You Were What You Eat

2. Rosemont High

The hallway was empty, except for one girl. She walked quickly across the linoleum-tiled floor without making a sound. It was a gift; even in boots she was silent. And as she stalked silently through the halls, she had only one thought in her mind: Where is room 122A?

Her green eyes flashed in frustration, and she ran a hand through her long black hair. It was the first day of school, and she was lost. Well, not the first day of school – school had been in session for almost a month. But it was Anna's first day.

Anna had decided to go to school when she'd first moved here. She'd signed up to be a freshman at Rosemont High School so she could get the whole four-year experience. She figured two months would be plenty of time to get everything in order, but apparently she'd been wrong. It seemed like every time she got one document in, they wanted three more. It had been a lot more trouble than she'd expected, and she hoped it'd be worth it.

Anna scanned the numbers over the doors as she scurried down the hall. She didn't want to be any later than she already was – not that it was her fault. She'd been both nervous and excited about her first day of school and decided to come a little early. She'd ended up at the front doors twenty minutes before class even started.

But when she went into the office to get her schedule, she found that there were still some papers she had to fill out – something about an emergency contact. She spent over half an hour trying to explain to a very strict and unyielding office lady that she didn't need one of those. When it became clear she wouldn't be allowed to leave until she'd given them a name, she finally resorted to just making one up. By the time she was done, she was almost fifteen minutes late to English.

As she neared the end of the hallway, Anna stopped running. She was now standing outside of Room 122A. This was it – her first class. Anna smoothed down her hair and took a deep breath. Slowly, she opened the door.

It wasn't the way she expected it to be. In her mind, she'd pictured a classroom full of students sitting quietly at their desks. The teacher would be standing up at the front of the room, tall and thin and probably wearing a severe black dress. She'd be giving a lecture to students who would be diligently taking notes. Everything would be nice and orderly and calm. That's the way it'd always looked in those old movies she'd seen – wasn't that how it was supposed to be?

Instead, what she saw were students talking loudly to each other – a few even shouting across the room to carry on conversations. Half of the students were still standing, and almost no one was looking at the teacher. The teacher, for her part, was standing at the front of the room, her fat, round face smiling warmly at a piece of paper in her hand. It wasn't quite chaos, but it was close. The strangest thing was that the teacher didn't even seem to care how her students were behaving. In fact, she seemed almost oblivious to the whole scene.

Anna stared at the woman in disbelief. She had on a long flowing black skirt with bright pink, blue, and purple flowers plastered all over it. And she'd paired the monstrosity with a neon-pink shirt and gaudy blue necklace. As she squinted down at the roll sheet, Anna thought she looked friendly enough, but completely clueless. So this was her English teacher, Mrs. Boyd.

"Michael Thomlin?" Mrs. Boyd asked hopefully, the smile never leaving her fat face. A skinny red-headed boy slouching in the front glumly raised his hand, and Mrs. Boyd smiled even wider. "Oh good. And last – but certainly not least!...Jessica Williams?"

A hand was raised in the back, but Anna couldn't see who it belonged to.

"Good. Well, I'm glad you're all here today. Shall we begin?"

Even though the class finally started to settle down, Anna still stood next to the door, fighting the urge to just turn around and leave. Clearly, she hadn't been noticed yet; it wasn't too late.