Gravity

Chapter 9 - July 2004

Third year at the academy was only two days old and yet everything had changed for Michael.

For the first time ever, his class had been broken up now that they'd all chosen their own subjects and now all the classes from that age group were all mixed together. This came as both a blessing and a curse.

On one hand, you were meeting new people that you'd previously only seen in the hallways or outside on the school grounds. There were new friends to be made and some people that you hadn't seen since primary school to reconnect and catch up with.

On the other however, you were no longer guaranteed to be in the same class as your friends. In fact, some students complained that they didn't have a single friend in certain classes. It was a stressful time for everyone, particularly when you considered that you wouldn't know who was in your new classes until you got there on the first day. Thankfully, the school started the New Year before the summer holidays, hoping that it would help ease the students into it.

Michael, Joe and Evelyn had compared their timetables as soon as they'd been given them and had found a mixed bag. Though Mike and Evie were in the same General Science class, Joe was in a separate class. Joe and Mike had P.E together, but Evie was on her own in that class. But when it came to Geography, they were pleased to all be in the same class.Geography may sound like an odd choice for the most exciting subject but there were reasons behind it. For Mike and Evie, they'd decided that since they couldn't study other planets and alien worlds, they would study their own planet, Earth. The geography class promised to help them understand things like atmosphere and geology, as well as what lay beneath the Earth's surface. To them, this would help them understand any studies done on other planets like Mars or Venus.

For Joe, and probably everyone else in the class, it was chosen for a very different reason.

Every year the geography students were taken on a week- long trip to various sites in Europe such as mountains and lakes. It was almost legendary throughout the school. The trip for Mike, Evie and Joe may have been over a year away at this point, but they were about to experience something almost equally as exciting.

They'd met up outside the classroom before any of them went in to ensure that they could all sit at the same table in class. Though most teachers changed the seating plan straight away, others kept it the same. Mrs. Porter had been their teacher through their entire tenure at the school and she had a great relationship with them, so they hoped that this would work in their favour and she would allow them to stay seated together.

They chose a table by the window, ignoring the rain beating against it, with Michael's back to it so that he was facing the door to the classroom. Joe and Evie didn't care who else was in their class but Mike was curious. 

There were a few kids coming in that he recognised, but most were new to him. As an adult, he wouldn't think twice about this amount of strangers but being a month before his fourteenth birthday, he might as well have been discovering an alien race. He'd started to lose interest now that the class was near capacity but suddenly his interest was revived at the speed of light when he saw the next girl to walk into the class. Stacy.

Michael did a double take and rubbed his eyes to see if he had fallen asleep in class and was dreaming but every time he looked again, there she was.

"Joe!" He quietly hissed, nudging his friend and nodding in her direction.

"What?" He yelped back before looking. "Oh for the love of fuck!"

His outburst attracted Evelyn's attention too, encouraging her to look and roll her eyes while letting out an almighty groan as the three of them watched Stacy take a seat at the table in the back corner. Ironically, the table that the trio had occupied during the last school year. They'd chosen to avoid it this time because there was a guy they didn't know already sitting there when they arrived. Mike was now regretting that choice.