semi-automatic | joshler

1. the beginning

Play the song, please: "Stop, Focus" by K.Flay.

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The last days of August mean only one thing besides heat; school. Tyler Nathaniel* Joseph hasn't been to school for over two years and he has moved a week ago from Cincinnati to Columbus, to his aunt's house, starting new school.

It's Friday and his last school year starts in 3 days. He still hasn't registered yet, even though it's already late, so he really needs to today. He's fiddling with his phone at a kitchen table, when he hears his aunt yelling to hurry up.

Debby told tyler to not call her his aunt, because it makes her feel older, than she really is. She is not much older than Tyler.

Debby is his mother's younger sister and she's exactly the opposite of him. She has straight, dirty blond dyed hair, perfectly curved body and perpetually tan skin, that she easily maintains whilst napping by the pool during the day. She works by night as a nurse.

Tyler has pale white skin,—he used to have golden-tanned skin, but remembers those times like through a fog—huge brown eyes and dark brown, fluffy hair. Debby tells him he's skinny as a stick. She over-exaggerates a little.

But the fact is, Debby looks like she belongs in a tan lotion ad. Tyler looks like he just jumped out of a coffin.

Nobody can dislike Debby, no matter how hard they would try. Sometimes it makes Tyler hate her, because he knows he will never be like her. She let him live with her not because he didn't have anywhere else to go, but because he doesn't have anywhere else he can stand to be. He's still surprised, that a single woman in her late twenties decided to provide gloomy teenager a home. He's thankful for Debby, but he won't tell her this. Not that he tells her anything. He doesn't.

She, as always, has to listen to loud music while she's driving, and Tyler is thankful for it. Loud sounds make it impossible to hear the soft ones, and the soft sounds are the ones you have to be afraid of. Also, he feels safe in cars, especially Debby's car. Outside is a different story. He never feels safe outside.

"Your mom asked me, if you can text her, when we're done here," Debby tells him. His mother expects a lot of things she's never going to get. In the scheme of things, a phone call is not too much to ask, but that doesn't mean she'll get one.

Debby pulls into a parking lot of Tyler's new, lively and disgusting school. It's a shape of an octagon, like an angular letter C, and parking as well as courtyard are located inside the letter.

When they walk in, they are attacked by stuffy air and even louder noise, that in Debby's car. The hallway is a mass of commotion, there are a few lines leading to several doors. Debby leads Tyler with her, pushing people away and passing all of the lines.

She reaches one receptionist and tells her they have an appointment with the Principal. She's playing his mom's part today and this is a side of her he doesn't usually see. She prefers the cool aunt role. Even though she doesn't have any kids, she acts like a good mom.

The receptionist points at dark, huge door leading to the Principal's office, so they hurry in its direction. Sometimes cases like Tyler's have their pros. They can avoid standing in annoying crowd of sweaty students and their parents sending nasty glares here and there.

They have to wait a few minutes in the other, empty this time, hallway. Nobody notices Tyler at all, but he thought he will come in and fill some paperwork and then will be done with it, but he wasn't expecting dozens of students crowding the building.