Chapter 1 (ii)

When it started, it was the same as it always was; school dances, student body elections, pep rallies—I led two of those—and sporting events. Something about rules got sprinkled in but by then I’d completely checked out. Sitting still had always been difficult and, exacerbated by the monotonous droning of the school’s vice principal, I was in real danger of falling out of my chair.

Sufficiently through with the sanctioned torture, I asked to be excused to the bathroom and then took off in the direction that seemed more promising.  I wanted to check out the music room, chat up the teacher for a bit, and make sure he understood what a prodigy I thought myself to be. Mr. Roberts…I think that’s the name they’d given. It didn’t matter that I’d never been particularly gifted at any instrument. He would find my enthusiasm and passion too hard to resist and once I explained my fateful back story of belonging to failed musicians, he’d stumble over himself to help me actualise my dreams. Teachers could get like that, I’d found. Once they knew your passion, there were some who’d lose sleep over it, and that tended to work out well for me. In this case, it might’ve made him more willing to let me centre stage with an instrument I’d never touched in my entire life. After all, he wouldn’t want to crush a kid’s dreams, would he?

It was a solid five minutes of aimlessly walking through the hallway before I heard what sounded like two voices. Eavesdropping was a terrible habit; society liked to say so to shame people who uncovered their closets full of skeletons. It was never that they were plotting behind the scenes; it was that you refused to mind your own business.

Funny how that worked.

By now, eavesdropping was second nature. At home, if I could catch wind of whatever my mother was planning, it was easy enough to feign a loss of appetite or a stomach ache to excuse myself from dinner. Having dinner with only her son was often enough to placate my mother. Then, it didn’t matter if I was suffering or not; I was out of the picture and that was all she needed. Of course, this situation in the hall wasn’t nearly so severe but curiosity was a hell of a thing and just maybe it would provide me with insights I could use to shape my new image. I would learn what interested them, what turned them off, what stirred them to action, then I could more effortlessly assimilate. It would be like I’d been there all along. Ingratiating myself with the masses would be a cake walk after that.

"Don't forget we have a meeting after school," I heard the first person say.

"Why do I have to show up? This is the first time in literal weeks that we haven’t had to be deep in planning shit. Can't Jayden give us a break?" the other retorted; a girl, that one was a girl.

I stepped away slowly, finding I didn’t have much reason to stick around. Eavesdropping was only as valuable as the information you could get from it and without knowing even the nature of the meeting they were talking about it was difficult to categorise the information as ‘useful’ in the strictest sense.

Not wanting to interrupt whatever else they had to discuss, I turned and headed back up the hallway. I ended up taking the corner sharper than I’d meant to and found myself colliding with what could’ve easily been a solid brick wall but was actually a broad chest. My nose stung from the sudden impact and my balance faltered for half a second before I regained my senses. Glancing up, I saw a boy with sandy brown hair. Dark brown eyes bored into me, just as confused in the moment as I was.

My gaze locked on his, mirroring his intensity as best as it could. With the minutes trickling by, I waited for his reaction. You could tell a lot about someone by the way they reacted to an accident. Take this guy; when a reaction finally came, it was in the form of his lips quirking upward into a smirk. No anger, no impatience just…amusement. There was a joke somewhere but only he could hear it.

He was the sort that got up to no good; probably the sort that thought consequences didn’t apply to him. Run into enough people like that and it became easier picking them out of a crowd.

The thought sent a wave of nausea running through me. It wasn't him, not personally, but somewhere along the very twisted line of my many performances, I'd developed a mild aversion to those of his particular disposition.

In one of my other lives, I’d been looser than I had any business being, ignoring the toll it had begun to take on my mental health until I couldn’t ignore it anymore. I’d been liked but for all the wrong reasons. I lost myself in a sea of expectations and didn’t have the first idea of how to swim. It was the only time I’d ever tried to break my own cover without there being a move involved and I’d only been marginally successful. The boys hadn’t forgotten, their girlfriends hadn’t forgotten…my body hadn’t forgotten. I began being blamed for things I didn’t do, the target of rumours and assaults that got covered up after. The consequences…I’d never considered the consequences until they became real.

That time, we didn’t move because of my mother’s predictable problems; we moved because of the humiliation I’d brought her.

"You shouldn't be walking around the hallways like this; never know who you’ll run into," he said, the faintest hint of seduction veiled beneath a veneer of unadulterated concern.

My heart dropped to my stomach where it joined the frantic churning that was taking place there. My cover had already been set and I wasn’t looking to go back to a character I had readily shelved the moment I left my old school behind. I’d been pulled into dark corners too many times already. There’d been too many hands that grew acquainted with my skin. I’d promised myself that I’d never go back to that and considered screaming to ensure that promise was kept. The principal’s office hadn’t been far back the way I’d come; surely someone would hear me.