The High School Years

[Edward Reed]

Time: … High School years?
Date: Tuesday? Tuesday sounds good.
Place: A random high school
Status: Open for real real, not for play play.


This school is a festering pool of wayward adolescents crying out for a redeemer to save them from midterms. There is no one to answer them. Teachers drone on, instilling and perpetuating government issued rules to corral the masses into passive sheep while their pupils sit and rot. Their minds empty and hollow like the cafeteria after mystery meat Monday. Cheerleading whores and AV nerds will spill out in the streets and spread their diseases and useless technology that will soil future generations and, is that guy picking his nose? Gross.

One Edward Reed sat perched atop the soda machine, having climbed up it earlier to leer down from the shadow of his hoodie and lecture every student that came for a caffeine pickup on the government’s interference through the licensing of false advertisement. Pepper was no doctor. He curled dirty fingers over the edge and leaned forward suddenly causing a girl with too much makeup and not enough clothes to shriek at his sudden appearance. She had bent to grab her soda from the door and saw his shadow cast over her. He wrinkled a freckled nose at the cheap perfume that she had apparently bathed in and frowned at her too short skirt.

“Freak,” she muttered.

“Whore.” The bleak insult meant for a more graver voice, cracked in the middle and made the teenager glower.

“Take a bath!” With a flip of her bleach blonde hair, the girl walked off with one furtive glance her before she leaned in close to friends to gab about the newest guy she was dating.

Edward glared at the retreating figure before he pulled a wrinkled piece of paper from his sweatshirt and tapped it to the front of the soda machine, displaying the simple message. The end is nigh. He pointed to it as a abnormally tall kid passed by, slowing just enough to read it before quickening his steps as a couple of jocks pushed him aside to walk through. Edward made note of the bullies, knowing he’d take care of them after school if he wasn’t thrown into detention by the end of the next class.

[Annabel Caldwell]

The photocopier in the front office was emanating the chemical smell of toner. The copier made weird whirring noises as it folded the copies in tri-fold and stacked them haphazardly at the bottom slot. Annabel Caldwell's eyes looked up past the freckled bridge of her nose and her Barq's Rootbeer Flavored LipSmackered lips smiled at the school secretary, who had a severe gaze fixed on the girl. Hey, it wasn't Annabel's fault that someone had destroyed the school newspaper's copy machine. As usual, the assistant editor (which was just a fancy name for proofreader under the tyrannical rule of the current editor) had arrived earlier to print off the latest copies of the school newspaper and distribute them to teacher's mailboxes and classrooms only to find the copier's door open and it's insides littering the floor like LEGO pieces. Now Annabel was photocopying in a mad rush to get the paper out to the students before the bell rang while the editor and vice principal were meeting with the hall monitors. Usually the paper was out before the earliest of the early birds arrived, and there had been some notice in its tardiness.

Annabel scooped up the last of the copies in her arms and hugged them to her chest, shifting the weight of her backpack to one shoulder. "Thank you Mrs. Teel!" She said over the stack of warm paper as she exited the front office and promptly collided with a freshman. With some finangling, the papers were still in her arms, more or less, but there was no way she was going to get them to the classes on time.

"The school newspaper! Hot out of the copy machine! Get your school newspaper here!" A couple hands grabbed the papers before the aforementioned bullies grabbed handfuls of the pamphlets and lobbed them into the air. "Oh, real mature!" Annabel yelled at their retreating backs.

"Blow me, Sister Annabel!" One of them retorted, making a rude hand gesture.

Annabel scowled and tried not to let color flush her cheeks. She kneeled down, her long gray skirt bunching up around her legs as she picked up the copies that hadn't been trampled. People didn't have any common courtesy these days! What with bullies and now the journalism club's copier getting torn apart, this school was going downhill fast.

Annabel worked the hallways, shoving newspapers into student's unaccepting hands until her pile was down considerably. As she approached the soda machine, her eyes caught the tell-tale hand-scrawled sign posted above the coin slot. She looked up and, sure enough, saw the hunched over figure on top. She never knew how he could get up there with the almost entirely smooth surface. She caught across the hallway, almost colliding for a second time with a short girl carrying a trombone case to stand next to the pop machine. "Paper?" She offered, poking one of the tri-folded papers up to the boy.

[Edward Reed]

A grimy hand came up to pull the dark blue hood further over the shocking mess of orange hair just beginning to curl and Edward turned his withering gaze from one student to the next. He needed a haircut but the last person to raise any form of a weapon was tossed out of a window. Granted, it was the ground floor window but the message was clear, no running with scissors. The teen rubbed his exposed jaw, scratching at the vague peach fuzz and maintained overlooking the slowly thinning crowd of hormonal bodies on one knee. The other he tucked up and rested his chin on.

“Hey,” he yelled at a random teen and reached behind him to throw a shoe he had found on his way over to his infamous spot. Just one shoe, lonely and yellow like a school bus, it had lost its owner and mate and had turned to a scuffed life of crime. The immoral shoe hit its target and the teen that was previously attempting to shove a small freshman into a locker went stumbling forward. He turned to his laughing friends and threw a punch just as the local authority aka hall monitor showed up and used his girth for something. Edward watched the ruffians be hauled off and was only mildly satisfied, there was still so much and he was prepared to jump down and take care of the rest when he heard her voice.

Weekly, if lucky, Sunday church choir at the orphanage could not compare the soft but strong voice that tugged at the inner cords of his being. She commanded his attention and he brought his glaring gaze down, the faint lines vanishing and like a thousand flowers opened their petals to clap her entrance, the dull roar of the student body faded in a haze around her. Edward blinked, rubbed an eye and swallowed before he could trust himself to speak.

“Circulating liberal media?” He curled his head to a shoulder the normal downturn of his lips lessened, not quite a smile but as close as it came with him. Even less often then his attempts to crack a joke, though he did have one about penguins but that was better saved for a more appropriate time.

[Annabel Caldwell]

A smile danced upon Annabel’s lips as she looked up at the youth, crouching like a teenage gargoyle above all else. She vaguely hoped that the zit on her chin wasn’t as red and obvious as it was this morning. She resisted the urge to reach up and rub it and withdrew her offering.

“Circulating liberal media?”

“And how. Leslie Miller wrote an article about how the minimum length of skirts should be shortened by three inches.” She opened the pamphlet and stared at the black and white text before closing it. “The new editor certainly does like to um…grasp for the outrageous.” A passing girl ogled Annabel and Edward with fishbowl eyes. Annabel cocked her head to the side and stared at her until eye contact was broken. Annabel didn’t understand why most people stared at the orphan boy in the hoodie, and at her when they interacted.

Annabel lowered her voice and leaned up on her tippy-toes to try and make a more private atmosphere between the two. “But apparently someone doesn’t like it. When I went to run off the paper this morning I found the copier torn apart. Like someone had opened the door and took a bat to the insides.” A flock of goth kids passed by and the girl distributed pamphlets to each one of them. One of them eyes the small cross hanging from Annabel’s neck and hissed before scurrying away. One of Annabel’s scarlet eyebrows cocked and she shook her head. “I haven’t spoken again with the principal since he and the editor met with the hall monitors, but I don’t think they have anything to go on.”

[Edward Reed]

OOC: Annabel’s “And how.” makes me crack up every time because I hear it in her voice. Just had to say that.

---

The dark clouds that seemed to metaphorically, and the one time in real life, circle the grungy youth, swirled in distain as Annabel exposed one of the scandalize stories. She opened the paper and he jerked his head back as if the words would jump out and taint him. The boy grunted and glanced at the paper, catching for any names. “Gutless, conceited,” he muttered as the girl leaned closer to him, the brilliant shade of her eyes like precious stones. “Cute… Cut!” Edward quickly covered the slip. “Cut him down to size.”

The boy leaned back and grabbed his backpack before sliding off the soda machine, his sneakers making a dull thud. He sullenly slouched, making his already short frame smaller and hiked a backpack strap over one shoulder. He eyed the paper Annabel had and finally held out his hand for one. Hall monitors, a personal bane that didn’t understand his way of thinking. Thought him too rough and in too many fights. They were too soft! With knitted eyebrows he stared at the paper, scanning the front page.

Cheerleading bake sale, striping with food, chess club champions, sounds decent, record bullying, nerds not happy. “Doesn’t smell right,” he said out loud what he was sure, they were both thinking. “Unknown scandal, must look into.”

[Annabel Caldwell]

Several more pamphlets were distributed as the youth slid to the floor, and Annabel didn't pay attention to the impact his feet made upon landing. She handed Edward his copy, a faint blush rising to her cheeks as their fingers brushed against each other's.

“Gutless, conceited, cute… Cut! Cut him down to size.”

The blush stayed in her cheeks but she soldiered on with speech. "He'll be booted off soon enough if he doesn't keep his grades up. He's failing choir. How do you fail choir?" The last few pamphlets were distributed except for Annabel's own copy.

“Doesn’t smell right. Unknown scandal, must look into.”

The first bell rang and Annabel turned to Edward, her voice low. "My first class is Honors English. I can get out of it if I tell Mrs. Wozow I'm trying to help with the copier mess. I could get hall passes for both of us."