Virgin Mary

ETHAN REED _________________ I sip the bitter coffee in my favourite Darth Vader mug. I feel my thigh dampening and immediately notice dark spots of coffee that has spilled on my khaki pants. I look at the mug and notice a c***k at the bottom before giving a heavy sigh. Typical. This is a typical occurance in this family. We have moved out of houses more times than I've changed my underwear. So much things get broken or lost due to this process. Mom is kind of a nutcase. She never settles on a house because she always claims that it isn't good enough. But I suspect she's just running away from various problems. I pour the remaining contents if the coffee into the sink and bid Darth Vader goodbye as I threw him into the trash. "Mom!" I shouted through the walls. "I'm leaving now, don't forget to pick Abby up at twelve. She's having a half day today." I was referring to Abby, my eight year old sister. "Yeah, yeah." I heard her reply through the wall. Her tone worried me as I could tell she wasn't paying much attention, which meant that she'd forget Abby. Again. "Don't forget Mom!" I shout again and look at little Abby who is in last years Halloween costume. She dressed as a princess last year and she thought it would be a great idea to go as one on the first day of school. She had an admirable amount of self confidence in her, a thing that is constantly lacking in me. She has made friends in all the towns we've been to, so I'm guessing she has hundreds by now. "Ethan?" Abby asked, with pancake syrup stained on her cheeks. "Promise me you'll pick me up after school." "But mom's picking you up today." "Ethan, we both know that she'll forget me again." "You make a good point." I smiled at her. "So you'll pick me up today?" "I promise." "Pinky promise?" She held out her sticky pinky. I playfully rolled my eyes. "Pinky promise." ____________ I went out and hopped on to the morning bus. Instead of avoiding touching anyone and anything, all I could do was wonder how this school would be and whether it'll be as terribly lonely as my previous schools. Since I'm socially awkward and we move a lot, so I really never get the time to make friends. I'm usually a mystery to other kids because I'm always that kid who shows up at school one day. I never talk. I'm always first in class and is gone before you have the time to say hey. But I always somehow manage to get a bully or two before getting friends. I finally reach my stop and jump off the bus before walking up to the impressively furnished school. Camden High. The name seemed friendly enough. I mean, how bad can it get here? And if it does get bad, we'll probably move out before the end of the semester anyway. I walk into the school, ready to perform the 'I'm-new' drill for the hundredth time... once I figure out where the office is. I look walk aimlessly for a some minutes, wondering why I couldn't figure out where the office was. It couldn't be too complicated to find, schools have more or less the same structure. And at the corner of my eyes, I notice a girl in all black. She resembled a vampire with her raven hair, pale skin and immense beauty. Just by looking at her, one could tell that she's the dangerous type. The type that bends the rules and breaks the law. She doesn't look like a girl subject to the ways of society, she's a girl stubbornly resistance to moral influence. Her recalcitrant personality is completely parallel to my overly obedient one. And if you doubt me on my judgement of her personality, then just take a wiff of the air around her. There's portending evil lingering. Every single cell in me screamed for me to run from her but all I did was gawk at her. And though I've figured it out in my head that I'll be keeping my distance from her fear inducing self, all this girl seem to do after she placed her eyes on me was burn a hole in my skull with only her piercing honey brown eyes. She leaned on the glossy red lockers, eyeing me like I was her next lunch. And just like that, my insides turn to mush. I felt unsettled and very out of place, so I sped my way past her, avoiding eye contact. But she wouldn't quit staring me down. So my next plan of action was to turn to the next person I saw just to avoid the scrutiny that came from the vampires eyes. "Hey." I say to a tiny Asian girl who had rosy cheeks and resembled an asian doll. "Hey... can I help you?" She questions and I quickly remember why I spoke to her in the first place. "Um, I... actually yes. Can you direct me to the reception? I'm lost." "Oh, you're a newbie. That figures. The reception is way at the back of the the school. Weird right?" I nodded. "Follow me." She insisted. I do just that, right after stealing a quick glance to the the raven haired girl I had dubbed as the empress of darkness. My eyes then returned back to the tiny girl in front of me who had her dark hair tied back in a 'not so perky ponytail', her hair bouncing. I notice that her backpack was slightly open and inside I could see that she had the book, 'The Hobbit'. "You're only reading that now? It's a good book." I say and she looks down at her bag. "Are you kidding? I've read this book like a million times already. And this book is not just a good book, it's like a legendary cross between literature perfection and fantasy gold." We then have a fan frenzy banter on all the fictional characters we are obsessed about. She agreed with me what very small population of people I've met in my entire seventeen years of existence would. She agreed that books are always so much better than their movies. And she proved her hypothesis by stating that books give us an insight on the characters motives and background. Any one can say anything about me and my naive tendencies, but I think this is the start of something beautiful. "So, what other books have you read? You seem to have good taste." Me and good taste in a sentence. No way. "Well, I read a lot of sci-fi, fantasy books. For fun that is. Like the Harry Potter series, greek mythologies– Percy Jackson for instance. Star wars, and the occasional comics. You know, with the old school superheroes and all." "Shut up." She hits my on the arm. Too hard. "I thought was the only one. My friends find it weird to read the Marvel books when I've watched the movie." No one judged me cause I've haven't got to talk to anyone long enough for them to actually judge me. "I also wanted to ask– sorry for going off topic– but, there was this girl I saw when I was coming in. She had a dark, evil look. A deadly glare–" "Say no more." She cut me off. "That's Nicole Hamilton. She's the overlord of this school." "Overlord?" "Yep. She rules this school with a mighty fist and her parents money. She's by far the meanest," she stopped to re-evaluate her statement. "Evilest most ruthless person in the school." "Can't anyone stop her? Like one of the students. Surely there's someone more powerful than her." She laughed. What's so funny? "No one is powerful enough to dethrone her. Nobody is that stupid to even try. She has a system that she uses to rule the school. It's complicated." "She really is an empress." I whispered. "What?" "Nothing." I dismissed. "What about the teachers?" "They are all afraid that her parents will stop shoving money up their asses. We've been over this. She also has a system that she uses to rule that school. It's complicated. Here we are." She turned to face me. "The office." "So she's really that bad?" "Bad? She makes the devil look like a kitten." "Let's be accurate for a minute. How bad, on a scale from one to ten?" "I think it'll be accurate for me to say a hundred. She bullys. She mocks, she taunts, and can turn anyone into Camden High's public enemy number one. If I were you, I'd keep clear from her." "Ditto." I shake my head dramatically. "Oh, and I didn't catch your name. I'm Sakura Kawasaki." "And I'm Reed. Ethan Reed." I said, doing a James Bond impression. She laughed. "I hope that we're in the same homeroom. There's so much we need to talk about." She walks away, leaving me with thoughts on the empress of darkness. ____________________________________________________