The church bells ringing mean 12:00pm, because nobody around here has a phone, weirdos. That’s what time the class on introduction to vampires starts; they’re holding it in the big school building. Way different than the place they’ve got me stuck in. Kind of like they’ve got their own little community college over there. They don’t want me to learn about vampires and stuff like that but they can’t stop me. What are they going to do anyway? Stop me from learning? I don’t know why they think they can put restrictions on education, but they’re wrong.

I just keep my head down and find my way into class. I’m probably the shortest person walking in but I’m hoping that they overlook me. Maybe fifty people in the class, you’d have to look pretty hard to see me. I take a seat and take out one of my textbooks. Everyone else has their own books which are way different than mine. They’ve got crazy patterns on the covers and are filled with diagrams. Mine just says science on the front with some generic looking people and pictures of the organ structure of humans, but I’m doing a great job of blending in.

The teacher walks in and everyone starts closing their books, I close mine following suit. She starts passing out stacks of paper right away. Take one pass them down, so far, this is easy. Is this a pop quiz? I don’t know any of this stuff. Alright, play along. Name, my name is Kaiden, easy. Wait, I should use an alias; I’ll be Doug today.

Do demons feature similar internal organs to humans? Different types of Lycan, I don’t even know what a Lycan is. Six fundamental differences between Orcs and Goblins. I don’t know any of the answers to this so I take some educated guesses. There’re two types of vampires, good and bad. But there aren’t a lot of good vampires. Scratch that, male vampires and female vampires. That’s a trick question. Silver bullets kill werewolves. Mummies, zombies and boogeymen are three other types of creatures. I pass in my test with everyone else and relax. Can’t get much worse than that, at least it won’t count towards my grade.

“That wasn’t too bad,” I say smiling to the girl to my left. She’s got pointy ears, she must be an elf.

She stares at me like she’s trying to figure out if there’s something wrong with my face. I’m just going to look towards the other side of the room and hope she doesn’t notice I probably shouldn’t be here. The teacher collects the papers, quickly glances at all of the papers and chooses one out of the stack.

“Doug, is there a Doug here? I don’t recall a Doug being in this class. Where is Doug,” she asks.

Oh crap, I’m Doug. There is no Dough here lady. Drop the issue and teach your class this isn’t important. She keeps looking over the class trying to see who doesn’t belong here. She finds me and makes eye contact. I look down and away from her, hoping she just lets it go and thinks I’m someone else. Crap, everyone else is looking at me now. I can’t even sneak out of here now.

“Stand up Doug,” she said staring directly at me.

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“My name is actually Kaiden,” I say looking at the wall above her head, instead of her.

“Why are you in my class Kaiden?”

“I wanted to learn about vampires.”

“When you’re seventeen, you can learn all you want about vampires, werewolves, demons and anything else you want.”

“I actually am seventeen. I spent three years as a thrall or something like that, so my body didn’t age, so some people think I’m fourteen. But, that’s just a misunderstanding. We’re getting it all worked out. I should be here anyway,” brilliant. The best lie, is just the truth. I’ve got this in the bag.

She looks at me and gives some real consideration to what I just said. I got her, I’ll be able to stay. A ball of paper hits me in the side of the head. The class starts laughing and I know they’re laughing at me right away. That was so messed up, but it still doesn’t stop another ball from hitting me in the back of the head. Okay, I got the point with the first one, the second one was just to rub it in. Oh, the third one, got it. I know when I’m not wanted. I grab my backpack and start to make my way out of the room.

“Young man. You have a lot of determination and you probably have big dreams, but everything comes with time. In a few years, if you still believe, you can be phenomenal. The rest of you would do well to mimic his mindset,” the teacher says as I make my way outside.

I just need a chance to prove to everyone that I can be great. Nobody wants to give me a chance. What’s wrong with me? Why does nobody take me seriously? I can do this but nobody wants to help me. Maybe I just need to get some stakes and go kill vampires on my own. How do I even find vampires? I just need the basics to get started.

I’m not even bothered by the rain outside. It just makes sense, everything else wants to spit on me. Why not let nature do it too? At least there’s no cars to splash me around here. I just want to leave here, but I don’t have anywhere to go. I don’t even know where here is, I’d just end up lost in the woods.

“Kaiden, boy why are you walking in the rain without a jacket or umbrella,” I hear Miss Dalia call out to me. I can’t finder her until she yells out “Up here, in my office,” from a window a few floors off the ground.

“Hi Miss Dalia,” I wave back at her.

“Mother Dalia, and come inside for a cup of tea.”

“I don’t like tea, I’m just going to go get some sleep.”

“You’ll catch pneumonia out in the rain.”

“I’ll be fine, just a little rain,” I hear the thunder, so it might be a lot of rain coming.

“At least let me give you a jacket,” a jacket does sound nice.

“Sure, I’ll be right up.”

I climb the stairs to her office and the door is already open. She’s poured a cup of tea and left a towel for me to dry off a little. I don’t see her immediately but she’s going through a closet off to the side. She didn’t pour a cup of tea for me. Fair, I did say I didn’t like tea and she did leave a few cookies out. I help myself to one, I love frosted sugar cookies. She couldn’t eat all these cookies herself anyway. Sugar isn’t good for old people, so I help myself to another.

“I was going to offer you some cookies, but it seems like you’ve helped yourself,” she returns holding a folded red jacket.

“Sorry,” I gulp one down.

“No, you aren’t. I’ll make you some. Here’s a jacket. If you aren’t going to stay, at least get home before the storm gets worse.”

“I could stay and listen to more stories,” the jacket is way too big for me, but it is warm.

“Sure, how about a story about a young woman learning she can fly?”

“Is the story about you?”

“Yes,” she smiles.

“Can you really fly?”

“Yes, I can fly. Not like my younger days. It is more like levitation these days.”

“Okay, tell me the story.”