountain of both long-term and short-term homework.