A King's Weakness (Book 1)

Chapter 8

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, I steel myself to enter the new high school Kage has enrolled me in.

After the admittedly traumatizing events of the weekend, I had been tempted to postpone the first day at the new school to Tuesday—or indefinitely—but at least this way I won't have to sit in the house all day long and think about how my life has been upended in less than twenty-four hours.

That decision has resulted in my current predicament: me standing on the cracked sidewalk in front of the school, staring at the entrance as students flood in to attend class. Starting over is always the worst part of moving, but I have done it so many times that I'm a certifiable expert on the subject. Although, the many times I have done it before, I never knew that I could accidentally freeze everything if I got scared. This—this is the source of my hesitation to enter the building.

It doesn't help that my sense of smell and my hearing have been amplified ever since running into the pack of shifters, and the school is practically a roiling pot of hormones and body odor.

Someone bumps into me, reeking of cigarettes, and mutters an apology. I wrinkle my nose at the stench, wondering how I have never noticed just how truly awful tobacco smells until now. The abrupt contact pulls me from my thoughts, and with renewed bravery, I force my shaky legs to carry me through the front doors.

The routine is always the same: find the office, meet a bored secretary who points me to an uninterested guidance counselor, the counselor gives me some horrific schedule and a map, and then I'm on my own.

Easy enough.

Armed with my new weapons—a terribly drawn square that is supposed to represent the school, and a class schedule that looks like the printer ran out of ink halfway through—I begin to navigate the dimly lit maze that is the campus. It's nearly eight o'clock, so the halls are emptying rapidly, leaving only the handful of kids that fancy themselves as troublemakers loitering outside of the classrooms. I can't blame them, I did try it at my first high school, after all.

After turning the supposed map upside-down several times, I eventually find my first class—English, what a joy—and slide into an open seat near the door.

I am rarely lucky, but today I must have won the damn lottery. The elderly teacher barely notices me—too focused on the fact that someone has drawn a rather detailed image of male genitalia on the whiteboard—and she doesn't force me to do one of those painful introduction exercises. I do, however, get a few sidelong glances from some curious girls, but they dismiss me as unimportant soon enough.

The rest of the morning is fairly monotonous. I perform the usual, painful new girl song and dance—"Hi, my name is Calamity King, but I go by Calla. I just moved here from..."—and try to keep my head down. When the bell rings to send everyone to lunch, relief bubbles in chest at the opportunity to stretch my legs.

I practically sprint from the classroom, turning the corner sharply to find the nearest exit. Students fill the halls, spilling through doorways like an unstoppable tidal wave. The sounds of lockers slamming and people laughing rises up to grate against my eardrums. A group of athletes stomp through the middle of the hallway, the crowd parting for them like a school of fish rushing to escape a shark. Girls titter excitedly, laughing a little too forcefully at whatever idiotic joke the boys deign to share with them.

The monotony of school never ceases to amaze me.

I press myself close to the lockers and struggle to move against the current of people heading to the cafeteria. Teachers mill between the students, sticking out like sore thumbs, and a grumpy looking man in his sixties catches my eye, immediately glaring at me. As he pushes past people to get to me—probably to ask me where the hell I think I'm going—a door swings closed further down the hall, revealing a sign labeling it as the girls' restroom. The sea of students doesn't part as easily for the teacher as it did for the jocks, and I make a beeline for the bathroom, just missing the teacher as I fling the door open.