After I Died

Self-Guided Tour

After we left Nightshade Hall and stepped out into the atrium again, I turned to Alex.

"Okay, is this where the tour starts?" I ask, looking around again for no particular reason.

"Uh, sure! I've actually never given a tour before, I just wanted an excuse to skip class." She said, walking towards the fountain still looming over us.

"Ah, alright." I was a bit worried now that this 'tour' would only further confuse me.

"Oh, relax! I know this school like the back of my undead hand!" She said, strolling over to the fountain. "And, some added bonuses." She grinned, opening the seat of the bench nearest to us, revealing it hollow, full of miscellaneous things crammed into at all kinds of awkward angles.

"Huh." I said simply, finding it wholly unsurprising that she would have goodies hidden in every crevice of this campus.

"I was expecting a 'woah', but that works too." She shrugged, closing the bench top and walking over to the hallway to the left of the clock-entrance-thing. "So this is the quad." She said, gesturing to the atrium. "It's pretty cool, everyone just hangs here." She leaned against the wall and looked around. "Oh, and try not to fall in the water." She pointed at the fountain. "The mermaids hang in there, and I hear it's nasty." I chuckled at the recent memory of Cameron falling into that same water earlier today.

"Noted." I said, making a mental note to try and stay on Sabrina's good side.

"Alright, the school's organization of classes is pretty simple. Get out your schedule too, so you kinda know where to go for tomorrow." Tomorrow already? I guess I thought I'd have a bit more time to settle in, but evidently not. I take my schedule out of my pocket and unfold it, looking it over again.

     "Follow me!" Alex said, walking down the hall she was in front of. I follow her, looking at each room as I pass, classes in progress in every one. I hoped they didn't notice me, even though I was allowed to be here. I think. With Alex I already felt it could be either.

"Okay... so there's Social Studies, with me," She added, pointing to a door to our right. "and down there is Science which you have with... Sabrina, right?"

"I think that's what you said?" I said, not entirely sure. She waits for me to catch up before peering at my schedule.

"Yep, I was right." She said, walking until she reached a door further down the hall. "Right here." I was making notes about the positions of my classes in the margins of the paper, though I'm likely the only one who could decipher them. She turned around to walk back down the hall.

"Takin' notes, smart." She said, finger-gunning in my direction as she walked past me back to the quad. Once I'd reached her she looked at my schedule again. "Okay, tally forth!" She said, marching towards another hallway.

That's much of what the tour consisted of thereafter, hallway after hallway, pointing at various doors that I had to find a way to remember. After my schedule was covered in hasty notes, I returned it to my pocket.

"That was all of my classes, right?" I ask Alex as we arrive back at the fountain.

"Yep, but the tour's not over yet!" She grinned, walking towards one of the hallways we hadn't been down yet.

"What else is there?" I questioned , following behind her.

"You've... never been to a real school, huh?" Alex said, without turning around.

"Uh, yeah." I said, kind of embarrassed that I had to answer like that.

"Welp, we have lunch in the cafeteria every day." Alex says, walking up to a large tapestry hanging in the hallway. "And this is the way in." She pulls a rope hanging next to the tapestry and it furls up, revealing a passageway, much more inviting than the one leading to Nightshade Hall.