Chapter 2: A day in the life of chaos
698 Words
Lee Arden woke with a melodramatic groan.
His alarm clock had long since given up, silently staring at him as if it knew he would ignore the thing anyway.
He rolled over, tangled in blankets, and muttered, "Why do mornings exist? Who thought this was a good idea?"
Fifteen minutes of negotiation with himself—was rolling out of bed a form of exercise—finally came to an end, and he stood, one sock flapping loosely from his foot.
He glanced at the time: 7:45 a.m.
Late as usual, he thought. But Arden never panicked. He had a system.
His system involved speed brushing, partial breakfast, and skipping half of the things adults said were necessary.
He was out the door at 8:05, milk tea in hand from yesterday's "emergency stash" in the fridge, and sprinting down the street like a man on some heroic mission.
School was the same battlefield it always was.
Arden swooped into the classroom with flair, dramatically slinging his pack onto the chair and proclaiming to anyone and no one at the same time.
"Behold! Lee Arden has arrived!"
His classmates groaned, some of them laughed; the teacher pinched the bridge of her nose.
This was normal, this was life, this was Arden.
"Late again, Arden?" Mrs. Velasco asked in a voice filled with exasperation and dread.
“Fashionably late, ma’am,” Arden replied, executing a slight bow.
“You’re welcome. You’re welcome for the excitement I bring.”
His best friends, Jace and Min, shook their heads. Jace muttered, "One day, Arden, they're going to ban you from entering classrooms."
Arden winked. “Then they'll have no choice but to start worshiping me from the hallway.”
The morning tumbled along with the customary chaos. Arden attempted to pay attention during Math, but numbers and equations seemed to have a personal vendetta against him.
When the teacher asked him to solve a problem on the board, Arden froze momentarily. Then he raised a hand.
"Sir, I think this equation is morally wrong," he said.
The class burst into laughter.
The teacher groaned. “It’s not moral, Arden. It’s math!"
Arden shrugged. "Same difference."
Lunchtime found Arden and his group of friends congregating in their usual spot.
They discussed everything and nothing: memes, upcoming tests, and the more mysterious rumors regarding the “haunted” alleyway leading behind the school.
Arden rolled his eyes.
"Haunted my foot," he said.
"It's probably just rats. Or ghosts in debt. Nothing scary."
Min elbowed him. “You'd scream like a banshee if a cat stared at you for too long.”
Arden waved a hand. "Fake news. Purely fake news."
Arden's stubbornness got him right into trouble after lunch.
During History class, he engaged in a very intense argument with his classmate Victor on some very trivial point.
Victor said, "The Roman Empire fell because of economic collapse.
Arden snorted. "Wrong. It fell because Caesar didn't have an umbrella on that one rainy day. Obviously."
Victor's jaw had dropped. "You are impossible!"
Arden shrugged. "I prefer the term… creatively analytical."
The teacher tried to intervene, "Arden, can you please stick to the textbook?"
“I am sticking to the truth!” Arden protested.
“The textbook is just propaganda from ancient paper manufacturers!”
By the end of the argument, the whole class was in hysterics, Victor fuming, and Arden standing triumphant, as winning an argument was more important than breathing sometimes.
The rest of the afternoon was a combination of Arden's antics: narrowly avoiding detention for doodling on the walls, talking back to the canteen staff over the "unfair distribution of fries," and almost falling over his shoelaces again.
By the time the last bell sounded, Arden had managed to survive another day at school without major injury, though he did leave destruction in his wake.
As he gathered his bag, he grumbled, "Tomorrow, I will be even more unstoppable. Or at least slightly more awake."
With that, Arden stepped out into the dying light, wholly oblivious that his next adventure—a dark alley, a sneeze that would seal his fate, and a mafia leader who had noticed him—was already waiting.
- Writer
