I realized that this person I had abruptly caught sight of was also a student who went to my middle school.

  However, the reason I noticed her like a balloon at a funeral was because she was wearing a plaid black turtleneck. Alongside her blue eyes and light yellow hair, she almost looked like she was an old lady from this unique lighting.

  I thought to myself how bad I felt for this girl, whose name nearly escaped from my brain but fortunately snatched it just in time as Angel.

  The reason I felt deep sympathy for her was because of those rumors saying that her parents wanted a baby boy, which was why her original name was supposedly Aaron. But as soon as they figured out their child was a girl, they were incredibly upset.

  And when I say incredibly upset, I mean that allegedly, they didn't even look at her when she was born out of pure spite.

  In a quick second, they named her Angel out of malignance. Everyone in middle school ridiculed her because of the story spreading like wildfire and ever since then, she's been the embodiment of an outcast.

  Of course, this story has been alleged. But most of it seemed to be true as Angel herself confirmed it.

  When I caught sight of her, I wanted to meet and introduce myself to her. For whatever reason, I was curious about how she acted, her thoughts, and her emotions.

  However, a crowd of students was in my way and I couldn't have gotten past them. Even with a bulldozer.

  These crowds usually happened because of a big fight between people I could care less about. However this time, it was because of a seemingly extraordinarily famous girl walking past the hallway cutting through the middle of the Cafeteria. Many wanted her autograph and desired to meet her in person.

  I heard whispers that she might be royalty, but I didn't pay any attention to that since it was the morning and I truly couldn't care less.

  I heard behind me a whisper along with Emily getting up and suddenly pushing her way past the crowd and heading toward where Angel was sitting.

  Yet, hilariously, she began getting swept away from the overwhelming amount of students swarming to the hallway.

  She somewhat regained her balance and persisted past this sea of students until she got to the other side. She turned toward us and gave us a thumbs-up.

  I was utterly bewildered about why she couldn't have just waited for the crowd to pass, but oh well.

  Now, I didn't know why at first Emily did this. But I knew I had to follow her and make sure what she was doing wasn't something stupid.

  I waded my way past the dwindling crowd right when she got to Angel's table after pushing her way past a smaller crowd that was surrounding Angel from out of nowhere. As we went toward the table, Emily yelled to Angel,

  "Hey! I don't know if you remember me, but I used to be in one of your classes! How are you doing!?"

  She had to yell this because the crowd was becoming obnoxiously loud. It was also surprising that Emily went to someone first because even though she was more extroverted than introverted in most things. She usually never initiated any conversation with anyone in middle school.

  Perhaps she had changed ever since.

  Angel, looking flabbergasted, then replied in a whisper that I barely was able to make out,

  "Hey, nice to meet you, Emily. You look nice in your school clothes."

  "AW! You too!" Emily, nearly shouting by this point, replied.

  I didn't know exactly why Emily was presenting herself more extensively to her. I wanted to ask her why of all people would she talk to her, but I decided it wasn't my place to ask. And she likely wouldn't hear me in the first place with all of the students here.

  "So Angel, what's your favorite color?" Emily asked, sitting right next to her.

  I sat at the opposite seat from them. I didn't know why she was so persistent in finding people's favorite colors all of a sudden.

  "Uh, seven." I wasn't sure if I heard her correctly. But did she just say seven?

  "Seven?" Emily was as confused as I was and as she looked at me for an answer, I shrugged.

  "Oh sorry! I thought you said my favorite number. What was your question again?" She asked in a whisper.

  "Oh!! Oh. . ." Emily looked at me again and I mouthed something along the lines of 'It's too loud.'

  "What's your favorite color?!" She asked again, a bit louder this time.

  "White. My favorite color is white. I like it since it's my brother's favorite color. What's yours?" I never knew she had siblings.

  "Mine's Yellow. I like it because it's so bright!"

  "Oh yeah, it compliments her alright," I said judgmentally.

  I noticed a screen on the marble table and pressed it, resulting in it asking me to select something to order or make. I pressed the make button and created a holographic firework from an A.I system. I showed this image to Emily and Angel.

  The story behind this firework was when I had entered my middle school for the first time. I heard an enormous explosion to which I naturally rushed toward.

  That was when I first met Emily accidentally setting fire to the garden at that school with, you guessed it, a firework.

  Those were the good times.

  Emily understood the reference since her face contorted and recoiled in disgust of her past self. She didn't want to relive that memory again, so she changed the subject.

  "You mentioned you had a brother? What is he like?" She asked her.

  "He's all around the nicest person in my family. He's also the same age as I am, he just goes to a different school."

  The nicest person in her family huh? Why does that sound so wrong?

  "I also have a sister, but she's four years older than I am and usually keeps to herself. One time I remember her locking herself in her room for hours upon hours! When we tried to get her to answer, we realized she was sleeping the whole time." Emily chuckled at that statement as I simply stared at her with a deep smile on my face.

  "Do you have any other siblings?" Emily asked her.

  "Nope, just those two. I honestly couldn't ask for better ones though, I remember my sister taking care of me when I was young. Of course, my parents couldn't be bothered."

  She looked at the holographic image of the rocket and swiped at it, causing it to take off and explode, disappearing right in front of us in blue, downcasting pixels.

  "Anyway though, what about you? Do you have any siblings?" She asked Emily.

  Emily had a concerned look on her face as soon as she asked this. She shrunk back in her chair, a disdain for the question obvious in her expression.

  I was curious too if she had any siblings since I never asked nor knew. But, as aforementioned, it looked like Emily wouldn't and couldn't talk about whoever they were. So, both me and Angel dropped the subject altogether.

  "Do you have any siblings, uh..?" She tried to ask me. I realized she probably didn't know my name since I didn't bother to introduce myself.

  "I'm George and yes, I do have siblings. A brother and a sister." I answered her question.

  "Wait, you have siblings? Why didn't I know about this?" Emily asked me from her metaphorical shell.

  "Probably because you didn't ever ask about my personal life when you were copying homework from me." Angel snickered at that.

  "Shut up!" She exclaimed back. I laughed out loud while Angel smiled warmly and looked up at me.

  "I forgot to ask you before, but what is your favorite color?"

  "Uh, I'd say my favorite color is black," I stated.

  "Why's that?" Emily asked me. I already knew that she knew the answer, so I came up with a fake one just out of spite.

  "I don't know. It just sorta calls to me I guess."

  "Interesting," Emily said, giving me a squinting look of annoyance which made me feel oddly happy.

  "I say that's a nice color," Angel whispered.

  "Uh, I have a question for you Angel, if you don't mind," I said.

  "I don't mind at all, what is it?"

  "Why are you whispering so much?"

  "Yeah, I've been wondering that too. We're lucky that we have such good hearing." I found a coin on the floor and chucked it at Emily's nose.

  "OW!"

  "That's what you get for lying, stupid. We have horrible hearing." She grumbled at me and looked down at the coin. Angel stuttered before, once more, whispering,

  "S-Sorry that I whisper so much. I just don't like being so loud. Even in middle school, I didn't exactly raise my voice and I didn't and won't ever raise my hand in class."

  "I don't understand that. Maybe I will in the future, but for now I don't get why people have to be so silent. Especially when we're run by these. . ." I ceased my train of words and stared up at the camera directly above us.

  "People," Emily finished what I said, using a rubber band she got from absolutely nowhere. She shot the coin directly at my forehead, making me stumble back and fall off my seat right on my back.

  Emily, of course, bursted into laughter while Angel tried to conceal her smile, yet I still saw it.

  "You little..!" I rubbed my forehead.

  "That's what you get, stupid!!" She mocked me with the word 'stupid'. I didn't appreciate this all that much. I picked myself up and got back to my seat right in time to see Angel taking a bite off of something and putting it back in her pocket.

  "What'd you take a bite of?" I asked her.

  "Hmph? Oh, it's just some-" She gulped down her food slowly.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  "-eggplant. My mom made it for me."

  "Eggplant?" Emily asked in utter confusion.

  "That doesn't sound like a reasonable breakfast," I said.

  "I've been eating eggplants for breakfast for, well, I don't know how long now. Maybe ever since elementary." She said, taking another bite of her eggplant and stuffing it in her pocket.

  "Alright..? Hey, why don't I, you, and the idiot over here get some hot chocolate right now? It's pretty cold outside and the teachers will allow us to do anything on the first day anyway!" Emily exclaimed. I didn't exactly appreciate her calling me an idiot.

  "Wait, they will? Also, this idiot got her through most of middle school." I pointed at myself while saying this, fetching a smirk off of Angel.

  "Shut up, and yes they will. At least I heard it from one of my closest friends. She said that they won't bother you at all, even if you go to the. . ."

  She looked around herself before whispering,

  "The secret room."

  "What's the secret room?" Angel responded in a whisper of her own.

  "Well, you better put on your attention spans, this is gonna take a whole three minutes of explaining!" She cracked her knuckles and cleared her throat.

  Afterwards, she focused her fingers on the screen on the solid, marble table. She pressed the order button, ordered three small cups of hot chocolate, pressed back to the menu where she then pressed the make button. She then finally put in a request for a 3D model of one of the buildings on campus.

  This resulted in a holographic image of the building in front of us, complete with a rotational function to seek out all sides of the structure in question.

  "This is the D building. It's supposedly just used as a teacher's lounge as well as a maintenance area where workers go in and do some mumbo jumbo to the buildings. But that's not what we're talking about." She said, spinning the building until she pitched and zoomed into the basement.

  "Er..? Are you sure you want to do this right in front of the camera right above us?" Angel asked.

  "Why not!? It's much more dangerous this way." She focused on the bottom of the building as three small hot chocolate cups appeared from a tiny portable inside the table in front of us. Emily took a sip and sighed, saying in part,

  "Okay. Many years ago, when these buildings were first being built by whoever the hell liked marble that much. They decided to make the A, B, and C buildings into teaching facilities. Obviously."

  "But the builder also wanted the D building to be a teaching facility though. Here's the thing, the contract in which he signed to build these buildings stated that he couldn't do such a thing."

  "Because of this, the builder got furious and he decided that the best way to hide his spite for what he was constructing was by building what the contract requested, but also something else in the basement of the D building. Can y'all guess what it was?" She asked us.

  I took a sip of my hot chocolate and took an extremely WILD guess,

  "A classroom?"

  "WRONG! BZZZT!" She yelled out, grabbing the coin from the table and chucking it at my forehead again. At this rate, I'll have a bruise on my forehead on the first day of school.

  "Ow..! Not again." I groaned out loud. Angel chuckled at me, but now it was her turn to answer Emily. And if she didn't, well she would get a smacking of a lifetime by a penny.

  "Uh, uhm. . . Was it some sort of treasure cove?! Maybe?" She squinted her eyes and face for impact. Yet, Emily dropped the penny on the ground.

  "How did you know that?" She asked her in bewilderment.

  "Uhm, wild guess?" She didn't know how she got it based on her facial sudden reaction. After she sipped her hot chocolate, Emily knocked herself out of her confusional state and continued the story.

  "Anyway, as Angel said, yeah. He built a treasure cove. But this treasure cove wasn't only just built for paper money and golden coins, no."

  "Inside the cove, it is said that there is a device that would turn you into a teacher for exactly one day. And it's in the form of a chalk!" Her voice tried to boom throughout the table while she looked at us in anticipation.

  We looked back at her unfazed.

  Don't get me wrong, getting a magical chalk that would somehow in some way turn you into a teacher for one day sounded cool and all. I could just only imagine what it would be like to teach a group of kids like these. And I didn't ever want to imagine that.

  "Oh come on, guys! You should be excited! Just imagine, we can be stinking rich while also getting the power to be a teacher for twenty-four hours!! Do you know how many things we can do?!" She asked us.

  "Like what? Handing out detention slips and being underpaid? I don't wanna visualize that." I said back. However, Angel replied,

  "W-Wow! That sounds amazing, I'd love to!"

  "That sounds like a 2:1 ratio George! See, I know my math when it counts stupid!" She said, I hated her guts so much.

  "Alright, let's do this then." I put my hands in the air in full withdrawal while Emily yelped in excitement. Angel was also pumping her fists in the air, which I found rather amusing.

  "I'm gonna go check on the guys over there. You two chat away about how the hell we're even gonna get into the basement." I stated, turning off the holographic of the D building. I walked over to Steve and Jack, finishing my hot chocolate, and promptly throwing it away in a trash can.

  This time it was way easier to get to Steve and Jack since the crowd had traveled to the other side of the A building for whoever the hell that famous student was.

  "What's up, guys?" I asked them. They waved back at me as I sat down on the opposite side of them.

  "You won't believe what Jack can do! Here, show him!" He exclaimed.

  Jack legitimately got up and, I'm not even joking when I say this, lifted the table with the two of us still seated on the solid chairs connected to the table.

  "WOAH!" I shouted, not expecting him to lift something as hefty as a whole table. He set us back down as a teacher who didn't look so human strolled over to us.

  "Don't do that!" The robotic teacher squawked.

  "My bad." Jack rubbed the back of his neck as the robotic teacher went back to. . .

  Wait. Why were robotic teachers in this school? Steve's facial expression seemed like he had the exact same question in mine. So, I asked him,

  "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

  "About why are there robotic teachers here?"

  "Exactly!" I exclaimed. It was utterly strange to us, but maybe we just didn't know about new regulations on teaching. Or maybe it was because this school just had robotic teachers on hand?

  Either way, it was strange.

  "I gotta read a news article about that," Steve stated to me.

  "About what?" Jack asked us, oblivious to the question that Steve and I had in our minds.

  "About why the hell there are robotic teachers in our school."

  "Oh, you guys haven't heard? This school is doing a beta program where half of the teachers will be fully automated while the other half will be human. They're doing this whole control and free group at this school. Personally, I want to be on the human side."

  "Same," I said back, nodding my head in agreement. Steve, on the other hand, scratched his head and said,

  "I'm honestly getting tired of crappy human teachers. Robotic teachers for the win!" He drank his chocolate milk as if it were a shot glass and set it down, wiping his mouth. Jack looked at me and asked,

  "Hey, where is Emily?"

  "Hm? Ah, she's over there talking with Angel." I said, pointing over to them where Steve and Jack eyed behind themselves.

  "She looks introverted," Jack stated.

  "Be respectful you idiot," I replied.

  "What!? It's the truth!" He exclaimed. I shrugged while Steve seemed hesitant toward Angel.

  "What is it, Steve?" I asked him.

  "Isn't that the same girl that—"

  "Yes. It's the same girl." I said. I didn't know the words he was going to say, yet I knew he was going to say it. He shrunk in his chair after I bluntly replied to his non-existent question. We sat in silence for a couple of minutes before Jack attempted to lift another table behind himself.

  "Jack, don't." Steve and I warned simultaneously.

  "My bad. . ." He said back disappointingly, going back to his chair and slumping down in his seat. He continuously made this annoying clicking sound out of boredom,

  Click.

  Click.

  Click.

  Click.

  Click!

  "Can you stop with that clicking sound!?" Steve exclaimed after a whole minute of him making the sound with his tongue non-stop.

  "But I'm so bored!" He exclaimed back, his knees buckling up and down in anticipation.

  "Here, play with this real quick." I said, tapping the make button on the table. I then placed in the word 'GAME' to hopefully create one that would distract Jack until orientation.

  This resulted in the holograph showing a game of Stars and Knights.

  "A board game!?" He complained.

  "Just play it, you big cry baby. I'm gonna head back to Angel and Emily to see what they're doing." I said to him. He picked up the holographic board game and asked Steve,

  "Do you wanna play?"

  "Sure. Why not?" He shrugged at him. They unboxed the board game as I walked over to Angel and Emily.

  However, before I could even reach them, I caught sight of someone I never would've expected nor wanted to see ever again. My jaw clenched up, my eyes widened into a pearl, and my fist curled into the ball as I saw her.

  Now, the girl, if I should even call her that rather than a petulant 3-year-old baby trapped in a 14 to 15-year-old body, was the most famous student at our middle school.

  To put that into perspective, our middle school had approximately 12,000 kids. Yes, you're reading that correctly, it was a large middle school, and she was the most favored over anybody else there.

  And better yet, she was a classic bully. Hell, there was a short myth of her bullying one of the eldest teachers there so badly that the teacher. . .

  I'd rather not talk about what that teacher did to herself after the bullying. The point is this person, dare I call her that and not a monster, was one who got under your skin. And whenever she lost an argument; she would just whine to her followers.

  Her followers were massive in quantity, spanning from jocks to geeks and from emos to egotists. And this girl's name was. . .

  ????????.

  I soon realized she was heading toward the direction where Emily and Angel were chatting. I also noticed her being followed by that same massive crowd that had blocked Emily's and my pathway beforehand.

  However, I didn't want her to intervene in Emily's and Angel's great conversation about. . .

  From what I heard here, their favorite animals.

  But that's beside the point. I decided to, stupidly and irrationally at that, intercept her as she was arriving at their table.

  I patted down my clothes, walking right up to her. I knew she would likely throw a fit over anything. So, I "accidentally" slightly bumped her left shoulder.

  The crowd gasped in the cafeteria's oxygen supply while Veronica gave me the most wickedly pointed glare I've ever seen someone perform. I noticed that she was trying to size herself up to me. However, as I was a full five inches taller than her (5'7"). It was rather hard for her to do so.

  And right when she was on the verge of pushing me out of the way with her fists clenched in an anticipating outburst. . .

  She surprisingly calmed down, ignored my distractive self, and resumed her walk over to Angel and Emily. My heart slowly began to jog within my body and because of this newfound nervousness. I ran toward Jack and Steve to tell them,

  "Hey! Bad news! Veronica is about to go to Emily and Angel's table."

  "WHAT!?" Steve shouted while Jack glimpsed at us in total confusion. He more than likely didn't know about her because he went to an entirely different school.

  "Who's Veronica?" He asked us.

  "A person you don't ever want to talk to or else your life is going to be a literal hellscape," Steve said, packing his bag and slinging it over his shoulder.

  "Alright. I'll help you guys then." Jack was surprisingly easy to convince.

  We hit the floor running through the cafeteria, a multitude of tables which continued to impede our path, and into the hands of the threshold of a large crowd. We had been abruptly stopped only a few feet from where Emily and Angel were by this annoyingly persistent gathering of students.

  "Crap, we can't get through here!" Steve exclaimed through the heap of bodies.

  "No shit," I muttered so he wouldn't hear me.

  "I have an idea, hold on!" Jack, quite literally, grabbed each of us by our hoodies and plopped us down on two marble seats. He clasped the entire table from under our feet and heaved us through the crowd as people ducked down to avoid getting a concussion. They took out their phones, taking pictures of our comical situation.

  Honestly, if I wanted to memorialize myself on the first day, I think I wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

  Once we weaved our way past the crowd, he set us down on the empty ground as we ran toward where Angel and Emily sat.

  We soon realized—after running for only a short while—that we were already too late as Veronica had already gotten to their table.

  The following interaction then happened,

  "-so yeah that's why I think iguanas are the best species, Angel," Emily said. I found that a bit odd, but oh well.

  "Oh wow, that's cool! I'm more of a dog person though." Angel replied back to her, her hand swiping a strand of hair from her eyes.

  The crowd had dispersed to their surroundings. Angel's eyes darted around in worry, wondering what this was all about.

  Emily sat up and her eyes were in a state of a mixture between fright and vexation. Veronica stepped out of the heap of bodies following her.

  Emily, as anyone would be in a situation between humiliation or relief, tightened her stance. Her back became straighter, her eyes gleaming just a little less at who she was confronting.

  They stood face-to-face with each other, a palpable tension that rose with each waning second being felt by the masses. If a fight broke out, the school wouldn't hear the end of it for days to come.

  I feel as if Veronica knew that though as she took a deep breath. Slowly exhaled all of her usual pent up stress in a long sigh.

  And warmly extended her hand toward Emily.