Ursa Minor (On hiatus)

Pale blue

Lunch period. Half of the day done, but half still left. A day like this the glass was always half-empty to me. "Get lost," I told the kid with the locker underneath mine. A junior. Short and scrawny. He ducked out of my way and scurried off. Sometimes I felt bad for making him change lockers with me three years ago, but I had never regretted it. Especially not today, one of these bleak uneventful late October days, with nothing to look forward in a nearby future except Halloween maybe, if you were that kind of person who liked to wear costumes. I was not that kind of person.

A weight on my back as I disposed my books into my locker. "Mattie!" Kat heaved herself up, her voice piercing in my ear. I bent her hands of my shoulders. "Are you trying to make me deaf?"

She jumped giddily to my side instead, now I noticed that Mel was bouncing around with her too, her hair swishing around her. Kat, loud and eccentric with a love for anything European, and Mel, not so loud, not so eccentric, and in love with well anything romantic. The pair had been free with purchase, when I started dating their best friend. Who by now was just my best friend.  

"What's up?" I asked them, since clearly there was something going on. 

"Did you hear that there's a new student in our year arriving today?" I shook my head.  

"New blood," Kat purred. 

"Fresh meat," Mel filled in, and they both growled high-pitched like newborn puppies.  

"Enough with the carnivore metaphors please." To even think of blood and meat and eating in the same context made me feel somewhat sick. I grabbed my gov class stuff, closed my locker. "Think of it more like vampire metaphors, like we're not eating animals, we're biting people. A certain person," Kat said as we started walking, and they both giggled like it was insanely funny. This vampire craze I would never understand.

We made our way through the inside-turned outside hallway. The architect of the school had decided that natural light should guide all the bright-eyed students, with glass lined hallways and all classrooms in the middle with windows to the hallway. Which meant it was searingly hot in the summer, freezing in the winter, and bleak as hell in between. And people either fell asleep from lack of daylight or spent their time during lessons looking for people passing by. Probably not the intention.

Trish greeted us with a smile and bent down pulling out a stack of photos from her locker. She had a lower one, but then she was only five feet, the top of her head barely reaching my shoulder, so it wasn't as annoying for her as it had been for me.  

"I developed the ones from the other week, I really like this one of you, all bedhead and cheekbones and mystery," she said, handing me a picture. I took it from her carefully, so she wouldn't nag me for smudging it. Me sitting on Trish's couch looking moody.  

"I don't know, I look a bit uncomfortable." A bit was the nice thing to say, I looked like I would rather die than have my picture taken. Trish shook her head. "Not to me."  

I looked closer. It was me on the picture alright, with my average eyes and average mouth and too big nose. The photo was black and white, so my hair color, (dark brown) and eye color (light gray) were lacking. Not much of a loss. "And doesn't like my nose look weird?"  

"You're an ungrateful model Matt!" She snatched the picture from my hands. "You look perfectly fine, you know you're cute, there's no reason to act all coy about it!" 

"I'm not acting coy," I protested, but Trish just gave me a 'bitch please' look, and started to look around for the one person she didn't want to meet, but inevitably met every day. Adam. Her recent ex and my other best friend. Yeah, maybe it was no wonder Kat was calling out for fresh blood. We were sort of an incestuous group.