• "They're real, I swear!"

    "Oh, yeah Daelyn? If they're so real, why don't you go get me a patch of their fur!"

    The class roared with laughter, and by now, Daeyln's apple cheeks were sprinkled with dark blotches of red. His dark brown, unruly hair swayed with each head shake. His stuttering was starting to become severe - only something he did when truly nervous. He had his mouth open in the shape of a squashed "o" as if he were about to say something, but a male from the other side of the room pitched in with the tormenting.

    "Ah, give the Dragons and Dungeons kid a break, he's only making a fool of himself anyway." My glossy blue eyes glanced at the boy, who dressed half jock and half punk. He threw his steel-toed covered feet over the black topped table with a sarcastic grin. He was enjoying watching Daelyn make himself a twit more than any other person in the room. We all knew how Tylor worked; and stopping Daelyn's bantering was not on the bucket list of his.

    "Yeah." The class waved in the same pitch of tone, turning their attention back to whatever it was they were working on. That's what I loved about study hall with a careless teacher. They'd sit behind their desk and do whatever they wanted to, whether it was knitting, reading, sending emails, doodling, whatever. Laid back teachers were just like us students. Every now and then they'd either pitch in with our off topic conversations or just tell us to pipe down and that we were giving them a headache just by breathing. For a while, we'd snicker at that comment and then regain a conversation about two minutes after.

    The teacher we had for study hall at the time was Mr. Yagins, the history and economics teacher. His room was decorated with Batman posters on one side of the room and Hitler posters on the other with captions we couldn't understand, and whenever we asked Mr. Yagins what the captions meant, he'd just give a cocky grin and go back to doing whatever he was before, acting like nothing had just been said. One kid said he knew how to speak German, but when we asked him what one of the phrases were, he turned a peach pink and mumbled, "French toast." Ironically, that became his new nickname, not that he has a problem with it or anything. Once when I was talking to him, I called him by said nickname, and a child in the sixth year asked me where his nickname came from. We shared a laugh, French Toast and I, and yet, that child still doesn't know where the name came from.

    My attention once returned to Daelyn. His fists were balled up on the tabletop, making his knuckles glow a dim white-yellow shade. His freckles were a delicate orange colour plastered against his rose cheeks. He glanced at me for a second and his expression softened, from anger and embarrassment to even more embarrassed. With a flick of his head, along with a sigh, his attention was diverted back to the stack of books in front of him. They weren't school books --- No. Daelyn was a fantasy kind of kid. He liked the things that had no hardcore proof they exist, or existed. The binding on his fiction book read the author's name, Veronica Roth. I knew that name. She was the woman who wrote the Divergent series.

    My head cocked to the side about half an inch as I tried to read the title, but no such luck from doing so. With a disgusted sigh, I returned to the position of slacking back into the orange plastic chair, crossing either of my ankles over the other.

    I didn't have many friends, well except for one. Her name is Samantha. I wasn't the kind of person TO have friends. People just knew my name and that was that. Me? My name is Vance Americus. I have eletric blue eyes and buzz cut black hair. I am a seventeen year old, soon to be eighteen in three days, male that attends Tates Creek High School in Kentucky, kind of in the middle of nowhere. Every person here seemed to be into sports, whether it was basketball or soccer, that's all anyone did. Except, for Daelyn, poor kid. As for me, well, no one expected me to do much along the lines of physical movement; I did gym class and that was enough. Now, I'm not fat. I'm just on the scale, weighing in at one-hundred eighty-five pounds, my height being 6 foot 2 inches. It was a good weight for a male as tall as I, however, I just didn't participate in any extracurricular activity, it seemed stupid. And for that reason alone, I stood as an invisible wall to most of the school.

    Samantha wasn't like me in the least bit --- she was semi popular, had the pretty blonde hair that curled half way down her back. Her eyes were usually tainted with thick mascara and a light covering of purple eyeshadow, emphasizing her brown eyes. To her, purple and brown were a good combination. She was small and petite, standing at a mere height of 5 foot 2 and a half inches. Because of this reason, she became a cheerleader. She loved it, being able to soar up into the sky, performing twists, turns, and flips. She's what they call a flyer. What I love about Samantha, is the fact she puts others before herself, going out of her way to at least compliment every person she sees. That's kind of how we became friends... She said, and I quote, "Wow, Vance! You have a smile to die for."

    The second the bell rang, my fingers laced their way into my black jacket pockets as I pushed myself away from the desk and out of the room, not giving the chatting kids a second to pass through the doorway before I. The hallways were empty, but it only took a few moments before it littered with about a thousand high school students and their best friends. People pushed past me with urgency written all over their face, some annoyed by the fact I was walking so casually in the hallway, when, my next class was all the way on the other side of the building. The thing that sucked about Tate's Creek was that you had three minutes to get your things from your locker, chat with friends, and get to class. Two things wrong with that; I never brought anything to classes, and I didn't have any friends to casually talk to in the hallway. I usually talked to Samantha at lunch.

    "Watch it, freak!"

    "I already told you once, Anthony, leave me alone!"

    My head turned around, the commotion was coming from somewhere behind me. "Oh, what's the little f*****t boy going to do?" I pushed forward through the forming crowd, where I breached the front row of people to see Anthony McGuire pushing Daelyn against the locker. A deep sigh rumbled out of my throat, just as Daelyn looked at me. His eyes pleaded for help. What was I to do? This kid and I never conversed until this point, and it still wasn't by words, just by body motions. "Eh? I asked you a question." Anthony shook the front of his shirt violently, causing Daelyn to gasp for breath.

    "I'm not going to do anything," Daelyn whimpered, his attention diverting from focusing on me to Anthony. His face was snow pale, his freckles emitting at a very noticeable rate. His breathing was broken and rigid --- he was fighting back tears, knowing full well whenever someone cried in front of Anthony the tormenting only got worse. The only thing red on him was his nose, which was going to start dripping at any moment. "And, I'm not a f*****t."

    Anthony grew a cocky smile at this, his grip tightening on the boy's red shirt. One eyebrow raised slightly while the other pushed downward. His blonde hair, pushed back at one point, started to fall strand by strand in front of his eyes. I'd never noticed his eye colour, and he was facing the wrong angle for me to be able to tell now, with his side facing me. "So tell me," He started, as if he were going to say something important. "What makes you think you can lie to me, Anthony Pickett?" Yes, his family was rural for long enough to receive a surname so country sounding.

    Something overcame Daelyn and he blurted out, "Maybe you're the f*****t. I mean, you're always harassing me."

    A hoarse laugh rolled out of Anthony. He rolled his head off to the side, and a distant 'crack' could be heard among the crowd of eager teenagers, anxious to see the outcome of Daelyn and Anthony. Without a warning to Daelyn, nor the crowd, however, the other male threw a balled up fist hitting Daelyn's nose spot on. A loud shriek came out of the brunette, causing many people to cover their ears. Just as a tear faced Daelyn began to fall to the ground, his back sliding against the lockers, Anthony grabbed him by the fabric covering his chest, pulling him back up to his feet. "Aw," he got up in his face, too close for comfort. "Did someone take a fall?"

    Oh what I wouldn't do to make him experience what he was giving out. "You... You never answered my question," Stuttered the boy, his nose more broken than possibly anything. I watched his chest heave up and down, obviously having issues breathing properly through his nose. Anger coursed through my body something that never truly happened when it was someone else getting made fun of. But, within the past few minutes, I'd watched him get tormented for believing in unicorns, and now, he was getting beaten around the block by some farmer kid. Enough was enough.

    "Hey," I said, walking forward towards the two boys. I shoved Anthony's back, causing him to let go of Daelyn. The brunette stared up at me in awe, and Anthony was obviously taken back by my broadness. "Leave him alone, you twit." This was the first time I'd spoken today. My hands found their way up to the fabric covering his shoulders, lifting him about two inches into the air, no locker behind him.

    "Put me down!" He writhed in my grasp, and I just sadistically chuckled, twisting my fingers in his shirt tighter, not letting him down any time soon. "You're such a freak, no wonder why nobody likes you!"

    I scoffed at this. "Nobody likes me, eh? You're the little kid who tortures people until they feel like s**t." One of my hands moved to his throat. "How does it feel, being on the opposite side of the boat, Mr. Pickett?"

    What didn't come to my realization was that Anthony's neck was turning a soft red with blue frost slowly going around it. "C-Come on man! Your hands are r-really cold." He stuttered some, and I grinned, dropping him to the ground.

    "Yeah, I work with ice at my fathers shop. You'd know, you sell fish to us over the summer." With that, I kicked his shin and walked away.

    "Oh my god, Anthony! Your throat is blue!" I heard people shouting.