New Turf

As I was walking slowly down the creaky wooden stairs down to the foyer of the school, I heard a shrill voice coming from the balcony.

“James, you’re going to have to change out of those clothes if you want to make it in this school,” she said.

God, she was almost like my mom. Hopefully I won’t be seeing too much of her.

I left through the front doors and found myself back at the crossroads and heading towards the boys’ dorm. As soon as I’d entered the building I’d regretted it. There were people running everywhere.
Sleazy guys were chasing the nerds and the cool kids were letting stink bombs rip. This place better have thick walls or I’m not gonna catch a wink of sleep here.

I looked around at the doors and was pleased to see that my room was the closest to the door. A sign read “James Hopkins” on it, which I immediately ripped off once I noticed no-one else had one. I looked inside. It was a pretty decent place, besides the filth, I guess. What a homely touch.

I was about to open up one of my suitcases when I heard a sarcastic whine of a voice behind me.

“So you’re the new kid, huh?”

“No shit,” I replied, sitting up and twisting to face him.

“Ooh, attitude. I don’t like that.”

“I can already tell you’re a hypocrite. You make a real good first impression, you know that?” I shot back, a smirk planted on my face.

His face, on the other hand, seemed to burn with fury. His eyes were like flames and I could already see the little cogs in his head turning, trying to think of something to say. Suddenly, his facial features relaxed – well, except that freaky scar on his brow – and he smiled again.

“Quite the joker, aren’t you. My name’s Gary.”

I stood up to fist bump him. “Jimmy Hopkins.”

“Nice to meet you, Jimmy. Now, uh, what color vest are you wearing today?” he asked, like I had any idea in hell what he meant by that.

“Well I packed blue, but I got some money and –”

“You, friend, need to get a grip on the social ladder of this school. Trust me, the only other kids here with blue sweaters are the middle-schoolers and femmeboy. You don’t want to look like either of ‘em, trust me. Come on.”

Ignoring this crazy guy in the room, I quickly dropped my jacket and equipped the button-up shirt and the sweater vest. I was about to drop my pants before I remembered Gary. I turned to see him just staring at me. No, not staring. Scanning. He was scanning me. Seeing whether I was useful or not, perhaps? Or he might want to get into my pants. You can never be too sure in this school, I’ve found.

“Can you leave?”

“If you say so,” he said like he had unfinished business with me.

I found Gary again when I had my khakis on, and I saw he was poking a scrawny sophomore in a blue vest. Must be femmeboy.

“Don’t you have something more intellectual to do with your time?” the boy suddenly snapped.

“Ooh, Petey’s growing into quite a feisty, independent young woman!”

“Shut up,” Petey mumbled. I could tell he gave up like that a lot with Gary around.

“Hey, Pete,” I decided to sit down next to him. The shocked boy was so taken aback that he forgot to shake my hand when I offered it to him.

“Ah, Hopkins, you’re changed. Let’s get going,” he sprang up and dragged Petey, I guess his name is, behind him by the collar.

Gary marched into the evening with a look of glee on his face. This guy likes being in charge way too much. Gary let go of Petey’s ear so he could swing his arms to complete the look of a drunk-with-power leader. He looked the part.

He led us both towards the cafeteria, where I saw everyone was eating – or pretending to – an abomination of a meal. I could see a bunch of them were munching on chips from the local store. Gary sat on a counter and patted the seat next to him. He proceeded to kick Petey in the face when he tried to climb on. I guess the invitation was for me. I hopped on.

“The social ladder isn’t too hard to grasp. Five tables, five gangs.” He pointed to the second leftmost table, where the students wore green, “they’re the nerds, the very lowest of categories. Besides Petey here, of course, who is a non-clique student, they’re on the left there. They wear teal.”

I noticed that Gary was wearing teal, but Petey was wearing the same blue as I was. Maybe Gary wasn’t as high and mighty as he thought. I guess Petey was undecided, then.

He ruffled Petey’s hair and carried on, pointing to the next table, “the second clique there is the Bullies. They don’t really do much except harass the Nerds. Since they’re not very useful, they don’t socialize much and they’re just plain wannabes, they’re second to the lowest. They don’t even wear vests.

“Those are the Preps, or ‘Preppies’. These are the rich kids who think they’re better than everyone else. This immediately makes them one of the most unpopular groups. Even so, they’re the versatile group. I guess they bought their way to this position. They wear Aquablue sweaters with diamonds.”

I can see that you have some things in common then, apart from the money, I thought to myself.

“Then at the very right there, you’ve got the Jocks. Very stereotypical guys, very popular, athletic, attractive…” his voice trailed off for a second before he shook his head and carried on. “They’re the highest clique. They wear football jerseys, as you can see.”

“Who are they?” I asked, pointing to the table he’d missed out, in between the Preps and the Jocks.

“They’re the second-in-command clique, the Greasers. They’re wannabe Jocks who hang out at the autoshop. Basically they’re all John Travolta clones. Hell, it’s a surprised they haven’t gone through the trouble of doing a Grease Light’nin’ rendition for us.”

I nodded slowly, taking all of this information in, although I didn’t really see why it was important.

“The social ladder,” Gary began again while jumping off the counter and walking through the cafeteria, “is the most important thing at Bullworth. Without it, we wouldn’t have the foundation we need,” he paused, right in front of the school’s front door, “to rule the school!” he added with a flourish, opening the doors wide. The moon’s light silhouetted his sharp features, making him look almost spooky.

The three of us walked back to the dorm in silence, save for Gary’s annoying whistling. When we got inside, Gary headed for his room.

“I’d love to stay, girls, but it’s getting really late and I have plans to work on. Besides, Petey needs his beauty sleep.”

With that, Petey and I were left alone in the hallway. Petey decided to retire to his bed too, while I decided to beat whatever highscore was on the arcade game in the common room.