Chapter 6 (Rough)

Six

Feeling a strange combination of sleepiness and so much anxiety that it was very hard for me to stay in one place, I sat down at the kitchen table with the meal packet I had chosen and started to eat, turning on the phone that would be replacing my pendant during my mission. I had been practicing the use of the phone for a while now, but I still wasn’t fully used to it, which I hoped wouldn’t cause me problems later.

I tapped on the screen a few times and pulled up the details of today’s schedule, not all that surprised that most items on the list had been phrased vaguely. It was entirely possible that a human may steal my phone sometime during the mission, and it wouldn’t do if my phone contained information that revealed my true identity, or even alluded to it.

According to the schedule, I was supposed to leave for something called a high school in twenty minutes, but I didn’t have a clear idea what to expect, which made me downright uneasy. Pon was supposed to brief me before I left, but he was nowhere to be seen, and I was finished eating and ready to go looking for him when he finally entered the kitchen handed me a few objects. One I recognized as a sheet of paper, one was a stiff little rectangle with my disguise’s picture on it, and the other was a collection of papers folded in half and bound at the middle. It took me a moment to remember seeing the last object, which was a human’s book, in a picture that Pon had shown me, and the piece of paper turned out to be some kind of schedule, but I didn’t have the faintest idea what the small, stiff rectangle was used for.

I looked up at Pon, who was looking tired and somewhat flustered. “Did you know that attending a human school requires not only previous registration, but proof of identity, a brief medical history, records of past behaviors, and all kinds of other useless information? You would not believe how much research I had to do last night to understand it all enough to forge your records.”

I blinked at him a few times. I couldn’t tell you why it was surprising to me to hear that humans made registration at a school so needlessly complicated – it fit with everything other absurd thing I’d heard about the planet. “Did you get any sleep at all?” Knowing Pon, it wouldn’t be surprising if he had studied all night.

“Not really, no.” Pon pointed at my schedule. “Apparently, a human child’s school day is mandated for them, rather than the child being allowed to choose. You need to be at each of these rooms on time, or risk disciplinary action.” Before I had time to ask him what he meant by “disciplinary action,” he pointed at the book and said, “That is a rule book. Apparently, you’re supposed to have it memorized before you ever arrive in school. I skimmed it, and most of the rules don’t make any sense, so you’ll have to be very careful not to do anything unusual, because, apparently, most strange behaviors are considered punishable offenses.” I stared at him, trying to formulate my concerns into words, as he explained the last object. “This rectangle is called student identification. The school you’re going to requires you to keep it on you, but I never figured out why. Typically, humans use identification to prove to each other they are allowed to do something or be someplace, but I have no conclusive answers on what student identification gives you permission to do, exactly. I’ll be looking into that.”

I had been giving so much concerning information so rapidly that I was feeling a little dizzy. “Just what will they do to me if I don’t follow their rules?” I remembered Pon lecturing about the torture methods that some humans historically used to punish one another, and I felt downright sick.

“They will lock you in a room and tell you to stay put without doing anything for an hour. They call it detention,” Pon replied, not sounding concerned. “Which is not too different from the classes themselves, in which you are told to stay put and be quiet while only the teacher speaks. So far, I’ve found absolutely no explanation for either why the humans think detention is an effective way to teach good behavior, or why they think their classroom structure encourages any kind of real learning whatsoever. It’s all very odd.”

I stared. “You mean, humans force their children to tend schools that aren’t even effective?”

“Yes,” Pon replied. “Apparently, the creatures are under the impression that the lack of effectiveness has more to do with budget problems and the students’ attitudes than the system itself. Ever few years or so, one of this nation’s politicians will admit there’s a problem and promise an education reform that ultimately makes the problem worse. Apparently, they think that doing more of what’s not working will eventually fix the problem.”

I reached for a plate, found none, and settled for pulling on one of my braids. “And I’m being sent into one of these non-learning schools to study behaviors.”

Pon gave me an apologetic look. “I’m hoping that attending a human school will give you a clearer idea of exactly what makes this species different. Since the way we run our schools is one of the most radically different things about our cultures, this may be the faster way to get our answers.”

I nearly asked him if he was sure he had placed me in the school to look for the cure for the Illness and not to satisfy his own curiosity about the human race, but I decided that would be unkind. We really had no idea just what it was about the humans that made them more resilient, so there was no telling if exploring their quirks would be useful or not. At least it was a direction, even if we had no idea if it was misguided or not.

My phone started to make an annoying sound, and when I looked at the screen the notice read, “Leave for school.” I was a little bit startled to see that more time had passed during my and Pon’s conversation than I had realized, and I practically jumped out of my seat, grabbed my bag and rushed for the door.

“One last thing!” Pon called. “Take notes during lectures! You’ll be tested on your ability to remember what was said!” I didn’t stop to ask him what use the humans thought memorizing a lecture was.

I was barely out the front door before I found I was too tired to keep up my running pace, and I felt annoyed with my disguise over it, but, rather than wasting time feeling sorry for myself, I focused on getting myself to the corner where the vehicle that would take me to school would stop to pick up students.

As I got near the corner, I could see other students waiting at the same place, and I was surprised and more than a little concerned to see that they all looked some variation of tired, stressed, or annoyed. I paused near the edge of the group and took a better look at each of them. It was very clear that they weren’t looking forward to going to the school any more than I was, and I wondered why they kept on going if they all hated it this much. Surly, if they talked to their parents about this, they wouldn’t keep making their children go. It would take a truly heartless being to push their child into continually going to a place that made them miserable.

Of the small group, the child who looked most upset was a young man with unkempt hair and a bruise on one side of his face, and he was positively radiating anger. His posture was tense, and I could tell that he was just barely controlling himself. I studied him curiously. Just what had happened to him to make him so upset.

None of the humans at the corner had seemed to even notice me until now, partly because they each had a phone out, but the young man’s head abruptly snapped around to face me. “What are you starting at?” he barked.

Worried he’d try to strike me, I took a step backwards, and I glanced towards our base, wondering if I shouldn’t run. “I didn’t mean any disrespect,” I wavered. I meant to come up with some lie to explain why I had been studying him, but I simply couldn’t think of anything.

The boy gave a disgusted snort, rolled his eyes, then turned away from me, ignoring me very pointedly as he tapped rapidly at his phone’s screen. I blinked a couple of times. I hadn’t expected the escalation to end so abruptly.

We stood there, waiting, for a few more minutes, and this time I was much more careful not to openly study any of the children, although I kept watching and making observations. No one had said much, which was a little disappointing. It would be extremely hard to understand this race without listening to some conversations. I wondered, unhappily, if these creatures really interacted when they weren’t arguing.

Finally, the vehicle, a large, ugly, yellow thing called a “bus” pulled up in front of us, making such an awful sound that I had to cover my ears. Strangely, no one else seemed bothered by the sound, but they did seem annoyed to have to put away their phones. One by one, the climbed up a few steep steps to get onto the bus, but I hung back. If that thing made such a terrible noise while stopping, just how noisy would this ride be?

“Hey, Braids!” a man at the front of the bus hollered at me. “Are you coming or what?”

I hesitated one more moment, then started to climb the steps. “My name isn’t ‘Braids,’” I told him on my way up. “It’s Addia.”

He gave me a glare that I thought was uncalled for. “I don’t care what your name is! Take a seat already! You’re going to make me late!”

I scampered near the back of the bus as quickly as I could to escape his glare and sat down in a seat I thought he wouldn’t be likely to see me if he happened to turn around in his seat and lowered my head. I wondered, anxiously, what would happen to me if I annoyed him again. Would he do something violent, or would he send me to “detention?”

The child in the seat next to make gave a drawn-out sound that was something between a groan and a sigh. “Find yourself another place to sit.”

I glanced up and was more than a little dismayed to see that I had chosen a seat right next to the young man who barked at me for staring at him earlier. I would have happily changed seats, but the bus made another awful sound, then it lurched, and a glance out the window told me that the bus was moving. The entire vehicle vibrated harshly, and I wondered if all vehicles on Earth moved so gracelessly. In no time at all, I felt absolutely sick to my stomach. I frowned. I hadn’t even arrived at the school yet, and I was already miserable.

“You’re not going to throw up, are you?” the boy sneered. “I swear, if you puke on me...” he stopped, as if he didn’t actually know what he’d do if I did puke on him, but I was sure that whatever he did to me wouldn’t be pleasant.

“Leave me alone!” I snapped. It took all my concentration to keep my food in my stomach, my head pounded, and I was in no mood to even be having this conversation.

Thankfully, the boy went quiet, and after a while I found that the bus’s motions became slightly less unpleasant, even if I still didn’t like the sounds, but then, without warning, it slowed down jerkily, shifted clumsily to the right, then came to a jolting stop, making loud and unpleasant noises the entire time. I started to stand up, very happy that the unpleasant ride was over, but I then I noticed that no one else was moving to get off, and a few more children were climbing on. I plopped back down into my seat, feeling absolutely dismayed. This ride wasn’t over – we had only stopped to pick up more students.

I felt a gaze on me, and I turned my head to see that the boy was looking at me as if I was the strangest creature he had ever seen. “What, have you never ridden on a bus before?”

I hesitated. I wanted to deny it, but I could think of no other plausible explanation to give him. “This is my first time on a bus,” I replied, at about the same time the bus started again, and I had to put a hand over my mouth.

The boy gave a loud sigh, as if I was grievously inconveniencing him.

The bus kept moving for a few more minutes, then it stopped again, with those same nauseating motions, and I looked towards the front to see even more children getting on. I gave a quiet sigh, wondering just how many times we would stop before we finally arrived at the school.

The boy nudged me impatiently. “Go! Find another seat!”

I started to obey, standing up only partway before my shaking legs gave, and I fell back down, feeling distinctly dizzy. The boy glared at me, as if I had done the entire thing on purpose, and I felt a strong urge to ram my head into him for being so unpardonably rude, and I might have actually done it, if I wasn’t feeling too sick to move.

I put my head down, almost between my knees, and focused very hard on trying not to feel every little motion the hateful bus made, and I refused to move one bit until the bus stopped again, and I I could hear children getting out of their seats, but even then I found it very hard to sit up.

“Hey,” the boy complained. “Get up! I want to get out!” He gave me a rough shove.

Doing my best to ignore him, I very slowly started to stand up, and when I lifted my head enough to glance up, I was dismayed to see the man from the front of the bus looking at me and shaking his head. “Boy, you’d better walk her to the nurse’s office. She looks awful.”

I felt a jolt of alarm. Given Earth’s very slim medical understanding, combined with the fact that they would try to treat me the same way they would any other human, letting a medical professional try to help me would be incredibly dangerous.

I quickly forced myself to stand upright. “Oh, no, I’ll be all right. I just need a moment.” I hoped that would be enough to convince these people to leave me alone to go about my business.

The boy, asking no clarifying questions, rushed off the bus, and I followed him, struggling very, very hard to look as if I no longer had a stomachache. I could feel the man from the front of the bus watching me the entire time, but when I glanced back he looked more exasperated than concerned. I frowned to myself. Apparently, this was a decidedly unfeeling race.

I followed the other students in through a set of doors that struck me as being far too narrow compared to the sheer number of people trying to walk through at once, and people were pressed all around me, which I thought was distinctly annoying. I walked through the doors and found myself in a larger foyer area, but it immediately branched off into a set of very narrow hallways. I found a relatively still place in the noisy foyer and pulled my class schedule out of my pocket, trying to understand it. My homeroom class, whatever that was, was somewhere called B-10. I gave a confused frown. Just what was B-10 supposed to mean?

Someone placed a hand on my shoulder, which made me jump. I turned to see a woman decidedly older than the students. She gave me a friendly smile. “Are you lost?”

“Yes,” I replied, finding I had to talk loudly to be heard over the racket. “Where is B-10?”

She pointed down one of the narrow hallways. “It’s near the end of that hallway.”

“Thank you,” I replied, but she had already turned her attention to some other student, who was scowling at his schedule the same way I had been frowning at mine a moment earlier. Apparently, it was fairly easy to tell if someone was lost here.

I walked down the cramped hallway and found that the doors of the classrooms were labeled with both a number and a letter, and it didn’t take long to find B-10, now that I knew which direction I was supposed to be walking. I came into the classroom and stopped short, feeling more than a little confused.

Every classroom I had been in before had seats of varying shapes scattered into loose groups around the room, intended to be moved around as needed, and arranged to make talking to others in the group easy and comfortable. Here, I saw about three dozen stiff desks that didn’t look entirely comfortable, arranged so neatly in their rows and columns that it looked as if someone had been trying to see how many seats they could possibly fit into the same room and still leave just a little room to walk. Glancing around, I could see that this entire room was arranged and decorated in this stiff, uniform manner. I frowned. Just how was any student supposed to learn in this stifling environment?

The next thing I noticed was that very few students were actually in their seats, and they had arranged themselves into groups that looked similar to the ones that I had seen in my classrooms back home, chatting with one another. I kept on expecting them to start moving their desks to suit their needs, but they simply ignored the arrangements of the desks as much as they could, some leaning over them, some children standing in the isles, and some children sitting on top of the desks. It made me wonder if the desks were adhered into position, but I couldn’t imagine why.

A man with gray hair walked in, and a few of the students broke off from their conversations and went to sit down, sometimes clear across the room from where they had just been, which I thought was curious – wouldn’t it be easier to take the seat nearest to where you had just been, or to sit down near the people you liked to talk to?

“Take your seats!” the man at the front of the room called, which caused a few more of the students to find a desk, but there were still three girls who ignored the man and continued to talk to each other. Looking annoyed, he walked up to them and tapped one on the shoulder. They all turned and glared at him, as if they thought he was being very rude by interrupting their conversation. “Britteny, please go to your seat,” the man ordered, tone clipped. “Dionne, sit down properly, and, Celine, kindly return to your own classroom. You’ll be marked as absent if you don’t go quickly.”

The girls obeyed reluctantly, all rolling their eyes and sighing, which I thought was rude, but I couldn’t understand why the man felt that them being in certain seats was so important. If anything, that would make the class feel far too formal.

To my alarm, the man turned his frustrated gaze on me. “And, may I ask, why aren’t you in your seat?”

I put my hands up, wondering, wildly, just how easy it would be to make him lose his temper. “I don’t know which one it is,” I explained, voice very quiet.

His expression became less hard, and he almost looked embarrassed. “Oh. You’re new.” He pointed at the one of the two remaining empty desks. “That will be your seat this semester.”

“Um, thanks,” I replied, walking over and sitting down. I was still confused by the fact that the seating was apparently assigned, and I hadn’t the faintest idea what a semester was, but I didn’t think it would be safe to ask these questions out loud.

The man walked up to the larger desk at the front of the room, picked up some rectangle that had a piece of paper on it, then seemed to start to count us, making notes on his paper periodically, which struck me as being strange. At around the same time, the students in the room fell back into conversation, although mostly with different people than they had before, and some students had their phones out again.

I was still trying to work out exactly what was going on when a loud, strange sound came from near the front of the room. The man made some angry gestures at the children, which I assumed meant he wanted them to be quiet, but he was mostly ignored. The students who had their phones out put them away, but at least a fourth of the students were still talking. The strange sound from the front of the room didn’t stop, and it was quickly becoming grating.

It wasn’t until the sound had gone on for about two minutes that I realized that those sounds were supposed to be words, but for some reason whatever speaker it was coming from was barely speaking clearly enough to be understood. I quickly turned my full attention to the garbled voice, curious about what it had to say, but between its poor pronunciation and the fact that the students were still talking, I could barely make out anything. From what little I caught, the speaker was reminding the students of rules that should have been self-evident – that vandalizing the bathrooms wasn’t acceptable, and that students should refrain from stealing from the vending machines, whatever those were. I frowned to myself, wondering why the students would ever behave in such a way in the first place, let alone consistently enough that the speaker felt the need to remind them that they should stop.

By the time the speaker stopped talking, my head absolutely pounded, and I wanted nothing more than to find a silent place, but I had to go to my next class, or risk detention, which was actually sounding pleasant compared to homeroom. I pulled my schedule out of my pocket, but the aching in my head was intense enough that I had a very hard time understanding what I was reading. I stood up from my desk and started to make my way, carefully, out of the classroom.

Unfortunately, the hallways were about as loud and crowded as they were before, and I found that I was quickly becoming confused. Thankfully, my next class was in the same hallway, and I happened to glance at the label on the door as I walked past, otherwise there’s no telling just how lost I would have become.

The one adult in this room, who was the woman who had helped me find my class earlier, directed me to my seat as soon as I walked in, which saved me some trouble, and I sat down and willed myself to stop growing dizzy. I reflected, annoyed, that I had only spent about an hour here, and that I was already thoroughly tired with school, and I would like to be done with it forever, if possible.

The last few students trailed in and found their seats, and I noticed that fewer of them refused to end their conversations this time, although there were still several children who didn’t fall silent when the woman directed, until she threatened them with detention, which, surprisingly, made them stop.

The woman then went to the large desk at the front of the room, picked up a stack of papers, which the students groaned outright when they saw, and she started to pass out the papers. “I’m sorry, I know that you’re all tired of the testing, but I’m sure you’ll do fine.” She looked genuinely regretful about the papers she was delivering. I found myself staring. If her students hated the testing, and she disliked testing them, why did she keep on doing it?

When I received my own paper, I fished a pencil out of my bag, and I started to read the page, fully expecting to both understand it and solve it, but I found myself looking at a wall of completely nonsensical questions. After a moment, I realized that this was supposed to be math, but everything was so abstracted that I couldn’t even begin to understand how I was supposed to respond. Math had always been one of my favorite subjects, and to me it seemed downright absurd that it should seem so imposing to me now.

I could hear students around me writing feverishly as I stared down at my page and tried to figure out what to do. After some long moments of panic, I finally managed to mentally translate the first question into something I could understand, and, feeling relived, I wrote down my answer. Using this method, I found that understanding the question took far more time than formulating the answer, but I was happy to finally be making some progress.

I had just barely finished my page when the bell rang, signaling the end of the class, and all the students got up and placed their papers on the woman’s desk, with an attitude of anxiety that I didn’t understand. Just what did these students think would happen to them if they hadn’t answered correctly?

My headache was much less by now, and I found my next classroom without a problem, now that I could see how the classrooms were organized – each letter represented a hallway, and the lower numbers were towards the beginning of the hallway, with higher numbers near the end. I entered the room, and after a brief question about which seat was mine, I sat down, thinking that maybe the rest of this day would be bearable after all.

The teacher of this classroom, after somehow managing to shut the conversations down, came to the front of the room and called, “Please open up to Chapter Five, which starts in page one-hundred and thirty.” I didn’t have a clear idea what he was talking about, but all the students around me immediately pulled heavy-looking books and easily flipped to the place they wanted. I blinked a couple of times before I slowly looked in my bag, knowing the heavy book I apparently needed for this class wasn’t in there, but needing to be certain. Of course, I found nothing of the kind.

I sat there, feeling very anxious, when the teacher plopped what was apparently one of his own books on my desk, giving a martyred sigh before he walked away. I couldn’t understand why he felt so inconvenienced, but I was happy to have a book.

It took me a moment to figure out how to navigate the book, because I had never used one before. I finally opened to the correct page and started reading, hoping I’d have enough time to read whatever it was I was supposed to be studying before the bell rang and I’d have to move on, but I found that this book was almost as strange as the math page I had done earlier. This book was clearly about events in Earth’s history, but everything was described in such bland language, and with so many unneeded details, that I struggled to focus on it.

Bravely, I kept on reading, but I simply couldn’t keep my mind from wandering. I found myself thinking about my school days back home, and how much fun I’d had. There, the school was kept open at all hours of the day, and students were welcome at any time they wanted to attend, and could stay as long, or as briefly as they wanted, and I would have spent all day there, if my parents had let me.

I remembered, with a keen feeling of homesickness, how I would choose a classroom, depending on which subject I wanted to study, and when I came in I would immediately find teachers and older students there to help me if anything stumped me as I used that various study material that was scattered around the classroom. I would stay in that classroom until I got tired of the subject, then I simply stood up and went into another room. There were no assigned seats, no bells, no mandated study material, no blandly written books, teachers didn’t have to act as dictators, and no student even thought of vandalizing the bathrooms.

I was startled from my thoughts as the bell rang, and I found myself leaving the classroom, placing the book back on the teacher’s desk, and I only half-heard his warning to bring my own text book next time. I was so overwhelmed with my thoughts that it was hard to focus on much of anything.

I was walking down the hallway on my way to my next class when I started to notice something odd. Small groups of children would gather themselves together, single out another student, say some things that the other student evidently disliked, and the group would keep on saying those things, even after the other student looked unhappy, and the other student wouldn’t do anything to step the group from being so disrespectful. I noticed these strange behaviors no fewer than three times, all from different children, before I reached my next class, which was P.E., whatever that stood for.

I had some trouble finding the “gym,” but another student, a dark girl with hair that stood out from her head, noticed my confusion and guided me along. I was grateful to her for that, and I was very, very happy to meet a student who was considerate – I was starting to believe that all adolescent humans were unbearably rude.

I was expecting to arrive in a classroom like the ones I had been in before, but she took me into large room with little tiles covering the floors, walls made out of what appeared to be some variety of box, and I could hear running water coming from somewhere. The room smelled slightly like the refrigerator at our base had, and I wondered why there would be a something rotting here, and why it wasn’t disposed of.

Unfortunately, the girl noticed my confused expression. “Is something wrong?”

I felt a panicked jolt, and I inwardly scrambled for an excuse. “The last one I saw was different,” I said quickly, both surprised and relived that such a believable explanation had somehow come out of my mouth.

She looked interested. “Really? I thought that all locker rooms were pretty much the same.”

I felt cold with dread as I tried to come up with a lie that covered the fact that I had never been inside any locker room whatsoever. “In the last one I was inside of, the tiles were a different color, and the room didn’t smell like rot,” I said, hoping that I hadn’t accidentally said anything outlandish.

The girl laughed. “Oh, it’s the smell that’s bothering you. Yeah, we keep trying to get the janitor to do something about it, but he keeps on insisting that there isn’t anything he can do about the mildew. Honestly, I think he’s looking for an excuse not to scour the tiles.”

I didn’t understand most of her previous statement – what was a janitor, what was mildew, and what did it mean to scour? – but I was very relieved that she was satisfied with my answer.

I followed her over to one of the walls of boxes, and as I watched she opened one, pulled out another set of clothing, and started to undress. I felt a rush of both confusion and alarm. For one thing, I didn’t even know why she needed to change her clothes, or if I would be expected to do it too, and for another I didn’t like the idea of changing where anyone could walk by and see me. I knew this room must be gender-specific – I had only seen other girls in here – but I still didn’t want to undress near strangers, let alone ones that I found very strange and unpredictable.

Taking a glance around, most of the other people here didn’t seem bothered by the retaliative lack of privacy, but there were some girls who were changing very, very quickly and avoided making any eye contact. I wondered if they had any particular reason to be acting nervous, or if they were worrying unnecessarily. The thought made me uneasy, and I hoped that I could figure out a way around this apparent clothing-changing regulation.

The girl who had guided me finished pulling her new set of clothing on and looked at me strangely. “Don’t you want to change?”

“Not really, no.” Changing right here was the last thing I wanted to do.

She continued to stare. “So, you’re okay with getting your school clothes all sweaty and stuff?”

All at once, I realized what was going on. This was an exercise class, and human clothing must not be able to dispel oders as well as what I was used to at home, necessitating a change of clothing. No wonder the girls needed to change their clothing – if they didn’t, they’d carry that smell for the rest of the school day.

My realization dismayed me, but it also gave me a clearer idea about how to explain why I wasn’t changing. “I left my athletic clothes at home by mistake.”

The girl gave a sympathetic frown. “Oh, I hate it when that happens to me.” She took a glance at her watch. “We’d better get going. They’re about to start.” She started to walk, quickly, towards one of the doorways, and I followed her, startling a little when I passed by a few people who were apparently bathing. I should have realized that if people got dirty enough to smell but weren’t allowed to go home to take care of it, some bathing at the school would also be required, but what I couldn’t figure out is why students weren’t given any stalls or curtains for privacy. It seemed downright disrespectful to require these children to dress and bathe in front of others, regardless of if they were comfortable with it or not.

We walked out into a room with strange orangish flooring, a rectangle with a hoop and net attached to it on the far wall, and a stack of benches against two of the walls. I couldn’t understand the reason for so many seats – this was supposed to be an exercise class, wasn’t it?

The teacher was a grumpy-looking woman holding another rectangle with a piece of paper on it. I noticed she was wearing an oddly-shaped piece of metal on a cord around her neck, and I wondered what it could be used for. I didn’t think it was there for decoration – the rest of her outfit was practically devoid of details.

She waited, impatiently, for the few last students to gather, when she said in an abrupt tone, “All right, let’s hit the track.”

Nearly all the students groaned to hear this, and that alone made me suspicious of this “hitting the track” business, even though I had no clear idea what it was. The word “track” had a few different meanings, but none of them sounded to me like something you would strike. I supposed that I misinterpreted her statement, but I couldn’t quite work out how.

As it turned out, the track was a path for running in circles on, and “hitting” it meant to use it, and I was more than a little unhappy that I would be running. While I had adjusted to the extra weight on my form far better than I had previously thought I would have, moving quickly for more than a few seconds at a time was still nearly impossible.

The children, after mumbling and grumbling through their stretches, started to jog along the path at a reluctant pace, and I quickly joined them, not wanting to make my hesitation obvious. As we ran, I noticed that some of the students simply refused to run, until the teacher walked up to them, put the piece of metal in her mouth, and used it to make a piercing sound that left my ears ringing. Apparently not satisfied, she then started to make that sound at anyone she thought wasn’t moving fast enough, which I thought was unpardonably rude, and my headache from earlier quickly came back. I wanted to go up to her and tell her to stop doing that, because it was annoying, but I knew that would be a bad idea. From what I had seen so far, not letting a teacher do as they wanted was considered shameful. It didn’t seem fair to me, that the adults in the school were allowed to do whatever they wanted, even if it annoyed the students, but the students apparently weren’t allowed to say anything if their teachers were being obnoxious.

Predictably, I didn’t keep pace with the front of the group for long before I started to fall behind, and I did everything I could to resist the instinct to slow down, because I was sure that if that noisy metal thing got any closer to me the ache in my head would become agonizing.

For a while, I somehow, through sheer willpower, managed to avoid lagging at the very back of the group. I was feeling short of breath, and everything burned, but I was staying in the middle of the students. I wondered, dazedly, just how strong I must be to be keeping this up in spite of my disguise, when, all at once, I stopped moving at all. Everything looked as if it was dark, but with flashing lights, and it took me a moment to realize that I had fallen to the ground. Not that I was complaining – the ground was restful, after all that relentless excursion.

I heard some people gather around me and start making an assortment of concerned and puzzled sounds, and the thought crossed my mind that I should sit up and tell them that I was all right. Lifting my head proved much harder than I expected, at first, but after a moment I was upright.

The teacher stared down at me with an expression that was part concerned and part exasperated. “Maybe you should go sit down.” I was glad to hear that – it meant she wasn’t planning on making that sound at me for stopping.

I stumbled to my feet, with the girl who brought me here on one side and some boy or a rather on the other, and I found I could walk, although my legs ached. The nurse’s office was brought up, but, thankfully, it was dropped when I insisted that I’d be all right as soon as I caught my breath.

I sat down in the grass for the rest of the class, and by then I almost felt fine. My head still ached, because that teacher kept on making shrill sounds at slower students, but at least now I wasn’t passed out on the track.

On my way back inside the school, I walked through the locker room quickly, only barely remembering to pick up my bag, entered the hallway, and took out my schedule, ready to find another classroom, but the next thing I had was lunch. I didn’t have the foggiest idea where the cafeteria was or how to find it, but when I spotted some students carrying brown paper bags like the one Pon had instructed me to put my own food into, I figured that following those other children would be a good way to find where I needed to go.

After trailing after them for a little while, I came to a particularly congested hallway, and I hesitated, standing in a corner. I could hear a riotous level of noise coming from the cafeteria’s open doorway, and my head still ached. I badly wanted to avoid that noise room, but I didn’t think I had a choice. I was sure that if I tried to find another place to be some teacher would stop me, for no other reason than not going into the cafeteria would be something other than what I had been instructed. I frowned to myself, feeling very, very annoyed, and wanting to simply walk out the school doors.

After a few minutes, the doorway leading into the cafeteria became less crowded, and I realized that I’d be drawing attention to myself if I stayed where I was any longer. I gave a deep sigh and started to walk through the doorway, resisting the urge to cover my ears as I approached – I none of the other students seemed bothered by the noise, which I thought was strange.

When I reached the doorway, I was assaulted by a smell that seemed to be a mixture of food, sweat, and some variety of chemical. It was nearly enough to make me turn and leave, but I didn’t know if that was even possible, so I pressed forward, trying not to let myself wrinkle my nose or flinch.

Once I was inside the room, I could see that there were many tables spread across the room where students sat eating, and I supposed that was where I should be, but the ache in my head was so harsh that I found that I somehow couldn’t function enough to simply choose a table and walk over to it, which alarmed me.

It didn’t take long for me to regain some control, and I started to walk towards the nearest table, but I stopped when I realized it didn’t have any free seats. That was a simple problem to fix, but my moment of hesitation caused me to notice something. Some students would approach a table cautiously, almost as if they were afraid something would happen to them if they sat there, and I couldn’t figure out why that might be. All the possible explanations I came up with seemed outlandishly violent, but, then this was Earth. I didn’t have a clear idea just what was or wasn’t likely to happen, and I started to become downright anxious over what would happen to me if I choose the wrong table.

I was standing there, immobilized by a combination of confusion, panic, and the throbbing in my head, when I heard someone say, “Do you need a place to sit?”

As muddled as I was, it took me a full two seconds to register that someone was talking to me, and I turned to see the girl who had helped me earlier. I felt a rush of relief. “Yes!” I had to nearly shout to be heard.

She said something I didn’t catch, then stared to lead me. I expected to be seated at a table in this noisy room, but she walked past all the tables, opened a door and led me outside. I was both relived and surprised by this, but I didn’t comment – I had to focus pretty hard to speak just now.

She led me to a patch of grass where some other students were eating before seating herself, inviting me to join her. I plopped down happily, feeling very, very relieved that I didn’t have to spend one more minute in that awful cafeteria. I was already starting to feel somewhat better, although my focus was still poor.

I had barely seated myself and started to get my bearings again when one of the students in our group suddenly made a disgusted grunt, and when I looked at the boy who had made the sound, I was both annoyed and exasperated to see that the rude boy from the bus was sitting across from me. He glared at me, and I raised an eyebrow at him, but the girl who had brought me here was chattering as if she hadn’t noticed our tense interaction. I honestly couldn’t have told you what she was saying – I had just noticed a second bruise on the side of the boy’s face, and I was trying to remember if it had been there before.

I was startled out of my thoughts when the girl suddenly nudged me. “Hey, are you still there?” Her expression was teasing, and I was glad that she apparently wasn’t offended that I had tuned her out.

“Yes, I’m still here,” I replied, making a very weak attempt at joking back.

Presently, another boy came skipping up to our group, which struck me as being just a little odd – I had yet to see any of these adolescent humans skip, and most of them had dour or indifferent attitudes. Just what had made this boy happy enough to be skipping around, and here, at this oppressive school, of all places?

The boy plopped down into the loose circle we had seated ourselves in, and he started to say, “Hey, wait until you hear what I –“ He stopped talking when he saw me, and his smile faded. “Who’s that?”

I hesitated a moment, not sure how to respond. The question hadn’t been directed at me, and I didn’t know if it would seem rude if I answered as if I was the one he had meant to ask. Of course, it was odd that he had seemed to ask the group at large, instead of directing it at me.

“This is a new friend of mine,” the girl replied. I couldn’t understand the stress she placed on “friend,” as if there could be any confusion. “She’s new and doesn’t have another place to sit. She’s very nice.” Again, she stressed words that, to me, didn’t make sense in this context. I tried not to let the confusion show, and I hoped that someone would happen to say something to answer the questions I couldn’t ask.

The boy blinked a few times, then gave a tentative smile. “Oh. I’m glad you’re nice. I don’t like people who are mean.” That explained part of his reaction to me, and the girl’s response, but there was still plenty of things about this that were confusing me.

He rocked in place a moment. “What’s you name? Mine’s Brody, but I like it better when people call me Little Brother. I don’t actually have older brothers or sisters, but I like to pretend. Of course, I only like it when my friends call me that.” He paused, looking anxious. “Hey, you are my friend, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” I replied, quickly. Of course, I didn’t actually consider him a friend just yet, but I really didn’t want to see what happened if I explained that to him. “My name is Dee – Addia.” I hoped, with a sinking feeling, that no one had noticed my mistake.

Brody smiled. “Hey, that name is cool! I almost like it as much as Ty’s. I like his name because it has a Y in it, and it sounds like “tie,” which is a real word. I like yours because it has two A’s in it, and I like A’s, and it isn’t a name I’ve heard before.” The entire time he was chattering, Brody continued to rock, and I wondered why he’d be doing that, if he wasn’t unhappy.

“Lily’s’s name –“ Brody gestured at the other girl in our group “– is nice because it’s also a plant. I like Jay’s name,” Brody gestured at the moody boy, “because it’s a kind of bird, and I love birds.” Brody hesitated, frowning. “I don’t like Sadie’s name very much, though. It has the word ‘sad’ in it.” He looked at the girl apologetically.

Sadie laughed. “You don’t have to like my name, Little Brother.” She turned her attention back to me. “Hey, are you all right? You look all confused.”

I blinked. “I”m fine.” What else could I say? If I explained that I couldn’t track Brody’s commentary on name spellings and English, these students would want to know why, and that could be dangerous.

Brody started taking things out of his brown bag, chattering happily, but quietly, to himself about the contents, and I took the moment of relative quiet to make a better observations about the children seating near me.

Lily was sitting slightly further away than the other kids in her group, and her posture was slumped, almost as if she was trying to draw into herself, which I thought was curious. What possible reason could she have to hide? Did she not feel safe here? With the exception of Jay, everyone in this group seemed polite enough.

Ty, I noticed, hadn’t looked up from his phone since I had arrived, and his brown bag sat untouched next to him. I wondered what he could possibly be doing on that phone that was so absorbing that he didn’t want to either eat or talk to his friends.

I risked a glance at Jay, who was stabbing at the food on his tray viscously with his eating implement, as if trying to take out his frustrations on the strange substances that made up his lunch.

I looked over at Sadie, who was eating with a mostly content attitude, although I did notice her grimace slightly after she put something from her tray into her mouth, as if it didn’t taste very good.

That reaction made me curious about exactly what she was eating, and I looked at her tray to see an assortment of things that I thought looked inedible. In one corner of her tray was some green things that looked as if they had a rubbery texture, in the other corner was a food that was bright yellow, mushy-looking and soaked in some variety of fluid, which apparently wasn’t intended to be eaten. Most of her tray was taken up by a brown, rectangular thing, that looked as if it was trying to be both rubbery and mushy at once. Judging by how little of it she had actually eaten, I guessed that the brown thing was what she hadn’t liked. Her whole tray smelled off to me, and I wondered how these humans even manged to mistake these bizarre substances for food.

Brody looked up at me from the white, soft, squarish thing he had been eating. “Say, aren’t you going to eat? You’re going to be real hungry by dinner if you don’t eat your lunch,” Brody chided.

Not really knowing how to respond to that, I quietly took my brown bag out of my school bag and started to unpack my lunch. I wasn’t hungry, because I was still feeling slightly sick from my brief time in the cafeteria, but Brody was right – if I didn’t eat now, it could be a long time before I got another chance.

I opened a container made to look like something already found on Earth, picked up a spoon that really wasn’t that unlike the ones at home, only this one didn’t adapt to the need, and I started to eat, slowly.

Sadie frowned at my bowl. “What is that?”

I wished she hadn’t said anything, because it prompted everyone, except for Ty, to lean towards me to look into my dish. I had intentionally chosen a meal packet that my phone/pendant had told be would look similar to something humans already ate, but the phone had apparently made a mistake.

Jay wrinkled his nose. “It looks like the time my dad tried to make beef stroganoff.”

Brody tossed something brown wrapped in a clear wrapping at me, expression concerned. “You can have my Cupcake. You need it more than I do.”

I handed Brody his Cupcake back. From where I came from, turning down a gift was rude, but Pon had warned me not to eat anything from Earth – most of it was contaminated to one extent or another, and there were a lot of foods that the humans themselves only barely found digestible. I really didn’t want to find out what would happen to me if I ate something moderately poisonous. “It’s all right, Brody. I like my lunch just fine.”

He blinked, then smiled, as if he was relieved that he didn’t have to give up his Cupcake after all. “Oh. Okay.” He opened the package, and, even though we were seated about four feet apart, I was almost instantly overwhelmed by a smell so sweet that at once made my throat feel as if it was coated with something sticky, and the sent seemed to fill my mouth. Trying not to gag, I quickly ate another spoonful of my own lunch, hoping to block out the sweet, but instead it made my food seem to taste sweeter. Struggling not to grimace, or show my distress in any other way, I sat quietly and waited for Brody to finish his Cupcake, hoping that once he did the smell wouldn’t be as strong.

I couldn’t tell you if the smell did fade when he finished it or if I started to adjust to the smell, but after a few minutes I found that I was no longer overwhelmed by it, and I turned my attention to the rest of the group. Sadie was having a mostly one-sided conversation with Lily, who was giving one-word answers, Ty was still on his phone, and Jay had finished his lunch, and was zoned out and looking as if he was thinking about something unpleasant. Brody was drinking something out of a brown container and making contented noises to himself. I happened to glance over at Jay as he absent-mindedly reached up to rub one of the bruises on his face, wincing slightly, as if reliving the impact that caused it.

“What happened to your face? Are you all right?” If I had allowed myself a moment longer to think about it, I probably wouldn’t have brought it up at all, but by now I was sure that the second bruise was new, and I was feeling concerned. Just what had this boy been doing, if he kept on getting himself hurt?

Jay’s eyes flashed, and he openly scowled at me. “None of your business!” he exploded.

I leaned backwards from him, at the same time trying to get to my feet as quickly as possible, but before I was all the way up, Sadie spoke.

“Jay!” she scolded, apparently more concerned about his manners than my physical safety. “What has gotten into you lately?” She was annoyed, but clearly not afraid, and I took that to mean that she didn’t think Jay was likely to become violent. I let myself fall back onto the ground, but positioned my legs in a way I hoped would help me get up more quickly, if Jay became so outraged again.

Jay gave a sulky, grumbled response to Sadie’s question, turning his head away. Sadie rolled her eyes. “Honestly, it’s like you’re a different person or something. If this is a stage, I hope it ends fast. I’m getting tired of it.”

Jay didn’t give any reaction whatsoever, but Sadie didn’t push. She gave me an apologetic grin. “Sorry about that, Addia. He’s been like that with everyone lately.”

I considered Jay for a moment, careful to turn my gaze away before he caught me staring. The boy was clearly very upset about something, but I couldn’t think of what. Perhaps he hated this school as much as I did. Or maybe the near-inedibleness of his lunch had left him hungry. Those guesses didn’t seem right to me, but I wasn’t about to ask him about it.

The bell rang, and everyone in my group stood up, everyone looking as if they regretted that our lunch period was over, but I’m reasonably certain they didn’t feel the same stab of despair I experienced as we started trailing back inside. I had about three hours left of classes, and my headache had only barely begun to subside. I was positive that my last two classes would be as confusing and stressful as my other ones, and I badly, badly wanted to go home.

As it turns out, Lily and I had the same class, so I chose to simply follow her, rather than work out for myself where the classroom was, but instead of going straight for the classroom, she stopped, took an entirely different hallway than any I had been down before, and stopped in front of a wall of boxes that reminded me of the locker room. I watched, curiously, as she spun an object on the front of the box, very deliberately, a few times, causing it to pop open. She pulled a couple of books and a stack of paper out of the box, slid them into her bag, then finally noticed me watching her. She gave me a perplexed look. “Um, don’t you need to go get your books?”

I blinked a couple of times. I didn’t really understand what was going on. Was I also supposed to have one of these storage boxes? And why did everyone assume I had my own copies of the books the school used? Wouldn’t it be easier to simply keep a supply of textbooks in each classroom, and then have the students return them when the class was over? And why not simply carry our books in you bag, rather than run back to these boxes to get things?

I noticed that she was looking at me even more strangely than before, probably because I hadn’t replied, so I lied, quickly, “I didn’t bring my books to school today.”

That explanation seemed to make sense to her. “Oh. Did you forget to bring them?”

“Yes,” I lied, glad that she had given me an excuse I could use. “I was in a hurry this morning.”

She nodded sympathetically. “That’s usually why I forget my homework. I never seem to have enough time in the morning.” That statement seemed slightly odd to me – if she found that morning didn’t have as much time as she wanted, wouldn’t the problem be fixed if she simply got out of bed a little earlier?

I walked with Sage to my next class, which was chemistry. I was surprised by the gracelessness of the way the room was set up, and by the exact chemical compounds the teacher was having us create – I couldn’t see a practical use for any of them. The teacher then reminded the students that they had an exam coming up, and everyone groaned, but she didn’t seem to care, which, once again, struck me as being odd.

I left, feeling relieved that one of my classes had gone smoothly – all I had had to do was mimic what my lab partner was doing – but I was uneasy about my next one. I was beyond exhausted by now, and I didn’t have the foggiest idea what my next class would be like.

Looking at my schedule, I saw that I had English, which I thought was strange – all the students in this school already spoke English, as far as I knew – but I was happy that it was something easy – I was sure my translator would give me the answers.

I was shown my seat, and I sat down and pulled out my pencil, but instead of reading from a book or filling out a paper, the teacher said she’d show us what she called a film. The entire classroom groaned when the teacher stated her intention, which annoyed her. “You all tell me you hate my lectures, my papers, and my reading assignments. Is there anything you children don’t hate?”

“We don’t hate lunch,” called someone near the back, which caused the other students to laugh, which I didn’t understand. His joke hadn’t been that funny, and it seemed designed to annoy the teacher, besides.

She put her hands on her hips, pursed her lips and glared at him for a long moment. “Anthony! I thought I told you to stop making disruptive jokes during class!”

“I’m not making jokes during class. You haven’t started it yet,” Anthony mocked, which made the students laugh again. I frowned, trying to understand what was going on. Did these children honestly think that intentionally annoying the woman was funny? This entire situation struck me as being mean-spirited, and I wished the young man would stop. The teacher had clearly been stressed out long before this, and I was sure that he was causing her significant problems.

She scowled at him, then, as if she was too angry to talk, she picked up a stack of pinkish paper off her desk and started writing on it at a furious pace. I wondered if she was so mad that she now had to write notes to communicate, and I watched with interest to see what happened next.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Anthony said, smugly. “If I miss football practice because you gave me detention, Dad’ll have you fired.”

The teacher stopped, then slammed her stack of paper down violently. Her face was bright red, and she was shaking. She impatiently picked up a small box and pointed it at a larger box on the ceiling, dropped the small box on her desk again, turned the light in the room off, then sat down angrily at her desk and openly sulked.

For a moment, the room was dark, and I wondered if this was some equally ineffective form of punishment, but then the box on the ceiling turned on, shining light on a white sheet in front of the wall. A picture appeared within the square of light, and sounds started to play from somewhere inside the room, and I realized I was about to watch one of the humans’ animations. Pon had shown me a few before I arrived on Earth, but I hadn’t been impressed with them – the images looked too flat, the way the characters moved was often unrealistic, and the sounds were sub-standard. I was a little annoyed to have to watch a poorly-constructed animation, but I was much happier that I wouldn’t be running laps, reading a text book that was impossible to focus on, or dealing with Jay. Maybe this class would be restful.

As the animation continued, I noticed that the person on the screen sort of jerked between positions a little, as if whoever had created this film had chosen not to show every instant of the man’s movement, which was irritating to me, but what was far worse was the fact that every few seconds or so, the entire film would display nothing but a dark gray color, then snap back to what it was supposed to be showing. After less than a minute of watching this, I found that I was becoming dizzy, and the headache quickly reminded me that it had never truly left. I closed my eyes, hoping that would solve the problem, but it didn’t.

When the film had started, I had noticed that the sound quality was poor, but I hadn’t been too annoyed by it, partly because I was busy watching the animation do strange things, and partly because the sound quality hadn’t seemed any worse than it was on the animations I had seen before. But, all at once, the man on the film started to talk, and every word grated on me. Somehow, the quality of the sound seemed to be twice as bad when I was listening to words than when it was only notes, and I found that, with my eyes closed, the man’s distorted voice was the only thing I had to pay attention to. My head throbbed its protest, and I wished I knew how to deal with any of this. I wanted to put my head down and put my arms over my head, but I was sure that would annoy the already-ruffled teacher, and I wasn’t about to risk detention – I didn’t want to spend one more instant longer here than I had to, let alone an hour.

After the film had been playing for a few minutes, I started to notice that what the man was saying didn’t sound much like English to me, and, now that I was paying attention, I could see that my translator was only picking up on about half of what he was saying, even when I worked out how to listen in spite of the quality. I thought that was very odd. Why were we being shown this film that was only half English in this class? Had she mistakenly shown us a film intended for the Spanish classroom?

By the time the bell rang and the lights were turned back on, my head felt fuzzy, the same way it did when I woke up from a dream, and I sort of stumbled out the classroom door, mechanically taking my schedule out of my pocket and reading it.

As much as my head was buzzing, it was very hard for me to understand what I was reading, and I had to read the paper about three times before I could comprehend it. I was supposed to go to Spanish, which was in classroom C-7, but I hadn’t noticed a “C” hallway before, and I hesitated in the intersection between hallways, trying to spot the place I needed to go.

Rather than finding the hallway I needed, I saw a small group of students gather themselves together, getting ready to mock some unfortunate child, and I found myself hanging back, wanting to let the group of students past me before I tried to walk down the hallway.

I watched, anxiously, as they gathered around a girl, and I wondered if I shouldn’t do something to help her. After seeing the way Anthony baited his teacher, I was a little concerned about what teasing students were capable of doing, but I had no clear idea how I would save another student in this situation. I found myself creeping closer to the group to hear what they said, even though I was certain I wouldn’t actually be doing anything about it.

I could now see that it was Lily they had gathered around, and she immediately began to shrink even further into herself, as if she thought she could retreat so far into her thoughts that they wouldn’t be able to hurt her. I felt a desperate need to protect her from whatever was about to happen, but I found that I was frozen in place.

Much to my astonished horror, the group around Lily, which was comprised mostly of girls, started to make incredibly rude and personal remarks about her body, and they spoke in such a crass, explicit way that I found myself flinching with each word they said, and I felt almost as if I was the one under attack. I tried very hard to move myself from where I stood, to come up to her, to go and get a teacher, or perhaps to run from the school and never come back, but I simply couldn’t move. I wondered, in a panic, just what had happened to me, and I started to grow very, very dizzy.

Suddenly, someone roughly shouldered their way into the group, and I was relived to see it was Sadie. She was holding herself as if she was completely in control of the situation, and I was sure she would know what to do about this – she was definitely the most capable student I had met.

Sadie put her arm around Lily’s shoulders, and Lily relaxed slightly, as if she already felt safer. “There you are! I’ve been looking everywhere. I need your help with something.” As she spoke, pointedly ignoring the cruel students, Sadie guided Lily down the hallway, and chattering about something that I’m sure she only brought up for the sake of having something else to talk about than the way the group had been treating Lily.

I had really thought that Lily was safe for the time being, but then one of the group called, “You really think you’re all that, but you’re nothing but a clothed money!”

I didn’t altogether understand the insult, but I noticed Sadie flinch, and for only an instant she froze, than she started walking again, even more quickly than before, and determinedly talking about cheerful and meaningless things. I felt absolutely sick to my stomach. These other students were intentionally making other people miserable, and seemed to be enjoying themselves while they did it. And, besides that, they had hurt Sadie, who was the first person here to be kind to me, and Lily, who I was sure wouldn’t hurt anyone.

The bell rang again and, all at once, the students who had been mocking broke their circle and started to hurry towards their separate classes, and I started to rush away as well, but I wasn’t looking for my classroom any more. I was looking for a safe place to throw up.

I found the girls’ room quickly, because I had remembered seeing it earlier, but the state of the room was so filthy that I almost turned around to find a cleaner restroom, but, of course, I couldn’t wait any longer. I found myself leaning over the trash can near the door, and I was astonished by just how much the vomiting hurt. I had never thrown up before, with the exception of the night my mother died, and I was unprepared for the way my stomach cramped, the texture of what was coming out of my mouth, and the burning at the back of my throat.

It seemed to me like several minutes before I was done with the painful retching, and when I pulled back from the trash can, I found I could barely see, because my eyes were tearing up, my head was pounding so hard that the entire room seemed to throb around me, my knees felt shaky, and my stomach muscles felt like they had been overworked. I wanted to lean on the wall to support myself, but, remembering the state of the rest of the bathroom, I chose not to. I staggered out into the hallway, which, thankfully, was empty, and leaned on the nearest wall. I still couldn’t see well, and I hoped that this one truly was cleaner than the ones in the restroom.

I pulled some water out of my bag and started to drink it, trying to get rid of the burning at the back of my throat, but the water only seemed to help somewhat. I rubbed my hands over my face, wondering what I should do. I wanted to leave and go to sleep for a long time, but I didn’t have any idea if Kenk or Pon even knew how to get me out of this school, and if they didn’t they’d be worrying about me. Besides that, I didn’t know what the consequences of leaving the school were. The people who ran this school might take pity on me if I told them I wasn’t feeling well, but they might also insist that I go to see the nurse, which, of course, was not an option.

With a heavy sigh, I realized that my best option would be to go to my last class, leave school at the same time as the other children, and hope that, somehow, no one would notice that I was in pain. Of course, not very many of these humans struck me as being particularly observant, so maybe my hope I wouldn’t be noticed wasn’t so far-fetched.

Looking at my schedule one more time, I began to look for the hallway I needed. Now that there was no one else around to keep me distracted, I realized that Hallway C must be up the steps, and I climbed them, then found C-7 without any more trouble, but when I walked in I had clearly disrupted something, and the teacher gave me an annoyed look. “Why are you so late? We started ten minutes ago.” She was clearly angry with me, but her posture and tone were reasonably controlled.

“I’m new, and I got lost,” I replied, hoping that would be enough of an explanation. I wasn’t about to tell her that I had been throwing up, and I wouldn’t be telling her about what happened to Lily and Sadie, not when there were other students around – for all I knew, one of the tormentors was in this class.

The teacher rolled her eyes. “I don’t see how you could have gotten so lost that it took you fifteen minutes to find us. I’ll let you off today but don’t let this happen again.”

I nodded. “Yes, all right.” I ducked my head a little as I walked into the classroom, as if I thought that would make myself invisible, and then sat down in an unoccupied desk. I was handed a paper, and I was glad for the excuse to keep my eyes on the desk – I was worried that if I made eye contact with anyone, they would somehow figure out what was bothering me.

I quickly started to read the paper, and what I saw was a lot of sentences in another language, but no instructions on how to translate them. I realized, with a sinking feeling, that there was no way I was going to be able to answer even one question correctly in this class – if the only reason I could speak English was because I wore a translator, then I really had no foundation for learning Spanish. I didn’t understand even one thing about the structures of Earth’s languages, and this class was designed for people who had a good understanding of English before they began.

I gripped my pencil tightly, feeling anxiety rising, and I wondered, frantically, what would happen if I couldn’t do the work at all. Would the teacher assume I was disobeying her and punish me for it? Would she keep me here until I filled this page? Would she tell me to leave her classroom and not come back? My head pounded hard enough that it made it hard for me to work out if any of these possibilities were reasonable or not.

I glanced over at the student on my right, who seemed to know what he was doing, and I thought of copying his work, and I nearly started to do just that, but a thought crossed my mind that made me pause. If I risked detention for something as minor as not coming to school on time, what would they do to me if they caught me cheating?

Unexpectedly, I felt a hot wave of anger. These humans were trying to force me to learn information that I didn’t understand and would never use again, and they were using completely unfair methods of intimidation to do it. I didn’t belong in this classroom, in an assigned desk, doing the same useless work as everyone else, among students who would likely hurt me if they got the chance. What I really needed to be learning was how these people thought, and to do that I would have to talk to them, but in this deranged, backwards school, conversation and earnest discussion wasn’t even allowed. Lives literally depended on my ability to learn what I needed, and quickly, and I was caught in a place where the people in charge were doing everything in their power to keep me from saving my world.

I knew that showing emotion was the worst thing I could do, and I fought to hold my face passive and my breathing even, but it wasn’t long before I was watching my tears fall onto my page, hand over my mouth as I tried to muffle my sobs. Just what did I think I was doing here, anyway?Did I honestly think that I was strong enough to not only interact with humans, but endure the brunt of their faults as well? I had just watched a group of children abuse each other, without restraint and without regret. Back home, such intentional cruelty would have earned them a lifetime in prison, but here absolutely nothing was being done to protect the other children. There hadn’t been any authoritative figures around to stop the abuse from happening, and I nearly threw up again when I thought about how little these people must care about their students to let this happen. Where the teachers simply unaware of what was going on? How could they miss something so common and so blatant?

I heard the teacher of this class walk up to me, and I tried very hard to stop crying – I was sure it would be seen as a disruption – but my efforts seemed to only make the tears come more quickly, and my sobs more violent.

The teacher stood there a moment, and I wished I could see her expression, but I didn’t dare look up. By now I was feeling downright ashamed of my lack of control, and I felt the eyes of many students on me. I was sure that if I allowed myself to glance around, I wouldn’t like the expressions I saw around me. I was sure that they would look gleeful or mocking, the way the cruel students in the hallways had, and I knew I couldn’t endure it if I saw someone else taking pleasure at my pain.

The teacher lightly tapped my shoulder. “Um, are you all right?” I thought that was a foolish question – I wouldn’t be crying if I was all right.

I couldn’t reply to her question, and I didn’t know what I should say even if I could speak, so in response I tried once again to quiet myself.

She leaned close to me and said, very quietly, “It’s not because I yelled, is it?” This question was almost as absurd as the last one – why would I react so violently to someone saying a few sharp words?

“No,” I mumbled, between sobs, and wished she’d leave me alone for the rest of the class, so that I could wallow in my failure uninterrupted, or, better yet, send me home, so that I didn’t have to spend one more moment in this place.

She hesitated again. I could hear her go back to her desk, and I thought she had decided to leave me as I was, but then she came back. She tapped me again. “Take this hall pass and go to the school counselor. He’ll help you work through. . . whatever this is.”

For a moment, my surprise distracted me from how awful I felt, and I found myself taking a full breath as I tried to understand what had just happened. Until just now, I didn’t have any idea that they even had counseling on this planet, but I doubted it was effective – if the humans had good counseling services, than why would this world be such a mess? And why would a school with so many students who were actively being abused have only one counselor? I really didn’t want to go and see this counselor – if he was competent, then he would figure out that I didn’t belong here, and if he was incompetent, he was very likely to make me feel even worse, but I didn’t think I was being given a choice about this. I got up from my desk, reluctantly, and started to walk from the classroom, head down, and eyes still streaming, but at least now I wasn’t sobbing so hard.

When I was nearly out of the room, the teacher, apparently remembering that I had gotten myself lost on the way here, stopped me and gave me directions on how to find the counselor's office. I knew she was trying to be helpful, but I had been planning on tucking myself away somewhere and later claiming that I couldn’t find his office, so I was more than a little annoyed with her for taking away my excuse not to see him.

I followed her directions, walking very, very slowly, and hoping that school would already have ended by the time I reached the office, but I had no suck luck – there was a full thirty minutes left by the time I found the room. I stopped, trying to give myself time to work out an excuse for why I was sent here. If I pretended as if I didn’t have any idea why she sent me, he would know I was lying – I wasn’t crying now, but my cracked voice would give me away. I supposed I could tell him that I was feeling homesick, which was true enough, but then he might ask me where I was from, and I didn’t know enough about Earth’s geography to answer that question. It looked as if the best I could do would be to refuse to say anything which, of course, might not end well.

I thought of simply staying where I was until school let out, but just then I noticed some teacher walking towards me from further down the hall and looking annoyed, and I figured that loitering in the hallway must be against the rules here, so I opened the office door and walked in to avoid getting myself into trouble. I could finally see why getting detention would be a deterrent – this place was so miserable that spending an extra hour here sounded awful.

When I came in, the counselor looked up from a paper he was writing on. “Good afternoon. What can I do for you?” His words were friendly, but he sounded weary, as if he was already tired of me. That annoyed me, but I tried not to show it – if he had to help every distressed student in this school all by himself, he must have a good reason to be tired.

“I-I don’t know,” I replied. “I just really don’t like this school.” Perhaps that was more than I should have said, but it was too late to take it back now.

He paused, and, judging by the expression on his face, sighed inwardly. “What do you not like about it? Maybe we can find a way to make things easier for you.” That was highly unlikely, but I wasn’t about to explain to him why that was.

I paused, trying to come up with a reason for disliking the school that didn’t reveal too much about me. “I miss my old one.” I was sure that was a response that any student could have given him, and I was relieved that I had come up with it.

“Oh. You must miss your friends from your last one,” he said, looking relieved, as if he had been stressing about figuring me out. “I know that a transition like this can be difficult, but after you make new friends, you’ll like it here just fine. It might also help if you spend some time Skyping your old friends a few times a week. You’ll adjust in no time.” He sounded as if he was reciting something that he had said many times before, and I found that I started to get angry. Back home, I had spoken with counselors before, especially right after my parents had died, but I had never met a mental health professional who would treat me so unfeelingly.

He looked up at me expectantly. “Is there anything else you wanted to talk about while you were here?” I felt a hot rush of indignation. Not only was he reciting impersonal advice to me, but he had also assumed the problem was solved, without even asking me how I felt about it.

“You really think that making friends will solve this problem for me?” I found myself saying, struggling to keep my voice even.

He seemed to miss both my frustration and my sarcasm. “I know that kids find it very hard to leave their friends behind, but, trust me, it’s not as bad as you think.” His words would have struck me as being condescending, if they had any emotion behind them whatsoever.

I fought to keep my temper under control, but, once again, he didn’t seem to notice. “Does that answer your question?” he pressed.

Finally, I found that I couldn’t take it any more. “I don’t think you want to help me at all!” I exploded. “You just want to get me out of the way! I’ve just had one of the worst days of my life, and all you’ve done is give me shallow, unfeeling advice! Just what kind of counselor are you?” I wondered, even as I shouted, if I was being too harsh, but I couldn’t seem to keep the words from coming out.

He gave me a blank look. “I know that being a teenager is hard, but you won’t solve any problems by yelling and blaming me for your problems.”

I had my mouth open to tell him, very loudly, that I wasn’t blaming him for my problems, and all I wanted from him was for him to listen to me, which was supposed to be his job in the first place, but I stopped myself. He would refuse to hear anything I had to say, and would keep on giving me advice that was out of context, no matter what I did. I could still feel an angry pressure building in my chest, but I was already ashamed with myself for yelling at him once, even if it wasn’t altogether uncalled for.

Painfully swallowing some of my anger, I said, forcing myself to speak at a more respectful volume, “You’re right, it wasn’t fair of me to yell at you because I miss my friends, and I’m sure that I’ll be fine if I do as you so kindly instructed. Would it be all right if I went back to class now? I’ve missed too much time already.” If he had been paying attention, he would have noticed how stiffly I was speaking, but, as I predicted, he didn’t.

He leaned back in his seat, wearing a self-satisfied expression, as if proud of himself for handling my outburst so well. “Yes, you’re allowed to go, but you probably won’t get much work done – you’ll only have about ten minutes left of class by the time you get back to your classroom.”

I thanked him, even more stiffly, turned, and walked out of the office, silently fuming. Just what made him think he was qualified to handle the students of this school, anyway? Back home, if I had cried during school, which was highly unlikely, any teacher I would have gone to would have been far more helpful than this so-called counselor, who was supposedly trained to deal with emotional problems. Ha! I would have been better off if I had come to Sadie, or Jay for, that matter. At least Jay wouldn’t pretend to give me sound advice, and would tell me outright that he didn’t care about me or my problems.

Rather than go back to the classroom, I went into the girls’ room, intending to stay there until school let out, and I was quickly reminded just how filthy everything was. My vision had been blurred the first time I had been here, and there had been quite a few details I had missed. Little bits of toilet paper (I knew what it was because Pon was very careful to look up the ins and outs of using an Earth bathroom before I arrived) were scattered all across the floor, used or unused, I couldn’t tell, and there were also longer strips spread hap-hazardly, which would make it hard to walk across the floor. The trash can was full, which made me wonder how I had managed to throw up into it earlier, and there were little piles of garbage all around it. The sinks looked as if they hadn’t been cleaned in the long time, and the mirrors were smudged so badly they would be almost unusable, and for some reason, the mirrors had an assortment of similarly shaped pink and red marks on them, and I couldn’t figure out how the marks would have gotten there. In the place of a paper towel dispenser, there was something holding onto a cloth towel, and, looking closer, I could see that that cloth towel was sewn on, so that a student couldn’t remove it to change it out for a clean one.

Stomach turning, I turned to leave, and I found myself running from the room with a hand over my mouth. I was a little curious about what the toilets themselves looked like, if the area around the sinks was that gross, but I knew better than to actually look inside the stalls. I wondered, unhappily, what I would do if I ever needed to actually use one of these restrooms during school, and I prayed that I would never, ever need to find out.

My plan of hiding in the bathroom abandoned, I went back to my classroom, just in time to hear my teacher’s instructions for our next homework assignment, whatever that was. I had been given various homework assignments throughout my day, but I hadn’t really thought about them much – I was more concerned with navigating the hallways and trying to understand why the school was structured so strangely.

At last, the bell rang, and students flooded the hallways, apparently almost as anxious to leave as I was. I felt dizzy with relief as I walked down a crowded hallway. At last, I could say good-bye to this place.

“Hey, Faucet!” Someone grabbed my by the shoulder and spun me to face her, and I nearly screamed when I found myself face-to-face with the girl who had led the attack on Lily earlier. If I remembered correctly from homeroom, her name was Dionne. I looked around wildly, and I could see that I was surrounded by children with mocking expressions on all sides. I was completely trapped, and I was about to get teased in ways that no person should have to endure.

“Just what were you crying about earlier?” Dionne sneered. “Did you finally realize why you don’t have a boyfriend? Heck, if I had a body like yours, I’d be crying on my desk too.”Mirthless laughter followed this remark, and I was sure that I’d throw up, scream or start crying again at any moment. It sounded like Dionne was gearing up to start giving out inappropriate insults, and I had no idea how to stop her.

She reached forward and yanked on one of my braids, which made my eyes water. “You really thought you could hide it under that babyish hair and that shapeless clothing, but I can see right through you, Faucet. The fact is, you’re – “

“Girls!” someone chided, loudly. Dionne turned to see an adult striding towards us, her arms heavy with books, but her expression saying that she was more than capable of making the other girls miserable, if that’s what it took to get them under control. All at once, Dionne’s friends scattered, and she stood there, quietly fuming, while the woman walked up to me. “Addia, are you all right? Just what were those girls doing to you?” I thought it was curious that this woman already knew my name, but that didn’t seem too important just now.

I had my mouth open to tell her that the girls had been saying some very rude things, but Dionne glared at me so ferociously that it made me hesitate. She was telling me with that look that if I told this woman about what was going on, Dionne would do everything in her power to make me absolutely miserable, but if I didn’t tell this woman what was going on, what would stop the girl from doing it again? I glared back at Dionne and squared my shoulders. She might be used to victims who didn’t do anything about her insults, but I wasn’t about to let her treat me that way. “She was insulting me mercilessly, and I’ve caught her doing it to other students as well,” I replied, intentionally avoiding giving Lily or Sadie’s names. If Dionne was going to try to exact revenge on me after this, I wasn’t about to give her a reason to take it out on my friends.

The woman turned and looked at Dionne, eyes flashing. “Is this true?”

I would have expected Dionne to be angry, but instead she started to laugh, putting an arm around my shoulders. “I don’t know how you keep a straight face when you say that, Addia.” Dionne gave the woman a charming smile. “It’s a private joke. You would have had to be there to understand.” I blinked rabidly a few times, trying to understand what was going on. Was Dionne honestly trying to lie herself out of trouble? She should have known that wouldn’t work – the woman had seen the circle of students around me, and I seriously doubted that this woman would be as gullible as Dionne was hoping.

“I see.” The woman looked confused, but, much to my dismay, she didn’t call Dionne out on her lie, and I realized, stomach sinking, that the woman must have believed Dionne’s story over mine.

Dionne gave my shoulder a squeeze, to make it look at if she was giving me a hug, but she dug her nails into my arm at the same time, in case it wasn’t clear to me how she felt about me. She pulled away and started to walk down the hallway. “See you later, A!” she called behind her, going out of her way to sound friendly.

I stood there, feeling absolutely astonished and confused, as the woman started to talk to me as if nothing had happened. “Addia, I’m glad I found you. You were supposed to pick up your text books at the office this morning before you went to your classes.” She dropped that stack into my arms, and I nearly fell forward.

“Thank you,” I replied automatically, thoughts still buzzing. Should I try again to explain what had happened with Dionne, or would that make things worse? If the woman didn’t believe me, I would get in trouble, and if she did believe me, and she tried to punish Dionne, Dionne would just lie again, and probably do it in a way that made me look bad. Of course, I wouldn’t be coming back to this school anyway, so maybe I shouldn’t be too worried about it.

“Did you find everything all right today? I can’t imagine how hard it must be to transfer in to another school in the middle of the school year.” I barely heard what she said – I was still trying to figure out just how Dionne got away with what she was doing. Surely, not everyone bought her lies, and sooner or later, she would have to get caught.

“Yes, I managed to find everything just fine,” I said, still trying to figure out why Dionne hadn’t yet been stopped.

“I’m glad to hear that.” She was about to say something else, but then an annoying sound came from her phone, and she pulled it out of her pocket to answer it. I took that to mean that she was no longer interested in out conversation, and I began to walk down the hallway to leave the school, struggling to fit all the books into my bag. When I got outside, I felt relieved, at first, but when I saw a line of ugly yellow school buses, I was quickly reminded of the awful ordeal I had gone through to get here. My head pounded even more sharply, as if it was worried I’d forget how miserable I was, and my stomach started to clench. I was sure that if I got back on that bus, my return trip would feel at least three times worse than the first one did. I felt anxiety rising, and it was so overwhelming that I found I couldn’t breathe. Stop that! I told myself, sharply. Maybe there was a solution to this problem, and I would need to be calm to see it. My fear stubbornly refused to leave, and I started to feel downright dizzy. I stared at the bus, as if wishing I didn’t have to climb on it would make it into a gentler ride.

“Hey, Addia!” I turned to see Brody, who was skipping up to me. “Which bus do you take? Maybe we have the same bus! I hope we have the same one, ‘cause riding it is more fun when there are more friends on it. Hey, why are you frowning?” He looked dismayed, as if he was worried that he was the reason I was looking unhappy.

I blinked a few times, then tried to make my expression relax. I found Brody’s chatter irritating just now, but I didn’t see any reason to tell him that. “I’m frowning because I don’t like riding the bus.” I wondered if he would find that statement strange, but I couldn’t think of something better to say.

Brody frowned thoughtfully. “Oh. Well, I guess you could call your parents to pick you up, or maybe you could walk. I’m not supposed to walk home by myself, but I guess that most kids are allowed to. Of course, you might have to walk for a really long time.”

I blinked a few times. “The school allows the students to walk home?” I was a little surprised that I hadn’t thought of this before. I supposed that maybe I had assumed that the way I had arrived at school was the only way to get here.

“Yep, yep yep!” Brody babbled. “Lily walks, Sadie walks, and some kids even have their own cars to drive. I can’t drive yet, but my mom says we’ll talk about it when I’m a little older. I wonder how much older is a little older. I’m eighteen, and I think that’s a little older enough.” As he spoke, I looked around the parking lot and noticed that a fair number of students weren’t getting on the buses at all, and I felt relieved that I had a way to avoid the bus, and a little embarrassed that I hadn’t noticed that there were students going home on foot until Brody had pointed it out to me. Of course, thinking clearly was very hard when your head hurt.

“Bye, Brody,” I said, starting to walk for home.

“Oh,” he said, disappointedly. “We’re not riding on the same bus. Good-bye.”

For a little while, I started to feel better as I walked. Being seating while I stewed in my distress hadn’t done anything to help me drain the stress off, and I was glad to be moving, but then my legs started to ache. I thought that was curious, because I really hadn’t gone that far yet, until I remembered P.E. I thought it was strange that I hadn’t noticed any soreness until now, but then, I had been pretty distracted.

I kept walking, and my muscles complained, very sharply, and my head decided that it wasn’t any happier with me after all, and, as if it didn’t want to be forgotten, my stomach kept on churning for a few minutes, settling, and then churning again. All this made it very hard to focus on getting myself back to the house, and I found I had to pull out my phone and ask it for directions, just to keep myself from wandering off course by mistake. Needless to say, I was in a lot of pain. I don’t even know how I managed to keep going.

As it turns out, the walk was significantly longer than I had guessed, and by the time I arrived at our home base, absolutely every muscle on me either burned or felt stressed to its limit, my back throbbed from the heavy load of books in my bag, my head was pounding so hard it was a wonder I could see at all, my mouth felt completely dry, I couldn’t seem to get enough air, my stomach felt as if it was trying to turn itself inside-out, and I felt a burning in my chest that reminded me of how the back of my throat felt right after I had thrown up. I could barely lift my feet enough to get up the front steps of the house, and, once inside, I practically fell down, on my side, into the nearest seat, which was a long, soft, chair, and it felt wonderful. After a moment, I realized that I hadn’t even taken my bag or my shoes off myself, but I didn’t really care. All I wanted was to stay still with my eyes closed for a very, very long time.

“Deeah?” said a concerned voice somewhere nearby. “Are you all right?”

Without opening my eyes, I tried to reply, but all that came out of my mouth was a low groan. Everything somehow hurt even worse when I opened my mouth, as if even that little motion of my jaw was too much to handle.

“MedicBot!” the voice called, sounding somewhat alarmed.

“I have arrived,” the bot replied a moment later, and I was struck, once again, by how annoying that voice was, and I wished it would stop talking and let me go to sleep. “What do you need of me?”

The person who had been talking to me, who I finally identified as being Kenk, gave a disbelieving sound. “Deeah is unwell! Help her!” He sounded exasperated.

After a moment, I felt something come between my lips, then something wet coated the inside of my mouth. I was surprised enough that I nearly choked, but managed to swallow most of the wet stuff, rather than inhaling it. Immediately, my stomach settled, and, a moment later, the pounding in my head softened. I looked up at Kenk, who was watching me anxiously. “Thank you,” I said, tiredly. I had been in so much pain that I hadn’t even thought to call the MedicBot for help.

Kenk relaxed, but only slightly. “What happened to you?” He gently pushed me a little more upright, then pulled my bag off my back before allowing me to lay down again.

“There was too much P.E.,” I explained. “And the bathroom was gross, and Jay wouldn’t quit yelling, and the school uses too many books, and. . .” my memories of the day were do mixed up that I had a hard time focusing on much of anything, and it wasn’t surprising that I had forgotten what I wanted to say. As I spoke, the MedicBot stared at me, probably scanning me for additional problems, then came around to my feet, picked one up, and sprayed something on the bottom of my shoe to disinfect it.

Kenk looked confused. “We’ll talk after you’ve slept a while.” That sounded good. I had never felt more tired. The MedicBot lifted my other shoe, and I wished it would leave me alone now.

I think Kenk said something else, but I didn’t really hear, because I was already drifting off to sleep.