Chapter 20: Chapter 18

That was...mortifying. Em thought to herself. She had just transferred to the school, and immediately, she had been made a target of some bullies. They outnumbered her, and they outmatched her. Thus she ran. And ran. And ran into that wall of a human. Said wall was tall and muscular, her hair messy and tangled.

She ran into the Human Wall and fell. The three bullies -whom she had named idiot 1, 2, and 3- just stopped completely in their tracks. They just stared at her, then looked at the Human Wall, then backed away. Fuuuuck. The human wall must've been some big shot in this school. Em sighed and resigned herself to her fate. She's probably going to... I dunno. Punch me or beat me up or something? She sighed, and waited for the punch to come.

But nothing did. The Human Wall just looked at her, then walked away.

Well, that was lucky. A part of her was slightly offended that the Human Wall just treated her like an insignificant thing, but a huge part of her told that small, offended part of her to do a reality check.

Gotta hurry to my next class. The school had no introduction system in place. They just handed her a map, her schedule, and the code for her locker. Then they told her nicely to get out of the office.

So she had wandered a bit, dilly-dallying so that she didn't have to get to class, and ended up wandering around outside the school. Then she tripped, and managed to fall into another girl's arms, when said girl's arms were holding two cups of...juice? For all she knew, it might be poison. Anyway, the liquid drenched both Em and the girl. The girl then screamed in rage, called her two friends, and chased Em around the school. The liquid was probably some very precious thing from the way the girl was persistently chasing and swearing at her. Somehow, they didn't attract the attention of a teacher.

Em found the class more-or-less with ease, and found most of the seats already filled. Why are the trouble kids so obedient? Em wondered. Her mind filled in the blanks for her. 

She randomly sat at a table in the back row. She had wanted to sit in the seat closest to the door, but the desk showed traces of a person already sitting there, since there was a binder already on the table. So she sat on the desk next to that desk.

The students -her new classmates- abruptly looked back at her and began whispering to each other. Ha ha, making fun of the new girl, eh? 

The teacher was already at the front of the desk, and she asked her, "Emerald, right? That desk is empty, so you can sit there for the rest of the term. Actually, all the desks around that desk is empty."

Em suddenly had a sense of foreboding. The classroom was huge, and the students currently here all sat near the front.

A girl two rows in front of her stood up, and approached Em. 

"Hi!" the girl chirped cheerfully at Em. Probably here to find gossip. Maybe to threaten or bully me. 

"Hi," Em replied, with much less enthusiasm.

"Do you know who you're sitting next to?" The girl grinned wider, clearly excited to drop some bomb on her -figuratively, hopefully.

"No...?"

"You sitting next to Storm!" The girl revealed, waiting for her reaction. 

"Okay?" The girl wilted slightly at Em's reply.

"Okay, okay?! Storm's in here for murder! She's a psychopath! Like, although we're all suuuuper bad criminals or something, not a lot of us are actually murderers. One of my friends going to the bathroom saw her go out at lunch and into the trees around the school! And guess what? She came back later covered in blood!"

"Right..." Em said. She knew better than to trust school gossip and rumours.

"And during PE. Storm's so strong that every time we play dodgeball, she has to sit out because the last time she played, she just ran across the line and threw the ball so hard it broke Seamus' nose. And one of my friends, who was in the Battlemaster elective last semester when Storm was still in it, said that Storm just ignored all the rules of the game, and began going for lethal strikes, almost killing that guy. And nobody, and I mean nobody, knows her Power. No one's ever seen her use it. Her roommate -Summer- says sometimes there's fur on Storm's bed. And Storm's face! There's this one giant scar, and her body is covered with tiny ones. She's also very tall. Her eyes almost glow through her hair which she never combs. Like, you know..." The girl chattered on. Em had tuned her out, but once the other girl had began talking about the physical traits, she suddenly had a sense of deja vu. 

She was snapped out of her mind by the abrupt stop of the girl's chatter. She saw that the girl was now staring up in horror somewhere behind her and to the right. Em looked back, and saw the Human Wall. 

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"Wait, she's Storm?" Em's stupid mouth suddenly asked.

The girl paled, then gulped. Her throat bobbed twice and she abruptly turned around and power walked away.

Em tried not to look at the Human Wall. The Human Wall -named Storm- set a pencil case down on the desk, pulled the chair out, and sat down, then scooted the chair forwards, making the annoying screech sound of metal against the floor.

"I am Storm. It's nice to meet you," She hear the Human Wall say in a surprisingly nice and smooth timbre.

"Hello. I'm Emerald, but call me Em. My grandma named me, because of my green eyes. I personally think the name's stupid, so just call me Em. My grandma is also dead now, which is the only reason I hadn't changed my name, 'cause my mom won't let me." Em's traitor mouth blabbered. She probably doesn't even care! And, against her logical side, some part of her had believed the girl's words, and was now in fear of Storm, the murderer.

"That's nice. But why don't you like your name?" Storm asked. Em sneaked a peek at the Human Wall beside her, and met the yellow eyes of her conversation partner. 

"Um...Because it sounds sort of pretentious? Like, I dunno, I just don't like the name."

"Is 'Storm' a pretentious and bad name?"

Em hesitated. She wanted to lie and say that 'no, Storm is a perfectly fine name', but her pride said to tell the truth, and that she shouldn't be buttering up to her classmate.

"Umm." Em managed to get out.

"Oh. That was a faux pas. I'm sorry." To her credit, Storm sounded genuinely sorry, though it was hard to judge based on only her tone.

"Right." Em paused. She had a question she very wanted to ask. It bubbled to the surface, and she could feel her mouth opening. No no no! Mouth, just because you're in a nervous and tense situation, that doesn't mean you can just do whatever you want! Em knew she needed to fix that bad habit, but the thing is, the main reason she was in this school was because of the fact that her mouth had almost no filter.

"So, what are you in here for?" She distantly heard herself saying. I'm dead. She felt like an anime character that had turned to stone.

The class hadn't started yet, and conversation in the classroom was loud. But there were also many eavesdroppers, and she hadn't been whispering. She could almost see the people nearest to them -a good two desks away- crane their necks and do the best they can to not turn back towards Storm and Em.

"I am here for... I don't know."

"What do you mean?" Em asked, befuddled, her curiosity triggered.

"I was told to come here by the Dean." Storm's eyebrows were furrowed. "Why can't I say what happened?" She muttered to herself.

"Okay, you don't have to say anything you don't want to." Em hastily said.

Storm's face relaxed back into her usual slack and expressionless...expression. Hmm. That didn't go right, Em thought. Her face looks more stoic than expressionless. 

"We are friends now." Storm suddenly said, out of the blue. Em looked at the eavesdroppers, and she could see them tensing, probably excited to share the latest gossip.

"Okay..." Em said, too confused to think it through properly.