The doors represented a void, a dark one at that.
Once I stepped through these blue metal doors, that would be it. I couldn't run home and pretend like it didn't happen. I had to push through and just keep moving, keep pushing forward until the first day was over. I glanced around one last time, seeing everyone move around me and flowing through the gates to hell, like a school of brainwashed fish.
The musty air choked me slightly, and the cool air nipped at my fingers. I pulled the sleeves of my sweater over them, and sucked in a harboured breath before pushing through the doors myself. At first all I could see was the heads of hundreds of people scrambling around to cross the hall, and trying to squeeze through to their homeroom's door. They bobbed to the beat of the low music being pumped through a decade old P.A. system. It was something happy, and upbeat but I couldn't relate. I felt frozen, watching the chaos disperse from the halls until I could walk without using my elbows as a personal buffer between the fish and myself.
There were a few glances as I wandered the main hall, across the blue and grey tiles that had obviously been white at some point in time. There were also some hasty whispers circulating to compliment the stares, not that I cared what they were headlining, but it did make me wonder if my easy, blend-in-and-don't-get-noticed Plan A would even be feasible. My guess was that it was not. I thought about what my Plan B would consist of as I loosened the book bag straps that were slicing my shoulders, and eventually I spotted an over-head sign, that hung from two thin chains off the ceiling tile above, saying Main Office. I ducked in quickly, avoiding the potential glares from the slowpokes and stragglers who hadn't found their way to class this close to the first bell. It sang out just as I stepped to the secretary's desk.
Though we made eye contact, we both waited to speak until both the bell and the morning announcements had concluded. I rested my elbow on the heightened wall of the desk and waited patiently, and listening closely. There was an assembly this period, given by a city councilman, about the loss of a student that was apparently in everyone's hearts. I wasn't expecting such an event to have taken place so early in my time here in Greyhill. I walked in on a mourning period, which despite how bad it made me feel to say it; would make this transition easier. They wouldn't all be staring at me, but some would be grieving, and some would be crying and that meant that only a small amount of fish would be enticed to notice the presence of fresh meat in their waters.
The secretary wore a blue, button down blouse and cropped her hair just below her chin, the colour that she had dyed it; a muddy brown with red highlights, washed out her tanned skin so much so that she appeared to be slightly jaundice in the lighting above us. She appeared like the type of woman to have a Grand Caravan and six children between the ages of three and ten, and like she was cheery but overall exhausted by her everyday life. Not that I was one to read people, but that was just the vibe that Karen, according to her bronze nametag, was giving me. She leaned over the desk to reach out and shake my hand.
"Hi there," she said with a pep that was on the edge of annoying and reassuring, "Welcome to Greyhill High!" And that was where she jumped off the edge, plummeting into the Annoying Sea.
"I'm Elora Jacobs. I'm here to pick up my schedule," I said. But I knew that the office was expecting me, by the eager expression on her face.
"Of course, I'm going to grab Mr. Aspen, the principal, and I'll be right back!" She said with a wink and she hobbled down the hall, she quite clearly had something wrong with her left leg. The way that she leaped and avoided putting as much weight as she could onto the leg, and the way that it was twisted outward more so than the right was a clear sign of a knee injury.
I spun around and flashed a glance around the office. It was an open room with a few cubicles along the far left, and then two secretary desks along the back wall, one of which I was leaning on. The rest was littered with waiting furniture, and tables. I could see that through the narrow archway between the cubicles and secretaries, there was a network of smaller offices.
