First Night

Before

Thump.

I jolted awake from the sudden pain in my forehead. My heart echoing as I quickly looked around. The faces of my shocked classmates and various degrees of snickering flooded my cheeks with color. My shoulders loosened, letting my mind regain consciousness.

Calculus, class 11-B, and a slightly irritated teacher. A bead of sweat fell down my forehead as what felt like an eternity passed. A blonde hair seemed to twitch as Mr. S, a man wearing glasses turned slowly towards me in his chair. His upright, damn near perfect posture, seemed to impose an aura. I couldn't decipher it from anger or control, that's for some psych study student at Harvard. "You okay there, Ryu?" I was dead silent as he continued to look at me with a raised eyebrow.

"Uhhh..." I scrambled for something to say. I scanned the wall that was lit up with light from the projector in front.

"Not really. It seems the concept of integrating trigonometric functions has evaded me entirely." I made a motion with my hand over my head adding a woosh noise with it. I hoped using vocabulary far beyond the norm would help me.

"I definitely agree with this guy here. I also would like to add along the loss of my will to live and to do well in this class has certainly followed." Max seemed to pipe up and save me from this stupid conflict I was stuck in, our sarcasm clear as day.

I will definitely buy that man a chocolate bar later.

With Max's help, Mr. S turned around to continue "teaching" the class. I often fell asleep in the class as it was after lunch and ultimately, boring as all hell. Not really caring much about school work or applying any actual effort to it was my specialty. Max turned towards me and shot me a thumbs up as he smiled. Honestly, with a friend like that, I should be set for life. However, he was lazy and wanted to build cars as a house wife. His radical brown bed head and untrimmed fuzz were brutal evidence to his cause. After weighing the pros and cons through my head, I ended up snickering myself. He planted his head back into the crook of his arm and seemed to pass out for the second time.

I let my eyes wander the room, alert like a cat. Whether via adrenaline or the societal pressure of not falling back asleep, I couldn't tell. My brain probably would look like a Christmas tree at the rate my neurons were firing. The trapezoid-like room was plastered white, angled glass doors at the front were starting to show their age as they creaked open every time when used. Directly behind me in the acute corner were Kayla and Eyin, behind them a heavy code locked door. The magnets on those things always amazed me, even on the four-inch thick wood ones like these. How much force does it take to break one open? How much would it crush to close? I twisted back to the front in my seat, and continued to watch the lines appear on the wall from the projector. Regardless my ADHD riddled brain was turnt. I was alive and definitely not under water. So why was I so hyped up?

I heard crashes outside, and before long a fire alarm in another building. My hands started to tingle in anticipation.

I noticed the signs earlier, even my Dad was with me on the opinion that the Bio-Attack would reach here. France was a long way away, so of course we played the part of the blind citizen. I was holding my breath as murmurs spread in the classroom. The building rocked. Not a slight rumbling, more of a shove.

A scream from outside the room broke the silence shortly after. Sirens, more screams, and now the panicked voices of my classmates as they reached for their phones. There were no windows in the room as it originally wasn't meant for a classroom.

I ripped into my backpack dumping all the useless books besides my sketch binder onto the floor. Max looked at me as if he had nothing else better to do. The corner of my button-up shirt got caught for a second as I zipped and secured my pack. I turned to Koby with my bag stuck to my back. His six foot figure rose in the front of the room as I prepared in the back. He wiped his slim glasses before replacing them on his upward nose. Koby and I had been friends for a bit, his knowledge in survival aspects complimented my military crush extremely well. We often played survival games, realistic shooters and things like that. However, on our off chances, we had things like hunting and shooting experiences under our belt. We locked gazes after I squared away my coyote tan ball cap. "What? You actually want to come with me?" I fired the question at him.