New Necessities (To Live and Let Go)

"Sit down, Alex. You're late.
"Which brings up a good point. If any of you are late to this class twice a week, the third time will get you a detention."

Alex looked at her in disbelief.
"Well thanks for telling me NOW, teach."

She immediately flashed her eyes to the pupils of Alex's and gave him the look of death.
"You will call me, 'Mrs. Greppetho.' "
Mrs. Greppetho stared Alex down and the whole class leaned forward slightly.

Long moments passed before Alex finally looked away and made a face while walking back to his seat.

Jack sat quite still, making confused faces to himself. He had never ever heard of this Alex boy before, but apparently he had a few friends, because the second his butt touched the chair, a group of kids was talking to him about his recent exploits.
Including Rian, whom he was sitting next to.
All Jack could think was, "Uhmm...What?"

The entire class of immature tenth graders started chatting loud and wildly.

Jack decided to join in with Rian's conversation with the other guys and Alex with the highlights. He turned to the right, facing into the crooked circle.

A kid in front of Alex was saying how the teacher's name even sounded like evil.
Alex laughed at the acquisition and said, "It sounds like you're trying to spit when saying it: 'Gre-ppetho!' 'Gre-ppetho!' "

Jack laughed along, finding it genuinely funny, also wondering if that was part of the Sarcastic Movement.
At the same time, Alex first noticed Jack, slowing himself to look directly at him.
They made eye contact.

Alex' mouth was opening in anticipation of words, but then the teacher's shout raged out through the room.
"EVERYONE, QUIET DOWN!"

All heads turned to her like a crowd of meerkats.

"GOODNESS GRACIOUS IT IS THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL AND I THINK YOU SHOULD SHOW ME RESPECT BECAUSE NOW I THINK WE SHOULD HAVE A GRADED TEST ON WHAT YOU ALREADY KNOW ABOUT CHEMISTRY."

Jack turned his big-eyed face right, making eye contact with Rian.
Then Alex's voice suddenly broke the scary silence.

"Excuse me, teach, but doesn't that sound harsh for the first day of school?"

All heads looked in his direction immediately. The sound was quite uniform.

"Well, Alex, harsh and rude sophomoric children need to be disciplined in a harsh way, thank you for asking. Now I hope that you will all be agreeable and ecstatic to stay sushed for the rest of class while taking the test."

Jack and Alex made eye contact again while wearing faces of disbelief. Jack didn't really mean to, he just looked in the direction of people, whereas Alex scanned every boy's face.

This teacher is unbelievable, Jack thought. Why would any teacher want to start school off with every kid hating her?

The rest of the class went by without a word from anybody except one exception: Alex. He whispered one word to the kid he was sitting next to, and Mrs. Greppetho instantly glared into Alex' soul and said, "Excuse me, what was that you said, Alex?"

On the test, Rian and Jack mutually accepted the other's glances on each other's exam.
The two of them were just sitting lazily in their seats, afraid to even fall asleep while waiting for the last members of the class to finish.

"Well, looks like everyone has finally passed on to me their papers. See class? Being quiet for most of the period isn't so hard, is it now?" Mrs. Greppetho angrily sassed the class. Jack could feel the faces of disgust coming from his classmates.

Just then, the bell rang. Jack's mind instantly flew to Zack. Zack would guide Jack to his next class. He didn't know where his geometry class was, but it was in Violet 145. Was that downstairs?

On a separate note, as Jack hurried out of the chemistry room after putting his wooden pencil away in a random pocket of his black backpack, he heard Alex' voice yell out, "RIAN! Hey!" and then see Rian saunter over to the seemingly popular boy. He didn't put much thought into it, but out of the corner of Jack's eye, he saw Alex point over to the door in which Jack was passing through.

Jack peered down the hall in the direction of Zack's classroom and wandered closer to it, a little afraid and already run out of confidence for the time being. It was hard to make out individual people in the packed halls.
But coming right towards Jack, was Zack. Jack smiled uncontrollably, his brother being a rare familiar sight in this new school already.

"Hey," said Zack to Jack, grabbing his hand and hitting shoulders, a regular greeting between the two brothers. "How was your first high school class?"

Right away, Jack's face fell and his body slumped.
"Awful. This chem teacher of mine sucks. She's like the devil in an old lady's skin. Someone said she was evil-"

The kid who said Mrs. Greppetho was evil left the room and glided by the two at the same Jack said it.

"-and she really is. She made us take a GRADED test on chemistry. That we haven't learned yet. Because this is the first year anyone of us has taken chem. And we just know everything about it already. Definitely. And that was all because people were talking after this kid named Alex came in.
I've never even heard of him before but everyone in that class knew him."

"Awww, well that sucks, man, what was that you had next?"

"Geometry."

"Oh right, yeah. Hopefully that's better. I mean my AP Physics was iffy, but that sounds like shit, man. Where geometry?"

"Violet 145. Is that downstairs?"

"Awwww, Jack! You're getting the hang of this classroom naming-slash-placement thing!"
Zack ruffled Jack's hair so hard that it was a little painful for the younger brother.

"Thanks...?" said Jack with a voice crack.

It made Zack's face look even more gushier over Jack, who in turn, became red.

A guy that Jack had never seen before said, "Hey" to Zack.
Who said hey back.

The random guy continued the conversation in the middle of the hallway. "Dude, I heard Jordan Kelly already got detention."

"Seriously?!" Zack replied.

"Yeah I could hear yelling on the other side of my class's wall!"

"That guy needs to get at least some of his shit together or else he won't make the team this year," Zack strained loudly to say over the roar of the walkways full of people trying to get to their next period.

"I know right? See ya' in seventh!" Zack's friend said.

Zack punched him goodbye and then abruptly became interested in Jack again.
"Okay, to get to Violet 145 you have to govthis way."

Jack nodded, forgetting what just happened and followed his older brother into the marching crowd of students.