A World That Never Was

Highcliff High School was a sizeable school that consisted of two floors because of how many students attended the school and how many freshmen they got from the middle school only a few miles away. The school’s mascot was a fire breathing blue and red dragon and therefore a lot of the halls and the central area were decorated in dragon’s heads, tails, claws, and flames.

Highcliff High was ranked within the top five in education in the country but ranked very low when it came to discipline and violence. There were a large amount of fights, expulsions, threats, and gang feuds but luckily nothing like a shooting happened and no weapons had been brought to school. It was truthfully a good facility and its staff tried hard but they figured as long as good grades continued to be made and students weren’t killing each other than everything was ok.

The bus pulled up onto the bus ramp and the doors opened up as everyone stood up and began to file off of the bus slowly. Eddie, just as he had been the last person on the bus, sat in his seat and waited for everyone to get off as that he would be the last off of the bus.

Unfortunately for Aliyah she had forgotten this little fact and sighed impatiently as Eddie just bobbed his head to the BreakBeat Music that played in his head. As the last person walked past, Aliyah shoved Eddie gently and he grinned as he just took his time pulling his earphones out and pocketing them along with his I-Pod. He stretched his legs and his arms and just smirked before next thing he knew he had to catch his balance as Aliyah shoved him out of the seat. Catching himself smoothly, he sat in the seat across the aisle.

“Get off the bus!” The bus driver practically yelled back at them.

Aliyah hurried to gather her things and rushed off of the bus, she waited for Eddie once she stepped down onto the bus ramp. Eddie, being the stubborn person that he was, still got up rather slowly and strolled off of the bus.

“Have a good day, Mrs. Coalstein.” He said to her and all he got back was a grumble.
As soon as Eddie set one foot down on the bus ramp the bus door slammed behind him and Mrs. Coalstein’s bus pulled off.

“She’s going to run you over one day.”

“She can try but we all know I’ll just flip the bus over.” He said as he grinned and flexed “On account of these.”

Aliyah rolled her eyes and began to walk away from him.

“Yeah. I would advice not looking directly at them. They’ve been known to….intimidate!” He clowned before following after Aliyah.

Once they entered the school they parted ways to go to their lockers and get their books. On his way to his locker Eddie got greeted a number of different people with “hellos” and handshakes or friendly hugs. Eddie wasn’t exactly popular but he did know quite a few people and the fact that his sister was popular made it so that even more people knew who he was, even though often he had no idea who they were; in some ways it was annoying but he didn’t care too much.

When he got to his locker there stood a person who he didn’t want to talk to right now, later, or even in the next days. Jasmine was leaning against the lockers around his own; she was talking to her best-friend Gwen. As Eddie neared them, Gwen seemed to catch some sort of signal and she walked off down the hall leaving the two of them together. Eddie didn’t say anything to her at first and he just went to his locker, punching in the combination into the keypad on the door and opened it. There were no words between them for a long moment before finally Jasmine spoke.

“Eddie…I’m sorry…” She started.

Eddie pulled his books from his locker and shut it before turning to look at her “Mhmm.” He responded.

It was a cold response and he didn’t mean to hurt her or anything but he couldn’t talk to her. Just looking at her made him think and it made him angry, angry to the point where he wanted to yell and he had never liked yelling at her.

“I’ll see you around.” He said to her as he walked off, carrying his books in one hand, heading towards his first block class.

Normally Eddie would head up to the second floor and hang out with his friend near the large window on the left side but the bus had arrived late today and he only had a few minutes to get to class but unluckily for him his class happened to be on the other side of the school and his teacher, Mr. Locke, was a prudish stubby man. Eddie called him stubby because he indeed was short, only standing a mere five feet from the ground. Eddie had decided that Mr. Locke was so strict because he wanted people to know he was not going to be stepped on and because he happened to be not but 25 years of age and didn’t want the students to feel like he was their sibling or something.

Eddie was only a yard away, he thought he just might make it to class on time when to his great dissatisfaction the school bell rang to announce that all students should already be seated in their classrooms. Eddie groaned and stopped his run for it didn’t even matter anymore, Mr. Locke would mark him tardy and as soon as the front desk got it he would be off to in school detention for being tardy too many times; this was easily his eighth tardy just this month.

Sure enough as soon as Eddie pushed open the door of the classroom there was Mr. Locke standing there looking like a displeased dwarf, he had his hands pushed into the coat pocket of his suit.

“Ah, Mr. Zagorac, we all so awaited your arrival.” He said.

Eddie just smiled “Yeah, you wouldn’t believe the line out there.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The line right outside your door to witness the world’s shortest man.” He grinned.

Stifled laughter could be heard from the students in the class room before Mr. Locke shot them a dark glare. “Who would like to be the first to join Mr. Zagorac in the front office?”

The class grew silent and Mr. Locke went over to his desk before pulling a sticky note from his pad and wrote on it why Eddie was being sent to the office and that he didn’t want to see him again in his class before walking back to Eddie and handing the note to him.

“I don’t want to see you back in here today. Get out.” He said firmly.

Eddie took the note and nodded, he really didn’t care since he was getting in school detention anyways. He looked out to the class and waved to the girl that he sat next to before he turned and left.

“See ya tomorrow Mr. Locke.” He said.

No response came besides the shutting of the classroom door. Eddie shrugged and strolled down the hall making his way towards the front office. Eddie thought that that had gone over pretty well and it was fun while it lasted.

“In trouble again, scar boy?” Somebody in the hall mocked him from behind.

Eddie turned around to see it was another one of his friends, Skyy. She had known Eddie since freshman year and had been baffling him with her excessive weirdness ever since. Eddie couldn’t predict her actions or emotions and that bothered him.

“No way. how could you think such a thing of me?” He asked sounded like he was astonished at her assumption.

“Don’t give me that crap. What’d ya do this time?” She asked as she linked her arm with his.
“I told you I’m not in any trouble. You know you’re really hurting my feelings, calling me a bad person and carrying on.”

Skyy pulled her arm from his own and then punched him in it “There, now your feelings aren’t alone in their pain.” She turned and began to walk away “You’re a loser, you know that right?”

“The coolest loser you’ll ever meet.” Eddie grinned as he rubbed his arm where she hit him.

“Bye loser.” Skyy waved absentmindedly over her shoulder and walked off.

Skyy was always calling Eddie names and hitting him and other such things but she did that just as often as she hugged him and acted really hospitable with him and that’s why Eddie was so thrown off by her; she was spontaneous.

It was a matter of moments before Eddie found himself finally pushing open the front door of the main office and he walked inside. The main office looked similar to a smaller building inside of the large school. Eddie wasn’t always in here but he had been here enough times to be familiar with the people behind the counter as he walked in and was greeted.

“Eddie. Isn’t it a bit early to be in trouble?” It was Couch Green; he was always in the office because he had no first block.

Eddie shook his head and walked around the counter to shake his hand “Never too early for trouble, coach.” He joked “Naw, I was tardy…again.”

Coach Green shook his head and Eddie’s hand at the same time “You’re problem always was being too disregarding.”

Just then a lady came from the hall in the back of the office and she looked at Eddie
“Mr. Zagorac I presume? The principal said you are to report to in school detention for the rest of the day.” It was as simple as that and she left again.

Eddie frowned lightly and sighed. Another day of in school detention, another day of sitting in a crowded room separate from the school listening to the heavy asthmatic breathing of Mr. Derkins and watching sweat trickle down his fat head because he simply refused to turn the heat off.

“Get going, Eddie. Don’t want to be late to detention as well.” Coach Green said as he gave Eddie a pat on the back.

Eddie nodded his head and began out of the office with a glum look on his face. The detention room could be fun at times when the right people were in there but often it just housed the annoying “bad boys” of the school who were actually always in trouble unlike Eddie’s occasional issues. Eddie couldn’t stand those guys; they did anything to torment another person and anything to make themselves look like complete and total imbeciles. One of those types was particularly annoying to Eddie and that was Ricky Mane, probably the worst kid in school. Word had been going around the school that Ricky was starting up his own gang but there wasn’t any proof about.

Eddie and Ricky had been rivals since middle school when Eddie tried hitting on the girl who turned out to be Ricky’s girlfriend. Eddie honestly didn’t know and when Ricky saw him he flipped out. They fought that day in the cafeteria where Ricky confronted Eddie about it. It didn’t last very long, a memory that shamed Eddie to this day. Back then he was basically skin and bones whereas Ricky was starting on the football team. Needless to say Ricky caught Eddie two good times and then he was down. Eddie didn’t actually remember much. His vision had gone black when he hit the ground and all he knew from there was the feeling of Ricky’s hard knuckles slamming against his face but even that only lasted a short while as he grew numb and could feel nothing no longer.

Ever since that faithful day there was an unspoken hatred between the two boys and Eddie took to bettering himself so that something like that would never happen again. That’s when he picked up weight training as a hobby.

He had to walk outside to get to the building that was In School Detention. The day had already begun to grow hot as the sun had just started to break the clouds that littered the skies. The small white building at the end of cement walkway looked similar to a storage shed and appeared to be made of the same material. The sign above the door read “In School Detention” in bold red letters.

Eddie sighed heavily as he reached out towards the handle on the plain white door and pushed it open just to be slapped in the face by a massive heat wave. It caused him to pull back away from the doorway and turned his head in the other direction so that he could breath.

“What’s the matter with you, son. Close that door!” The hefty voice of Mr. Derkins came booming from the far side of the single room building.

Eddie groaned and entered, closing the door behind him and leaving behind human, breathable air. Mr. Derkins peered at Eddie with piercing eyes, those eyes that always managed to freak out any student that he managed to hold the gaze of. Eddie quickly looked away but almost wished that he hadn’t. To his great dissatisfaction there sat Ricky Mane in the front row giving Eddie the worst possible glare and Eddie returned his glare with an equal amount of poison.

“Sit down, Mr. Zagorac!”

Eddie scowled as he made his way to an open seat. The room housed five other guys and two girls. Two of the guys Eddie recognized as Ricky’s lackeys. Eddie didn’t know their name because personally he didn’t really care; they were idiots just like Ricky. One of the two girls was Miranda, she had been friends with Eddie’s sister, Sasha, for about a year or so; she was around their house a lot. She waved at him with a huge grin and he waved back a bit absent-mindedly as he sat.

The time inside of In School Detention passed slowly and without a single event to speed up the time in the slightest. The work from each of the occupant’s classes was brought to them and they were to sit in silence and complete their work without bothering the irritable Mr. Derkins.

Mr. Locke must have been huffy at the shot Eddie took at his height because he sent tones of 11th grade literature work his way on top of the chemistry work he received; sweat caused by the gross heat in the room dripped from Eddie’s forehead and onto the papers.

Surprisingly enough he didn’t get any more glares or any lip out of Ricky as the detention pulled on for hours until the first lunch bell rang through the intercom that was wired into the room and every person in the room gave a sigh of relief, finally going to be able to get free of the incubator they were being confined in.

The In School Detention students were to report to 1st lunch, get their trays and then return to the building to eat. They were not to hang around and converse with their friends and they were not to go anywhere else and if they were caught doing either such thing they would be given Saturday school.

The cafeteria was rather massive and consisted of four levels of tables, a stage, an outdoor patio, and then the kitchen and three lunch lines. The food at the school was never exceptional but it wasn’t actually that bad, at least Eddie didn’t think so.

Eddie and the detention group were escorted to the lunch room and to a line by Mr. Derkins and taken to the front of the line so that they could get their food and that’s where the conflict began. Ricky bumped Eddie, obviously deliberately, and pushed passed him in the line. Eddie wasn’t a very hot tempered person and he was about to just let it go when one of Ricky’s friend bumped him next and then the third bumped him. Eddie bit his lip before nodding his head lightly and gripping the metal tray in his hand.

“Hey, Ricky’s shadow….” Eddie said to him to grab his attention.

It happened in a bit of a flash. As soon as the boy turned to face Eddie the only thing he saw was a metal tray come in close proximity with his face and then he stumbled backward and held his nose from the pain. Still wielding the tray in hand, Eddie managed to block the incoming fist of the other boy who pushed around his harmed friend. The boy pulled his fist back in pain but before Eddie could do anything a tray flew from behind the boy and the corner of it hit him right in the eye.

Fighting three guys at once was probably a mistake he wouldn’t make again. Before he could even recover from the pain in his eye he felt his head meet cold steel, probably that of the railing on the opposite side of the spot where you picked up a tray. There was no telling if they actually stopped beating him after he blacked out and with how slow the school reacted to fights there was no telling how long it went on for. Once again Eddie lay unconscious at the hands of Ricky Mane.