The Band Geeks Strike Back Part Two
By Shadow Dragon
I don't know why Gregg and Lily chose that particular day to walk along the edges of the eastern side of the school, where I went to lie down on the windowsills and dream up plots to fantastic battles full of dragons and adventure, but they did. Bless their very souls that they did, too, or else I would never have had the most vital part of my great scheme.
And if I could have a black dragon, I'd name her Myst. She'd be small for a dragon, because I don't really like really big dragons. Large enough to ride, but small enough not to be too big.
I had spent three full days focusing on vengeance and I just needed a break to fall back into line with my own imagination, which was bigger than most and took off at the slightest idea. I was letting it run wild when I heard a cracking noise beneath me and started. "What the �!" My leg slipped off the ledge, its momentum dragging my other leg along. As my stomach slid over, I grabbed the edge with both hands and held tight, praying for dear life.
"Ash?"
"Good morning to you, too, Lily. I kinda need help over here," I replied, recognizing my friend's voice rather quickly. "And it's a bit urgent." My fingers were starting to slip on the window sill and I really didn't want to know what landing on a bush felt like.
"If you fall from there, it really won't hurt you at all," Gregg observed. "So my advice is to just let go."
"Before I do something that risky, any other advice?" I asked, my voice rising with panic. I struggled to regain the grip that I was losing rapidly.
"You might hurt your legs if you landed the wrong way, though," Gregg mused, ignoring me.
"Thank you, Mr. Optimistic," I muttered to myself. "Okay, dropping now." I unlatched my fingers from the sill and felt the brief sensation of falling tickle my stomach. That ended all too abruptly as the ground sent a jarring pain through my entire body, spicing it to a burning fire of agony in my left shoulder blade. "OW!"
"Are you okay?" Lily asked, running up.
Somebody had taken a hot brand of pain and had smashed it into my shoulder, intensifying my agony. My face was twisted up with pain, my vision blurry. I sat up suddenly, feeling hot blood race through my left shoulder, making it throb. It hurt so terribly...
Lily had plucked something from where my shoulder had been and was now looking at it curiously. She set it down. "Let me see that shoulder blade, then, if that's what's hurt."
Nodding, I bit my lip and peeled back my collar. "Very red," Lily observed. "No wonder. You nearly killed the glass with that shoulder blade of yours!" She dropped a jar into my lap. "That's what you get for spying."
"I wasn't spying!" I said indignantly, mind temporarily off of my burning back. "I was on that windowsill right there!" I pointed and the pain returned. "I was thinking! I come over here to think once in a while, you know! Cori and Stef can vouch for me."
Lily rolled her eyes. "You know I was just kidding, right?"
"Oh."
"You might want some aspirin for that," Gregg remarked, pointing at my shoulder blade. I climbed to my feet, grabbing the jar from my lap. Refusing to be helped (I'm very big on being independent), I hurried off, trying to get to the pain killer before my shoulder killed ME.
"Lotion? A jar of lotion?" Winnie, my roommate, asked, picking up the jar on my desk. I'd left it there to nurse my aching shoulder.
"I landed on it today and got this lovely bruise," I said, pulling back the collar of my shirt. Winnie winced. Jade, deep into writing the English conceit that we were all working on, looked up.
"Good job, Fish Head! You almost beat me!" She peeled up the sleeve of her long shirt to reveal several scratch marks. I didn't ask where she'd gotten them from.
Jade's always called me Fish Head. This originated from Math Class. I used to call her Frog Skull, but then we changed it to Road Kill. Cori's nickname was Bird Brain.
"Let's all see how much we can mutilate ourselves this week, shall we?" Winnie asked, arching her eyebrows. I shrugged and she and Jade began to talk about something or other that happened before I'd come to the school, so I was left out of the conversation and set to work on my math homework, the keeper of all death.
It was half an hour later when I looked up to discover Jade and Winnie rubbing the lotion all over their hands. "It smells nice, Fish Head. Where'd you find it?" Jade asked. My hand moved towards my collar and she shook her head at the gesture, looking impatient. Jade is very...abrupt, I must admit. She's a great person, and very cool, but she's very short with people. "I mean where exactly did you fall on it?"
"Oh. Over on the east side of the school. I was lying on the windowsill and I guess..." I paused, trying to word it correctly, "Gregg and Lily were looking for a spot to talk and they startled me..."
"A spot to talk?" Winnie repeated skeptically. She and Jade exchanged knowing glances. "Did they startle you before or after they started talking?"
"Before, actually," I remarked, rolling my eyes so that they knew that I knew what we were all thinking. "But they really did startle me and I couldn't get down except for fall and I landed on it in the bushes."
"It smells nice, not too fruity," Jade remarked, offering the jar to me. "Sort of like apples." Before I could take the jar, she brought it back under her nose and breathed deeply. "Crisp, fall apples. Not just any apples, Fish Head, crisp apples." Her eyes flared meaningfully as she said "crisp", putting great emphasis on it.
I grinned at Jade's antics as I took the jar from her. "Homecoming's coming up soon," Winnie suddenly remarked, having apparently been lost in thought. "I wonder if Brett's gonna officially ask me to go."
"I can't believe they're making us vote for Homecoming King and Queen!" I said, out of the blue. "It's just a giant popularity contest!"
"That's the way this school works, Fish Head." Jade rolled her eyes.
I was rubbing the lotion, smelling like crisp apples, as Jade had said, over my hands. I nodded. "And the popular people are the scum of society, the preps. I suppose that some of them are nice, but I've still to meet one at this school."
I slept on my stomach that night. After practicing my melophone in the quietness of the bathroom (the dorm people would have yelled at me otherwise), I retired early, suddenly exhausted. Jade and Winnie were discussing something or other about a guy named Tom as I slowly drifted off to sleep on my bunk, used to sleeping while the light was on.
Because I was so exhausted, the alarm went off way too early in my mind. It seemed as though I had been lying across the warm bed for only two minutes when the alarm we all shared went off. Winnie and Jade did not stir as I dragged my head away from the pillow and blinked into the predawn gloom. It was therefore my job to turn off the alarm and pry them from their dreams, not a fun job.
The incessant beeping of the alarm clock grated across the heaviness of the morning, dragging it down as I yawned, sat up, and stretched. Bathed in the eerie green luminiscence of the green digits, I trodded over to the desk and reached to touch the snooze button so that Jade and Winnie would hear it nine minutes later, when I was in the shower.
As my fingers drew near to the alarm clock to touch the snooze button, a large crackling static filled the air, blazing even louder than the alarm clock itself. "Huh?" I heard Jade ask sleepily. "Fish Head! Turn it off!" Winnie stirred in her sleep.
"Fine!" I snapped crankily, and plunged my hand onto the snooze button, hearing the crackle crescendo.
"FISH HEAD!" I heard in protest and then everything was silent. But something was very not right. The digits had disappeared completely. The alarm clock was dead. Completely and totally dead.
"Um, Jade, Winnie?" I asked nervously, staring at the dead alarm clock. "I think I killed it."
"Good," Jade mumbled sleepily.
"No, this is not good. Our alarm clock is dead."
I put my hand on the alarm clock to pick it up and turn the face in her direction and the numbers glowed back to life, flashing 12:00. "That's weird."
"Shut up, Fish Head, I'm trying to sleep." At Jade's words, I turned and left to take my much-needed shower, thinking that maybe a small power outage had occurred.
Unluckily enough for me, I had another visit from the soccer preps, right after band the next Thursday. My schedule was a bit odd on Thursday mornings because I had advanced German II that day and the teacher didn't start until the second class time, meaning that I had the first class time free every Thursday. Cori, Stef, and Erryn usually spent this time in the Rec Room down in the basement and I joined them on most times. Lily and Gregg disappeared during this time (today, we suppose they go to the library). I was on my way to the basement, ready to play a few mean games of Foozeball.
The hallways at GA are very broad, sunny hallways, chocked full of windows and lockers so that sun flowed in freely upon the red carpets. And they were quite fun to run down when you didn't have to be in class, so that's what I was doing. What I didn't know was that I would have trouble turning from the red corridor to the green corridor. To this day, I wish I hadn't.
I got the impression of a black, white, and yellow windbreaker before I got the impression of landing on the ground once again. Why does EVERYTHING I do land me on the ground? I thought irritably as I pushed myself to my feet and stared eye-to-eye with the girl who had knocked me over.
Kristy De Gama herself.
"What do you want?" she sneered, looking annoyed that I'd busted in on their "first period skip group".
"To get through." I wasn't going to talk to them long. I wanted to get downstairs and play foozeball.
"How did you like your present from Monday?" one of Kristy's cronies asked sweetly, grinning sadistically.
