Time Stop

Chapter 2

School. What is there to say. It's a festering place of either learning or a bunch of crackhead kids deciding to create a cult around Percy the Snek Queen (don't ask). Don't listen to the media's portrayals of high school, with their even mix of jocks, bullies, nerds, and preppies. It's just kids being idiots. Sure, everyone's got their various ways of being idiots, but all idiots nonetheless. I just happen to be part of a small group of quiet kids (not like the memes, I swear) who all like art and the occasional TV show and book series.

The minute I entered school, Dani jumped on me and yelled cheerfully "DAMIEN WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN YOU HAVE A COZY SWEATER HUG ME NOW!!!" I take what I said about my friends back. We're a group of quiet kids and one loud lovable dumbass named Dani. She's a small kid, great at art, and hugs practically everyone she's ever met. Her hair is the frizziest thing ever to frizz, so only she can draw herself. Frizz hair isn't just a halo, artists out there. It's the devil incarnate. Beware. 

Next to her is Hayden. He's pretty cool. He came out as FtM a couple of years ago and bi guys have been swarming over him ever since. His art is pretty close to that of the Dragon Prince art style, with a blend of lines and shading that confuses the fuck out of my realistic artistic mind. 

"Hey." he says as I reluctantly hug Dani. 

"'Sup man? Draw any good art yesterday?" I ask. Our whole group is glued together by art, so it isn't a rude or nosey question, just normal talk. 

"Nah," he says "Too busy." 

Dani looks up at me with her big eyes and whispers loudly, "He was up watching chinese Season 13 of ninjago with english subtitles all night long." Hayden's eyes fill with panic. 

"Hey, I was not! How would you even know that stuff anyway?" 

"You text me all that shit you dumbass!" she says, then calms down and says "It's fine, you know. Season 13 is very important to you, being the first time your crush gets his own season." Dani says this in such a serious way that compared to how she usually is that even Hayden laughs, though he tries his hardest to keep an angry face.

During lunch Hayden, Dani, and Ash, a boy/girl I've known since kindergarten, sit outside under the ash tree near the cafeteria and draw as we watch the crackhead kids from the Cult of Queen Percy the Snek praise a worm on a string with a crown on it. If you want to know, Ash uses she/he as her/his pronouns since she/he's bigender. 

After a couple of minutes of drawing, furiously erasing, watching the cult in terror, and hugging Dani a couple of times, Ash says "Hey, did you know there's some new rich transfer student in my 1A math class?" 

"Oooooh, maybe they could hang out with us sometime!" says Dani cheerfully. Hayden and Ash exchange a look. All of us, besides Dani, don't particularly want other people into our group. We've all been together since 8th grade, and a new kid might be disconcerting. Last kid was Hayden's ex-girlfriend. Not a happy experience. 

Ash says to Dani, "Lets not get ahead of ourselves. For all we know he, and I'm ninety five percent sure he is a he, could be a complete jerkface in disguise." 

"A spy jerk." Hayden adds helpfully. 

Dani's smile lowers, but not fully. "Well," she says "At least think about it. What did he look like?" 

Ash stated "Red hair, green eyes, could have fit in as a Canadian perfectly." Green eyes? My mind is racing. Could it be? No way, I'm just acting dramatic for no reason. I sound like I'm in a romance novel. Shut up and get out of my head, brain. 

"What's his name?" I blurt out. Damnit damnit damnit. Don't say who I think it is goddamnit. 

"Oh, I think his name was Theo."

Theo

The rest of lunch came and went, and soon the group split. I went to art class, and then science. High school preps up science like we're gonna be blowing shit up everyday, but all you do is write. Not that there's anything wrong with writing, just school writing is terrible. Plus, blowing up stuff is pretty fun. I bet more kids would pay more attention to science if every assignment was to blow up the lab. Because of science class's lack of explosions, I decided to take a nap. Hell, I literally have all the time in the world. 

Freezing time, I flipped to a page on my journal and did a quick sketch of myself in my position. It helps me know how I look when I go back into the stream of time. Plus art is cool. I head past my frozen classmates to the back of the science classroom, to the lab parts. Lying my head on the back of a lab table, I drift off to sleep.

A hand taps my shoulder, waking me. 

"Hey, hey wake up." 

I look up and see him. 

Theo.