I woke up from my alarm and went to the bathroom to brush my teeth, thinking about what sort of crazy dream I just had. After that though, I got back to my room and opened my closet, which then I found my clothes and tried to put them on. However, since I was so tired because I had just woken up, I accidentally knocked over a box containing a journal I used to doodle on. And when I mean doodle... I mean just scribbling the words "I learned from my mistakes" over and over again. I had a remarkably strict mother.

"Hm..? What’s this?" I asked obliviously. 

As I opened the journal and flipped through the pages I decided to keep the journal as a sort of diary. Which in retrospect sounds a bit childish, but oh well. Then I got ready for school, which sounds way more simpler than what I did which consists of barely getting back up from bed. But, I persisted and put my school clothes on and went downstairs where my mom was cooking breakfast. 

As I go to the kitchen my mom asks, "Hey honey, how was your sleep last night?" 

"Pretty good mom just had a strange dream. What're you cooking today? Please say it's one of those world-class pancakes that you make once per year!" I responded. 

"You wish sweetie. But no, instead I made some scrambled eggs. Want some?" My mom asked. 

"Aww.. sure," I stated with a depressing tone, those pancakes were exactly what I needed right about now, especially since it was my first day at my new school. 

Speaking of my new school, I better say how I got to this school in the first place, the most prestigious high school in the county. 

While previously I had gone from school to school due to my mother working different jobs in nursing and taking care of elder people, we stumbled upon an opportunity of a lifetime where my mom could find a stable job in this town called Altandor while I could go to this school due to my grades being so high to the point of getting a scholarship. Looks like studying all of the time instead of living life with my friends back in middle school paid off after all!

After I agreed to the scrambled eggs, I grabbed orange juice from the fridge and headed to the table where I ate my scrambled eggs with my juice. And man.. they were still absolutely delicious! Even if it wasn't the pancakes. After that, my mom packed my lunch and told me, 

"Hey, I'm sorry for this but can you take your bike to school today? The car is at the mechanic because apparently, your brother took it for a ride yesterday without realizing that there was a whole broken bottle outside the driveway."

"Pfft, he's so dumb! And sure I'll go take my bike, I wanted to ride it to school today so it's a great coincidence!"

After that, I then went to the garage where the car was usually. Of course this time, it wasn't there. So instead, I looked for my bike which was at the back end of the garage. Then, right before I rode on my bike, I found a table and started to write my first entry in my journal, just out of pure fun.

Here's where I wrote on my first entry to my journal:

"I'm George, a 13-year-old boy and I've lived with my lone mother ever since my father joined the military and sent us letters that meant nothing but words. I also live with my two annoying siblings, but I'd rather talk about them later. And well, I live in a world that is overrun and controlled by just one family, the Redwood family. The year is 2813 and in my world, my outlandish world, the Redwood family has been controlling the world for approximately... actually, I don't know how long. This family pretty much monitors our every single move in this town called Altandor and it's just.. harrowing to say at the very least. Nothing you can do wouldn't be trailed to yourself... but enough about this family, I'm heading into my first day of high school and I'm super excited! Especially since this is the first school where I'll hopefully stay for more than three months!! I cannot wait to make new friends and see my old ones there like Steve and Fron, which I luckily heard that they're going to the high school with me too! Anyway, I gotta ride my bike now since I gotta be there by 7 and it's... CRAP 6:40! Gotta go, cya!"

I never knew that that would be the first and last entry of my childhood. How stupidly optimistic I was. 

After I wrote my entry, which I had to admit was difficult to remember and say, I got on top of my mechanical bike and rode it out of my garage after opening the door. Leaving the garage door open, I rode my bike through the streets of Altandor while taking in the natural scenery around me, it was beautiful as birds chirped all around me and trees rose high above my head. I turned across my street and hopped onto another street where I saw the high school in a clear view ahead. So, I sped up my bicycle, narrowly passing through other students, and just luckily stopped right at a bike parking spot.

I was now at Altandor Redwood High School! 

Once I arrived at the high school I saw a few familiar faces from my previous middle school. And I mean VERY few faces as I only saw one kid I randomly talked to in middle school stroll past me and enter the building right next to me.

However, that didn't stop me from looking for the maps of the school which I heard were in many places throughout the building! So, I parked and locked my bike through an automatic locking system and took my backpack which carried very few things other than just a notebook, and a Scruplot. And if you're wondering what a Scruplot even is, it's a device that tells you the activities that are going to happen throughout the day. It's shaped like a massive tablet and I could barely fit it in my backpack as I entered the building of the high school. 

Once I walked in, I spotted the cafeteria near the right side of the building as well as a map written at the entrance of the cafeteria and I headed over to the map. I looked at it closely and saw that the building I was in was called the 'B building'. Meanwhile, there was an A, C, and D building as well. The main office stood in the A building while all of the classrooms were settled in the C and D buildings as well as cafeterias in each of the two buildings. The gym and the library were then supposed to be near the D building as well as the teachers' lounge area, and I thought about each of these locations while I entered the cafeteria.

This cafeteria was very different than the ones I was used to. And the ones I was used to were rusted down and barely had any upkeep whatsoever. However, at this high school, the janitors and the lunch ladies loved to keep things clean as it was completely spotless and pristine other than the people talking in the cafeteria loudly. The cafeteria was also made of marble, entirely of marble, even the seats which was.. rather off-putting. 

I looked around the cafeteria and saw that the bathrooms were right next to me while a massive window stood tall at the end of the cafeteria, gleaming a fireball of the sun right towards the cafeteria, supplying the cafeteria its light. Whoever built this cafeteria knew what they were doing! I sat down at the nearest table and looked around the marbled cafeteria, looking for someone that I might've known in middle school. However, most of the faces I saw were ones I didn't recognize at all. I started to lose hope that I was even going to find a face I knew, even if that face was vaguely remembered. 

That's when I saw him.

He had glasses on and dark brown hair with a large book on his left hand and a Scruplot on his right hand. He also had wired headphones on and wore a plaid jacket with a red scarf and a green hat with normal jeans. I knew him extremely well from middle school and we were close friends, I just hoped he recognized me. Oh! I forgot to say what I wore. I wore a black sweater, black pants, a black shirt, and black mittens. Can you tell I liked the color black yet? 

The guy's name was Steve, if I remember correctly, he hated to be around people and was extremely introverted. So introverted in fact that in most of my study sessions, he went with me to our middle school library, which was rundown like most things were at that school. He also had a lisp, but I think he was able to control that by the time we graduated middle school. He also had a special type of laminated braces the last time I saw him that transformed into an igloo. Yeah... strange I know. He thought it was cool though so oh well.

Steve was walking aimlessly through the crowd of people in the cafeteria. It looked like he was trying to find his way through the school to somewhere, though if I had to guess judging by the way he was limp-walking while he held his crotch, he was probably looking for the bathroom.

So, I shouted out to him,

"STEVE!"

I hoped he could hear me through the entire crowd yelling out whatever happened during the summer. I never had anything to do in the summer and just slept and walked around aimlessly through my house, but I guess the students here were just more extroverted than I was. Meanwhile, though, Steve looked around after I called him and I waved my hands in the air to signal to him that I was in the cafeteria. However, due to the crowd being so large he wasn't able to even see me nor hear me screaming his name repeatedly by this point.

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I took matters into my own hands and leaped up from my seat, which was more like a way to grind my butt. I ran into the crowd and picked out Steve from the entire bunch, leading him to one of the marble benches as he sat down and adjusted his glasses. In which I realized was surprising since everyone else used contact lenses. His face lit up from looking directly at me,

"George! Oh my god, how have you been!? I feel like it's been forever since we've sheen each other!" He exclaimed with a weird lisp on "sheen". I was just as excited as he was since he was able to recognize me! I noticed that he had improved his usual lisp from middle school over the summer.

"It's been going good man! How about you?" I answered. The crowd started to disperse around the cafeteria as everyone started to quiet down, though I had no idea why. Steve replied, 

"Uhm… not so great."

"Why's that?" I asked him. His eyes started to well up while he set down his massive backpack and took off his hat. He scrunched up the hat and placed it on his lap while he said, tears rolling down his face in a zig-zag pattern,

"My, sniffle—parents uh.." He was barely able to put words in his mouth as he choked up on his tears.

"Hey, it's alright. You don't have to tell me what happened to your parents alright? I'm just happy to see you. And when you feel like it, you can tell me what happened!" I stated, he wiped his tears with his scarf and said,

"Heh, you always know what to say, don't you? Sniffle..."

"Pfft, well not always! Like for example, remember last year when I was trying to see if that girl was choking or not? I was trying to understand her for a solid minute before I even realized that she had her hands on her neck!"

"Hahahahaha! I remember that! Everyone behind your back called you 'Mr. Oblivious' ever since that day." He stated, I got embarrassingly mad and exclaimed,

"What!? Why didn't you tell me?" I asked him.

"Well, you were always busy with your studies and didn't have a social life apart from me and your friends, which were very minimal, so I thought that maybe you just didn't care." He stated, putting his backpack onto his lap on top of his hat.

"I.. fair enough. I don't think I really would've cared in middle school. But from now on, you have to tell me who's calling me what behind my back! Promise?" I asked him, putting up my pinky in the air.

"Promise." He stated, intertwining my pinky with his as we slumped down on our benches and chuckled.

"Remember when we used to do 'pinky promises' all of the time?" I asked him.

"Man.. and the funniest thing is we probably broke over half of those promises." He stated, we both chuckled even more before we blew up into a full-on laugh. It was nice laughing with him again, especially after all of this time apart from one another.

"Ha... hey, do you still have that hair clip I gave you? The one that was small and pink? I know I gave it to you as a parting gift for your sister but I believe it or not need it back... my sister got angry that her favorite clip got stolen even though she barely uses it." He stated.

"Yeah of course man! I'll bring it with me next time we're here!"

"Sick," Just then though, an announcement came over the intercoms in the building.

"Now that everyone is silent, please stay seated at the Cafeteria areas in your accorded buildings for ten minutes while everything is being prepared in the auditorium. Thank you and please be respectful!" 

The intercom shut off after that and the cafeteria exploded with noise once more. The noise got so bad that we had to move our stuff and ourselves to the far side of the cafeteria where the fire exit was and where there was a little less noise.

"So how was your summer?" Steve asked me once we sat down.

"It was pretty good, barely did anything though," I stated.

"Yeah.. hey! Did you know way back then, like hundreds of years ago, they used to have something called 'iPhones'?" 

"What were those?" I asked him.

"They were like these little pocket screens that had all these magical games and videos on them! Too bad they were banned around two centuries ago." He stated.

"If only we lived back then!" I exclaimed. Steve, being the absolute nerd he was, stated,

"Well, you shouldn't say that! Do you know how many wars there were back then? Hell, we're lucky we're not in a war right now as we speak!" 

"Calm down Sherlock I know. The world is crazy." I said, picking up my journal that I stuffed inside my notebook and hid it behind the notebook to make sure no one knew what I was doing.

"What about this school huh?" He asked me out of nowhere. He liked to ask me things seemingly out of thin air.

"Hm? Oh yeah, it looks pretty cool. Though, I haven't seen any teachers or even the principal." I stated.

"Yeah.. they're probably going to introduce themselves at the auditorium though, so we should be fine." He said, twisting his hat out of boredom.

"Hey, wait a minute," Steve said, looking directly at something, or rather someone, down the hallway where the fire exit was.

"George... is that" He poked at me, I looked towards where he was now pointing and saw a girl around my age. She was wearing a pink shirt with a yellow overhanging sweater and blue shorts with really dirty shoes. And if that's who I think it was, I would be shocked.

"Dude there's no way that's her right?" He asked me.

"I'm uh.. just not sure. Wanna go talk to her?" I asked him, of course, I knew the answer before I even asked. He shook his head side-to-side violently.

I sighed and left my backpack behind as I put my hands in my pockets and walked over to her. She was just staring at the ceiling and sitting down on the floor and when I stood next to her, she had a confused look on her face,

"Who are you?" She asked me immediately.

"I'm uh, George. We used to go to the same school last year?" She still seemed confused so I persisted on, hoping to jog her memory.

"You used to call me Mister Oblivious?" Still nothing. I sighed and said,

"You always tried to copy me and Steve's homework?"

"OHHHH!! My bad George, I had a rough vacation so I could barely remember anything last year." She said, standing up and patting her shorts down from any dust.

"It's fine, I get it. Here, let's go back to my table! You can see Steve again and we can talk about how rough your vacation was 'Troublemaker'!" The reason I called her that is the exact reason you'd think. And once we got back to the table, Steve was radio silent.

"Hey, do you remember me?" She asked him. Steve just nodded and rummaged through his backpack, looking for something in particular. She sat down next to me.

The girl I called over was named Emily, a blond haired, blue eyed, freckles ridden maniac. In middle school she was known as the 'Troublemaker' and what I mean by that was that she always caused trouble. No matter if it was something as small as a fire alarm or as big as causing an actual fire. I remember at one point in 7th grade when she decided to fire off a firework in the middle of class. 

The reason she even did that in the first place was because she wasn't allowed to go to the bathroom, which I guess is a little understandable but still. She would've been expelled immediately by our principal and teacher, Mr. And Mrs. Foyager, yes they're married, it's strange. However, her rich family was able to bribe them out of it. 

How rich? Uh, I never was able to figure it out, but I bet that's how she even got to this school. She didn't even have the grades, nor the sports scholarship to even get into this school.

"Hm. Hey Steve, why are you so quiet?" She asked him, but he still wouldn't respond as he continued to rummage through his backpack.

"Steve... Steve . . ." She persisted.

"STEVE!" She finally yelled out.

"Shut the hell up, Emily! Finally, there it is!" He finally pulled out what looked like a wooden box.

"A wooden box?" Me and Emily asked at the same time.

"This isn't just any wooden box! It's a box my father gave me for good luck. Really good luck." He stated, closing his eyes and pushing the box towards his chest, we decided not to press him on what the box was or what it even contained at all.

"Alright, well I'm gonna go get some breakfast. I'm honestly starving since I skipped my breakfast at home," Emily stated.

"And why would you skip your breakfast at home?" I asked her.

"Because George, I at least want to be on time at school for the first day to get a good impression! Before forever being late to classes." She stated, walking over to the breakfast line which was packed with people.

"Well, we're freshmen now, no longer the big dogs we were at middle school!" Steve exclaimed.

"Please, don't ever say big dogs again," I stated, going back to my notebook and getting in another journal entry:

"Steve was, and probably still is, the only friend I know who has every secret I've kept to myself. He's the only guy I could trust during those times back in middle school and now, I might need to rely on him one more time if Emily keeps sticking around with us."

"Yo, I'm back," Emily said, setting down a massive tray of food.

"Uh.. Emily? Are you sure you can eat all of that food?" Steve asked and he was right. The food was going up so high that it was bigger than Steve's whole hiking backpack.

"It's fine don't worry! Don't you guys know that I won the Lovingstead County eating competition?! Now please, lemme dig in!" She stated ambitiously, absolutely demolishing her stacked food. Steve and I stared in astonishment.

And as if it was magic, one second it was there, the next second it was completely gone.

"Ahhhhh! That was delicious!" She shouted out, a small group was watching her in disbelief as was me and Steve while she threw her trash in the dumpster.

"What? Are you guys shocked? Astonished? Maybe even a little bit-"

"Perplexed?" A guy from one of the many groups in the cafeteria stated, he walked over right to our table and stood next to Emily.

"Uh.. yeah. How'd you know that?" She asked him.

"I guess you can call me a mind reader!" He exclaimed.

"A buff mind reader that is." She stated. Steve, however, was looking mortified at the guy standing near our table and quickly tapped my shoulder. He waved his hand to signal he wanted to tell me something so I put my ear close to his mouth where he whispered in a squeaky voice,

"Do you know who that is?!"

"No, obviously not. I didn't do my research on every single soul that came into the school unlike what you probably did Steve." I stated.

"Well, you would be correct in that assumption. However, you still don't know who she's even talking to!"

"Alright.. then enlighten me. Who is this guy?" I asked him back, he looked around and finally stated,

"That's Jack Broker. You know..? THE Middle Linebacker of the school? He put one of Marshawn Lynch's descendants on the injury reserve with a clean hit! They nicknamed him the 'Soul Taker' for peeps' sake! He runs a 4.3 40-yard dash! He's a two-time Frolin county winner and also won the Super Cup with his fully equipped football team, he's a legend!" 

Even though he said this, I still really didn't care. And this was mainly because I didn't even follow sports or rumors about sports players. So I just responded,

"Sick, he's buff and he knows words like 'perplexed'. He seems like a cool guy to me." 

"No, you don't understand! This man is a full-on beast if you get on his bad side!" Steve was shivering as he said this. But I swear I remember him saying those same words before, though I just didn't know who.

"Just listen, we'll be fine if we just act calm. And right now. You're shaking in your seat. So for right now let's just introduce ourselves and say hi to each other. That's the least we can do! Plus, Emily's already doing that!" I stated and I was right since Emily and Jack were hitting it off instantly as they already introduced each other's name. Jack asked her,

"What's your favorite color?"