Kid in a Locker (REWRITING)

26. Ragnarok

"I see we have three new people in our class today." The woman looks over the rim of her glasses, her eyes going from me to Peter to Romul, and back again. Her roster is in her hand, where she just read our names from. How she didn't notice three new people walking into her class ten minutes ago, especially when there are only three other people in the class. They don't seem that interesting, either. It wasn't like she was so distracted by them that she couldn't see us. She just wanted a reaction from the others, which she wasn't going to get. "Romulus, Ophelia, and Peter. Welcome."

"I go by Romul, ma'am." His tone is light enough, but his face could make God wither away in freight. I roll my eyes at him but don't say anything otherwise. We are all tired from trying to adjust to the time zone. When we were exhausted, being snippy was in our nature.

The woman seems unfazed by my brother, mainly because she is already looking back down at her computer. "Of course, hon."

We all sit in silence for the next ten minutes as Mrs. Bianchi goes over her amazing holiday vacation she had with her brand new husband. Looking around, I can see that everyone else in the room cares as much about her personal life as I do, which is hardly any at all. It was bad enough that Mom and Dad forced us to go to school today. I didn't want the agony of pretending to care about my teacher on top of that.

Unlike Baker Street, the base's school was very small. You had the high school class, which was full with only seven people in it, the middle school class that had twelve, and the elementary/ pre-school class that has a fantastic four in it. There is no switching classes. There is no sports teams hanging up posters on the walls. There is only the one class, the one teacher, and the one cafeteria where everyone could spread out and have three tables to themselved if they wanted. It was horrible to say the least, and I wanted nothing more than to be back there instead of here.

The kid next me from me leans over the desks seperating us. He looks like he's going through a severe emo faze with his ebony fringe and black, baggy sweatshirt with the MCRX logo on it. "Pst. You want any drugs?"

I look at him with my jaw dropped and my eyes open wide. One, that question was so out of the blue that I couldn't help but look like a fish out of water. Two, how could he get drugs while on an Army base? Out of all the places in the world, this should be the one place where it was impossible to get drugs.

"Are you serious?" I hiss.

"Guess not." He sits back up and shrugs. "Your loss."

"I don't think so."

The teacher contiues to drone on about her holiday. All of us slump deeper into our chairs, facial expression mirroring the sudden need to find a large building and jump off the roof. I couldn't drown her out either, which made it worse. Her voice was like tissue paper crumbling in the hands of a happy toddler. Every syllable is a crinkle, every word is a marching band that brings pain to my ears.

She's too busy to notice me as I pull my phone out the pocket of my letterman. While getting dressed this morning, I saw it resting on the back of my desk chair and felt guilty. It had been shoved in a backpack and had been sitting at the bottom of a box while it flew from the U.S. to here, forgotten. I had been wearing Nick's stuff so much lately that it slipped my mind that this was my favorite jacket. So today, I decided to break it back in.

I blow away a piece of chocolate hair that falls from my messy bun and into my face as I go to unlock my phone. It had been an impulse decision one night at one a.m. to go to the store and buy a dye that would change my white locks into something else. I had believed then that it was some sort of identity crisis, a coping mechanism as I try to settle into the fact that I'm now in Italy. Now, though, I kind of wished the creamy dark brown color was my natural hair. Even Peter's hair was starting to shed its snow white and bleed into brown. It would make me blend in with the rest of my family, at least.