Motorbike

He didn’t look like he belonged there – that was for sure. Black hair matted with too much hairspray took its toll on the otherwise aristocratic bearing he was supposed to be presenting. It didn’t matter either way. With a grimace that could have been a smile, he turned away from the mirror, adjusting the too tight, button up dress shirt his dad had gotten him earlier that month. It looked horrendous on him, but the difference couldn’t be accounted for when clashed with all the other shirts he preferred wearing.

All corrupting influences aside, he considered himself to be relatively normal.

They would too. That would be their first mistake.
Alexander Kriusisile-Aicesalanus Nexus. Or, simply Alex.

He was ready for whatever they could throw at him.

xxxxx

“Oh my god. What is that?”

“Do you see his shirt?”

“He looks like a girl in that outfit.”

“Kinda cute, dontcha think?”

“Eww – no way.”

“Math paper fourteen? No, dammit.”

“What the hell is wrong with his hair?”

“Jos, look at the bag – it’s emo.”

Alex stood impassively in front of the students, letting the teacher drone on about good behavior and the importance of welcoming newcomers. He’d heard the speech a million times, and – with a few exceptions – it was always the same.

What he was focused on was really the reactions as a whole from the group of students before him. He knew he was going to have to attempt to match them, word for word, action for action. Attempt, being the key. He knew he wouldn’t, and it was only a matter of time before they’d alienate him entirely.

It always worked that way. Hopefully this time, his dad’s job would pull them out of this city early. It was a pro that his older sister worked here, but not a big enough pro to make him want to say. She was a sweet chick, but still, family couldn’t keep away the burns.

“Why don’t you sit over there?” the teacher suggested, motioning towards a seat in the middle of the back of the classroom.

Alex eyed the place with a look of slight scorn, but didn’t protest. The facial expression was for the benefit of his fellow students. They expected some sort of reaction, and that was the one he chose to gift them with.

Down through the rows he walked, making sure to avoid any sort of eye contact with anyone, staring straight through them as if they were ghosts.

Really, when he thought about it, they might as well be.

The teacher started to drone on again in front of the class, going over material Alex remembered perfectly well from a half year before. The school he’d just escaped had been more advanced than this one then. He closed his eyes halfway and leaned on the desk in the back, keeping a low profile, pulled out a sketch pen and paper and started to draw.

It was a modest talent, really. He couldn’t make artwork that would turn anyone’s head, let alone a true artist’s, but it was enough to amuse himself. He did amuse himself. The kid with the brown hair in the front row – the one that had made the snide comment about his bag earlier – he hung that one, taking special pleasure in drawing the noose around his neck and the surprised expression across his face. Perfect. The girl who’d referred to him as a thing got special treatment as well. He chopped off all of her fingers, leaving the bones in tact and scattering the pieces of flesh about the bottom of the drawing, stemming the flow of blood with makeshift drawn bandages.

The math geek – he took special care with that one, drawing the ruffled blonde-brown hair carefully and sketching in the pale eyes, open slightly as though surprised. Then came the overly carefully buttoned dress shirt, a pale lilac in color though the kid’s actual shirt was a lurid green. Lilac looked better. Not that anyone would be able to tell, because it was a black and white, but in his mind’s eye, he imagined the perfect color. Maybe he’d use colored pencil on it when he got home. At least this one turned out better than the stick figure hanging himself.

His careful caresses of pen strokes stopped when he felt, rather than saw, the teacher looking at him. His eyes lifted up to meet the eyes of the teacher who was glaring at him rather forcefully.

“Young man, would you care to explain why you are napping in my class?”

Alex considered telling the teacher one of several things. He could tell the teacher the truth, that he was actually drawing, not snoozing. He could say that he’d already covered this in the school he’d been to. He could say nothing at all and simply allow the man to berate him. With a feral smile, he levered himself out of the chair and assumed the reciting pose he’d had to master at the last school he’d attended.

In a droning voice almost exactly like the teacher’s own, he proceeded to finish the lecture – which he knew had been taken from a textbook on the subject almost verbatim – and then resumed his seat, letting the feeling of too many eyes staring at him slowly wash away.

He forced himself not to care. Not that it was a difficult task with the teacher standing there, jaw opened slightly and some of the more studious students peering at him with awe etched on their faces.

The teacher’s jaw snapped back up to the way it was supposed to be and he ordered, in broken, twisted words, “Get. Yourself. Out of here. Now.”

Alex shrugged and fluidly picked up his bag, sauntering out of the room as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He paused long enough in the doorway to give the room a quick smirk before disappearing into the hallway.

That’s got to be a new record for getting kicked out of class. Not even ten minutes, I think. Eh, so where’s this place I’m supposed to end up at? Or do they just eject students and let them wander the halls? It might not be so bad if I can just do that…

He walked down the hall, smooth movements carrying him easily through. Idly flipped his cell phone open and checked messages. Nothing new.

The halls remained empty.

There wasn’t much for him to do, really. He set about finding the cafeteria. At least he could set his stuff down there and not look like a homeless lostling. And he could draw, too.

xxxxx

Bright lights lit up the cafeteria. It was the ugliest thing he’d ever seen. The room itself was circular, and lots of circle tables dotted it, their mahogany wood surfaces shining slightly from whatever chemicals had been used to preserve them. It smelled faintly musty. He guessed that whenever there were a lot of bodies in here, it didn’t smell musty – it must smell sweaty and like too much heavy cologne from young men not used to the subtleties of wearing scent. The girls wouldn’t be too bad. They at least should know something about wearing perfume, assuming they did at all.

He settled down at one of the empty tables and pulled out the sketch he’d been working on. The math geek one – it looked good enough to keep. He set it aside and pulled a fresh sheet out, starting with pencil this time and working slower to recreate the first picture bigger and with more details. The rough sketch was good. He wanted something approaching a masterpiece.

xxxxx

The bell rang, ripping him out of his world. He looked up. No one was around the cafeteria. Not bothering to hurry, Alex packed his stuff up and started down the hall, letting his feet carry him where they would. If he was late for his next class, he knew from experience that he could blame it on not knowing the area. After all, the school was huge.

He was late, but not because of any fault of his own. The school was huge – bigger than he’d thought, originally. With makeshift hurry, he still didn’t manage to get where he wanted on time, but it was close enough.
The room he walked into was a math room, it looked like. There were huge black boards splayed across one full wall, stretching from ceiling to floor and covered in equations that made no sense.

With all the letters and numbers – not math, physics.

Which, was worse, in his humble opinion. At least math had the decency of making sense, even if most of the concepts were useless in the real world.
He sat down in the back and zoned out again, his pencil etching pointless figures and shapes over the top of the notes paper the teacher handed out. Not paying attention. Not paying attention. Not…paying…attention…

Maybe it worked a miracle. Maybe time warped. Some strange continuum may have been disrupted. Whatever it was, Alex was grateful for it. The day passed similarly to the physics class. Everyone ignored him, except for the whispers, but they were normal. Nothing strange.

When the final bell rang, he paused to stretch and stood up, just in time to be caught by the teacher as he tried to leave.

“We are going down to the waiting lounge,” she said in a prim voice, glaring a little at him as though he’d attempted to breach security.
Alex raised an eyebrow. What a fucked up school.

Then another thought crossed his mind. I told Dad I’d walk home from school. Shit – if I’m stuck here…

The thought was not a pleasant one. But there really wasn’t much he could do about it, being herded down into the waiting lounge with everyone else.

It was like a holding corral, blue faux-leather seats set up and a huge plexi-glass window that let the students inside see the cars pulling up. Alex thought it couldn’t get much worse. Then the first car pulled up, halted by something and a hollow female voice echoed out of the loudspeaker, “Derek Rizzen, your ride is here.”

A well-tanned kid with tousled blonde hair that looked out of place on his dark skin rose to his feet and went down the stairs to where his car was waiting for him.

The kids that Alex had decided constituted the ‘popular’ group were clustered around the window, talking and making snide comments amongst themselves. As per usual, it seemed that the leader of the group was female. Not a blonde, though, Alex noted with some satisfaction. At least these people didn’t follow all the rules of cliché. Their leader was a curly red-haired brat of a girl, brimming with over-done excitability and too many syllables stuffed into too short a time period.

He watched, dully interested as the less popular kids left, all called down one at a time. Someone noticed he was still there and made a comment on it. He ignored them.

Underneath them, a limo pulled up.

“Hey, is that yours?” one of the girls asked the flame-head.

Everyone clustered around the window.

“Oh, probably,” she drawled. “My father is always getting newer and more interesting vehicles for me, you know.”

“Wow, I wish my parents got me a limo,” another girl breathed, pressed flat against the window, admiring the huge silver and black auto.

The voice came over the loudspeaker. “Alexander Nexus, your ride is waiting.”

Alex swung up to his feet and grabbed his bag, passing the crowd of girls and sending a dashing smile at them as he descended the stairs towards the limo. All the time, he was thinking to himself, What the hell is going on?

Only when he got down and saw a figure in black and silver livery matching the limo did he begin to understand, and grin. The woman got out of the driver’s seat and opened up the door, bowing him inside. He slipped in gratefully and she closed the door behind him.

When she returned to the driver’s seat and closed the door and began to pull away, then he asked the question.

“Hey, sis – why are you driving a limo?”

His sister, Niasas Mesialen Nexus – simply Ni for short – turned around to wink at him.

“I remember my first days here,” she replied, navigating traffic with an expert ease despite the extra length of the limousine. “It was hell if you didn’t have a sweet ride, and I figured the same would go for now. I told Dad I’d pick you up from school – I guess you found out the hard way they don’t let kids walk.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.” Alex kicked his feet up and leaned back on the long seat of the limo. “So how’d you get your hands on this thing?”

Ni laughed. “Dad didn’t tell you?”

“Would I ask if I knew?” he replied dryly.

“I guess not.” She turned at a light. “I work with the limo company and told them I needed to pick my brother up from school.”

“They let you take this thing just to pick me up?” He was shocked.

She chuckled a bit. “No, not quite. Maybe it’s not right to say I work with the limo company. More like I own it.”

Alex grinned. “Well, that’s more like it then. I always knew you’d do well for yourself, Ni.”

“Thanks. You’re not doing too badly yourself if what Dad says is any indication.”

“Depends what Dad’s been saying,” he answered darkly. “If you remember, Dad has – ”

“A tendency to exaggerate, yes, I remember. So how have you been?”

“Same-same, can’t complain. Well, I could but it wouldn’t do anything except waste my energy, so I won’t bother.”

They continued on in silence for a bit before Ni asked, “How was school then?”

“Today? Terrible. Already I have the feeling that I’ll be the new target for the next few months.”

“That bad? What’d you do this time?”

His sister might not be all sympathy, but she was always all ears.

“Showed up, I guess. Some kid said my bag made me look emo. Another chick was crowing about how messed up my hair was – hell, if they ever saw it without all the hair product, they’d never recognize me.”

“Any good-looking guys in the class?” Ni inquired, a bit mischievously.

“Yeah – one of the math geeks, I think he is. I didn’t catch his name.”

“Plan on asking him out?”

“Ni!” Alex exclaimed, a bit shocked. “It’s my first day – you don’t go asking guys out your first day at a new school! I don’t even know if he’s gay for crying out loud.”

Ni laughed. “That’s what makes it fun, right? Besides, the worst that can happen is you’ll have to quote math problems at him to make him forget.” She got a thoughtful look on her face Alex could see in the reflection from the rearview mirror. “Maybe you should ask him for help on homework. You’re not abysmal at math, but you’re not brilliant either.”

“That’s where you fall through the cracks, sis,” Alex informed her. “I’ve gotten a lot better with numbers ever since you left.”

“Really?” She sounded a bit startled by that.

“I thought you and numbers were going to be like oil and water forever.”

“I thought so too. Then I discovered physics and since then, numbers and I have been quite friendly.”

She laughed. “Physics – yeah, I remember that. It was the worst year of my life.”

“You too?”

“Yep. Do they still have you in the room with too much chalkboard and not enough brain space?”

“I dunno what room that is, but we’re in a room with a whole wall covered in blackboard…”

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

They were almost home now. He looked out the window and watched the slum-like houses pass by. It was interesting, just to sit and watch them. A cat was prowling around the garbage. A dog was asleep, half its ribs visible, shaking its legs while its dream self chased something invisible to all other eyes.

“I want to get through the rest of this year with as few mishaps as possible,” he said, half to himself, half to his sister.

She nodded, seeming to understand.

“I know what you mean.”

“I think that I need more than just a cool car to really begin to fit in, and more than a hot guy to make me feel at home,” Alex added, wondering if his sister in all her brilliance would catch on to what he was saying.
She paused, checking both ways before running a red. “I hear you. So, what do you want me to do?”

Mentally, he cheered. At least he could always count on Ni to be on his side.

“I was thinking, I’d like to go into the city later on, if you’d like to come with me.”

She let the question hang in the air, longer than he would have liked before answering, “Sure. Any ideas when exactly?”

“Well, a weekend would probably be best. I mean, Dad won’t care what we do on a weekend together.”

“True,” she replied, pulling the limo up against the driveway of a scrawny house that reminded him of the African huts he’d lived in for three years straight.

“Thanks, Ni,” he said, truly grateful to her as he got out of the limo himself.

“Not a problem, bro,” she replied, smiling. “I’ll get you tomorrow too. And the day after. And after. And after.”

“I think I see the general pattern. So, we on for this weekend?”

“I’ll pick you up myself. See if you can’t get that math geek to come along.” She winked at his protest and put the window up, driving off slowly in the black and silver auto.

He watched her go, digging his hands into his pockets.

Day one down. At least it hadn’t been a complete failure.



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Author's Note: Mine. All mine. Go find your own sexaholic, new kid in town to screw with. :P
I began this last year, and I just found it again while I was transferring files from one computer to my new one. So thank the transfer.
I like how it's written. Hope ya'll do too.