3

Travis stared down at the sheet of paper in his hands, it read:
Calculus: Rm. 206
Biology: Rm. 300
Lunch
Physics: Rm. 302
Chemistry: Rm. 318

Of course, his mother had forced him to jam-pack his schedule with all of the hardest courses possible available at the school. It wasn’t that they were too hard, it was the fact that they took away from his social life and forced him to choose either good grades, or good friends.

Travis followed the numbers on the doors in the now empty hallway until he reached room 206. Calculus. Travis knocked on the door and was let in by what he assumed was his teacher, a balding man with horn-rimmed glasses. He handed the man his sheet of paper and the man announced “Class, we have a new student with us, this is Travis Vance, Travis take a seat wherever you wish.” The teacher was obviously saying this out of courtesy because there was only one seat available in the class, right at the back. Travis walked to the back of the classroom and could feel all eyes on him as he took his seat. He noticed Trish, from the bus sitting in a desk near the window chatting non-stop to another boy in the seat behind her.

Travis was at the end of his row, but to his left sat a well-built boy, who hadn’t seemed to notice Travis’ arrival. The boy was busy doodling on his sheet, and obviously hadn’t been paying any attention to what the teacher was saying. Feeling friendly Travis introduced himself,
‘Hi, I’m Travis’ he said as he stuck out his hand. The other boy looked up and gave Travis a calculating stare.

‘Parker’ the boy said as he took Travis’ hand and shook it. As it was his first class, Travis figured he would have lots of time to catch up later on in the semester so he talked with Parker for the majority of the class. Parker had lived in the surrounding area for his entire life and he knew most of the kids in the school if not by face then at least by name. Turns out, Parkers schedule was almost identical to that of Travis except for his last period, Chemistry.

During Biology, Travis spent most of the class learning the names of the other students and their social status courtesy of Parker. Over the frog they were supposed to be dissecting, Travis discovered the names of the only other students he had made any contact with. The jock from the bus stop was named Joel and from the way Parker explained him, he could tell that there was some unexplained tension between him and the football player. Travis didn’t push for further information but instead described the girl who had showed him where the office was.

‘Skinny, blonde, blue eyes?’ Travis remembered

‘Dude, you’re gonna have to be more specific, if you haven’t noticed that barely narrows it down’ Parker pointed out.

‘Kinda bitchy?’

‘That’s either Lindsay or Steph, they’re twins.’ Parker said

‘Well, this one had a scar on her thumb, looked sort of like an ‘S’’ Travis remembered the scar when the girl had pointed him in the direction of the main office.

‘On her thumb? Did it look like this?’ Parker rolled up the sleeves of his sweater and showed Travis a thin line on the inside of his wrist.

‘Yeah! What the hell?! You have one too? That’s really weird, I have a birthmark like that underneath my foot.’ Travis said in a low voice as the teacher passed by, inspecting their dead frog.

‘Well, this has been here ever since I can remember, my mom says her brothers have it too so its probably some genetics thing.’ Parker said as he pushed his sleeves back down.