How to Save Your School From Soul Stealing Demons

CHAPTER TWO

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 2ND
6:55 AM
VANTERBEST HIGH

Joel Vanterbest High sounds pretentious. It sounds like some private school with a fancy building and top-of-the-line facilities.

In reality, the building is one massive eyesore on the Victorian wasteland that is Bradford. In a sea of centuries-old homes, the simple, boring architecture stands out in all the worst ways.

And while it's plain on the outside, it's somehow even blander on the inside. A plaque in the grey and navy-themed lobby lets me know it was built in 1930, and despite the fact that it's one of the newest buildings in town, it feels more like a time machine than anywhere else I've been.

If white bread were a high school, it would be Vanterbest. Moldy white bread, if the musty smell of the hallways is any indication.

As I make a beeline for the athletic wing to find out when baseball tryouts are, I notice it feels a lot different than my old school, too. Just like Bradford's weather, the kids here are a little colder. 

At Darwin, it was like everyone knew everyone. Here, even just walking through the hallways to get to my homeroom, it isn't hard to see that people are more divided. It reminds me of one of those cheesy teen movies they keep coming out with—I can clearly make out the cliques of jocks, geeks, goth kids, etcetera.

It isn't hard to tell who's special around here, either. A group of teens that look like they just came off the set of one of those aforementioned Hollywood productions is standing in front of a trophy display case, laughing and chatting as they look over the schedules Vanterbest sent us last week in the mail.

A girl with hip-length black hair turns, the strands glistening like some kind of shampoo commercial, and catches me staring. I expect an eye roll, or a look of confusion, or pretty much anything other than the small, warm smile that spreads across her face. My stomach does a somersault, and she goes out of view as I turn the corner—that smile couldn't have been for me, could it?

I replay the split second in my head over and over again. I swear she was looking right at me.

Okay, that's one point for Vanterbest, I'll give it that much. I've never even been in the same room with a girl who looked like that before. 

And I probably won't get any further than that, considering the obvious distance between our social statuses.

The whole cliquey atmosphere is weird, but I don't see it affecting me much, so I can't say I really care. At Darwin, I was somewhat popular, only because I was Miguel's younger brother and I fell in with the sports crowd when I joined baseball. But everything went to shit after the accident. 

People didn't know how to talk to me anymore, and I didn't much feel like talking, anyway. By the end of junior year, I didn't. I ate lunch with the same people as always, and still sat by them in class, but we didn't actually speak. 

Everyone else moved on from what happened—to them, it was just a story, a tragedy that happened to someone else. I couldn't blame them, but I also couldn't just snap back into my old life when the funeral was over like my friends did.

Anyway, popularity at Vanterbest is the least of my concerns. All I want is to make the team and get through the year without throwing up at school. See, there's a big difference between being unpopular and being a total freak, and I've seen firsthand how people react when you randomly barf in front of them (they tend not to like it, in case you were wondering). If I want to avoid veering into total-freak territory, I need to get better at keeping my lunch down.