Missing in Action

Chapter 003

Spencer had spent most of last night listening to Jon ramble on about some new student. Now, it wasn't often that Spencer told Jon to shut the hell up, but when the other boy had come back to their room the night before, skipping and grinning, Spencer had already been in a horrible mood. He'd learned in Social Studies that they would be starting a project soon that required you to write an argumentative essay. They hadn't been given the subject yet, all Spencer was sure of was his hatred for essays. This morning, as he swung his legs to the side and sat up in bed, Spencer glanced over at Jon's sleeping form and rolled his eyes. No wonder the guy was sleeping right through the alarm; he'd spent most of the night on his laptop, researching the name Ryan Andrew Hastings for some information. It wouldn't have been completely an exaggeration to call Jon a stalker.

Sighing heavily, Spencer stood from the bed and stretched, his immaculate flannel pajamas now rumpled from sleep. He trudged to the washroom, mumbling at Jon to wake up, wake up, wake up. Once he was dressed and ready to leave, he waited by the door for Jon to pull on his socks and sleepily slip on his shoes. They made their way down to the cafeteria for breakfast consisting of bread, fruit, eggs and various breakfast meats. When they had finished the quick breakfast, both boys parted ways; Spencer to his Social Studies class and Jon to Phys. Ed.

The teacher for the Social Studies class was an old, bitter woman. She adored giving the toughest subjects for all her essays, and always succeeded in dividing her class on the right or wrongs of certain things. Spencer always thought that she did this out of pure pleasure of seeing people fight and not because she wanted them to learn something. He had no doubt that it would be the same thing today. He took his usual seat near the back and placed all his books on the small, wooden desk before waiting impatiently for the class to start. He only looked up when almost everyone in the class stopped talking. The teacher had come in, only about four minutes before the bell, as always, and they knew they weren't permitted to talk. Spencer sighed and stopped himself from rolling his eyes as he waited for class to start.

Ryan was more or less lost. The teacher the night before had talked about the Walker kid walking him to classes so he would get there with no trouble, but Ryan had found breakfast on his own and had then waited for the kid to come find him. Which, obviously, hadn't happened yet. In the end he'd decided that he should start looking himself, and that was why he was now walking down an unfamiliar hallway, hoping to just stumble across the right class room or something. Social studies in room 208 or something. He'd deducted that it had to be on the second floor, but that was how far he'd gotten, and now he was looking at the door leading into room 227, having absolutely no clue of where he ought to go. For a moment he considered barging into one of the other classrooms in the hopes that some teacher would be nice enough to guide him along the way, but if he were to judge by Brown, he had a feeling the teachers wouldn't really like that.

The bell rang and he cringed slightly. He hated being late for anything. It was probably just something that had been drilled into him at the academy, but that didn't change the fact that he was feeling very uncomfortable at the moment, even to the point where he felt a slight chill run down his back. And he really sort of hated that. He was supposed to be on top of things, in control of all of this, and yet he couldn't even make it to his very first class on time. And to top it off, that made him feel uneasy. He'd have to spend some time alone in his room later trying to get the fact that he wasn't some scared student but an agent with a mission through his own mind.

He was at room 215 now, so he was pretty sure he had to have taken a right turn somewhere. At least he was closer now. Even though the extra attention he'd be drawing to himself was quite unnecessary, and definitely unwanted. Oh, well, he should be able to deal with that. 210, definitely the right direction. And there was 208. He sighed in relief, reaching up to tighten his tie a little and make sure his uniform was in perfect order, and opened the door, biting his lip slightly as he tried to walk in quietly.