You Must Remember This

Chapter 2: It Was Love At First Sight

By the time the new freshmen made it up the steps into the central courtyard, all one thousand of the other students had already dispersed throughout the school. They traveled in small groups, checking in with old friends and excitedly sharing summer stories. Many were queued in front of the administrative offices to dispute their class schedules, and a few freshmen tried muscling their way through the crowd to skip the line before being sent to the back. All the veteran students walked quickly, forcing those who were not yet in tune with the currents of flesh to duck and weave or be forced to sidle along the walls. The sun had not yet broken through the clouds above, and the metal benches were still too cold to sit on.

Frank was a fast walker, but he was nearly swept away in the students' inexorable torrent before he ducked to the side and entered a hallway. Fluorescent lights illuminated the entire hallway, their light reflecting off the tiles to create the initial impression of sterility. Although typically there would be crumbs along the edges, pushed there by natural foot traffic, the school had made a particular impression to greet its new students with serenity in the hope that they would be encouraged to maintain this status quo. Every step from every student and teacher echoed, which typically would not be noticeable, but as most students were reveling in the crisp air outside, he could listen and count how many others were in the area. The posters were eclectic, ranging from a few reminders about food safety to exhortations to maintain Heller values. He saw one poster celebrating the then-junior class, which was covered in a mess of green scribbles that were presumably signatures. Nobody quietly sitting and eating their hasty breakfast acknowledged him.

His first class, Chinese, was outside, and Frank turned left at a junction and almost bumped into another kid, who was staring at his class schedule and neatly drawn map, seemingly perplexed at the instructions directing him to exit the building.

"Are you looking for Mrs. Huang's class? It's outside and to the left," Frank offered hesitantly. This was the first communication he had had with an unfamiliar student—did they bite? He probably wouldn't.

"Yeah, I am. Thanks," Ernest responded, his eyes firmly intent on his schedule and then the glass door in front of them, which led to an unfamiliar region of the school and was thus daunting. "Do you have her next period?"

"I do. I figured I may as well double-check that I'm in the right place, you know."

"Chinese III?" Frank nodded sharply in response.

"Interesting. What did you think of the assembly? The kids sitting next to me were so annoying, they kept whispering to each other the entire time. So disrespectful."

Frank nodded again, less sharply. "I was sitting in the back next to one of my friends, Jason if you know him, so it was quiet. He even took a nap." Ernest chuckled, then sighed again, before sharing more of his gripes with the morning's assembly.

On the other side of the school, John was completing his own ambling walk around the school. He followed the crowd's movements, and after a few minutes ended up right where he started. Seeing no particular reward for his efforts besides a few more familiar faces in the crowd, he pulled a granola bar from his pocket and started munching on it. He gingerly tested one of the benches, found it too cold, and chose instead to sit on the concrete rim of a planter, overlooking the still dewy central lawn. His next class was math, and he reviewed basic algebra formulae he knew he remembered from last year for fear of slipping up. He was enrolled in the accelerated geometry program, which was populated equally by freshmen whose parents were envious of the children closer to calculus and sophomores who, also envious of their peers, vowed to be left behind no longer.

Eventually, when it became clear to John that he would be unable to discern any hidden insight in the weaving crowds, he threw his granola bar wrapper in the nearest trash can and entered the nearest hallway to find his math class. Heller High School was roughly symmetric in its main floor plan: on the two sides of the central courtyard that were not occupied by the administrative offices and the gymnasiums, either two or three looming doors labeled with white-painted letters led to a regular grid of classrooms, numbered according to which hallway they were located in. Students and faculty alike considered it an elegant system, with the exception of the new arrivals, many of whom struggled to process the system when already suffering from sensory overload. Many classrooms were numbered incongruously, forming a healthy list of exceptions that everyone experienced knew by heart.