The Inadequate Experiments: 1. White Noise [Rough Draft]

Part 1; Insanity - 1. Whispers

Somewhere behind me, someone screamed.

I barely had the time to turn around before someone barrelled into me and we tumbled down the stairs, a pretzel of arms and legs twisted in ways they really shouldn't be twisted. I struggled to push the person off me, at the same time rushing to find something, anything to grab onto to stop my momentum down the stairs. I swung my arm out in an attempt to grab one of the poles supporting the railing down the centre of the stairs and felt the skin of my elbow come away as it hit the cold, metallic edge of an unfortunate linoleum step. My back hit the ground at the bottom of the staircase before anything else, forcing all of the air out of my lungs just in time for my head to fall onto the edge of the last step.

That was when I heard the laughter.

I groaned. "Tia, get off me, will you?"

My best friend could hardly catch her breath between giggles, her dark curls falling over her face, covering her striking violet eyes which were lit up like jack-o-lanterns on Halloween. "Dude," she managed somewhere between giggles as she untangled herself from me, "you should've seen your face. Why did I not get someone to film that?"

"Because you have no other friends?" I mocked.

Tia raised her eyebrows. "Touché."

"So," I said, sitting up and assessing the damage the staircase did to my elbow whilst trying to ignore the manic stares from the other students in the corridor, "what have you got to tell me that's so incredibly important that you felt the need to tackle me to the ground and break every bone in my body?"

Flicking her hair our her face, Tia pushed herself towards me on the ground, her eyes bright. "You remember back in like, eighth grade before I met Derek when I had the hugest crush on that cute little blondie with the lovely blue eyes?"

I raised my eyebrows. "That 'cute little blondie with the lovely blue eyes' who never spoke to anyone then decided he could act, sing and dance, then became the world's most famous teenager with an ego the size of Jupiter?" I asked sceptically. "Yeah, I seem to remember."

She slapped my arm. "Dammit, Sera, you're not helping! Be excited for once!"

I groaned. "Can we pretend that I am excited, but I'm pretending to look not excited so I can hold up my reputation as the sane one out of the two of us?"

Tia cocked her head. "Close enough. Anyway! His name is Oliver Jackson—"

"I know this, Tia, my sisters are insane fangirls and have his face plastered all over their walls." I interrupted.

"—And! He's coming back to school!"

That was not on. "What school?" I asked, my face as straight as a ruler.

"Our school, silly! St Elizabeth's Academy for Gifted and Talented Scholars, whose very halls we reside in at this very second!"

I stood up. "I think I'm going to shoot myself."

"Sera!" Tia cried, scrambling up from the floor.

"What? I don't like the guy. Enough said."

"But why don't you like him, Sera? There has to be a reason. Did he do something mean to you when we were younger?" She pressed, her violet eyes wide.

I sighed. "You know how, sometimes, there's those people who you just look at and go 'damn, they annoy the crap out of me'?"

She nodded.