Beeeeep…Beeeeep…Beeeeep…Anna silences the alarm clock with a swift bash of her hand.
“Oooaahhggg,” Anna groans as the sunlight singes her vulnerable pupils. She rolls out of bed, narrow black-rimmed glasses in hand, and heads for the coffee maker. Normally seventeen year old girls don’t drink their coffee black, but Anna is the exception to many ordinary habits. Her long, straight blonde hair gets tufted back in a messy bun and eyeliner is applied that draws out her piercingly green eyes. Seeing as she fell asleep in her typical loose black pants and form fitting white tank top, Anna throws on a light beige jacket and departs for the forty minute drive into town to school.
Along the way Anna stops to pick up her friend, Don, who haphazardly throws his satchel onto the floorboard and slumps down into the passenger’s seat.
After several groggy minutes, Don sits up out of his sleep deprived state to ask, “Do you want me to check over your paper for English?”
“No thanks.” Anna answers stubbornly.
“Come on,” Insists Don, “you know you need the help.”
Anna grumbles for a moment and reluctantly gives in. “I hate it when you read my papers.”
He fishes the document out of her backpack with a smug attitude, “I know that, but I’m the only reason you’re getting an A.”
“Read it out loud. That way I might be able to catch some mistakes I over looked last night.”
Don complies. “Sylvester Johnson High is located precisely in the middle of Yuval City. This is no mistake, because the founder, Augustus Yuval, bought a small two room cabin from Sylvester Johnson to start this city; that cabin was the epicenter of the city, everything grew out from it, and ultimately that cabin was converted into a school and expanded. Today nothing remains of the old cabin, but the school has grown to accommodate over 2,000 students. The city has become the financial center of the state, so businesses keep building skyscraper after skyscraper. Yuval City is constantly slithering its way into the fringes of the surrounding inhabitants, forests and suburbs alike.”
Don nods his head. “Not bad.”
Anna and Don reach SJH with time to spare, so they go to join their friends. The epithet Anna prefers is ‘band of misfits’. They arrive to find their morning spot -an open stairwell facing a hallway of abandoned rusty lockers- empty. Don quickly sits down on a middle step. He tilts his cap over his eyes and leans backwards to get some 10 minutes rest before classes. Anna pulls out her grid book and calculator and begins toiling away at some extra credit calculus problems.
She rolls her eyes as she notices Don asleep again. It figures, she says to herself, the one student who is a shoo-in for valedictorian is basically a narcoleptic. His intellect isn’t what bothers Anna. It’s the subtle flaunting, and his lack of effort.
Unintentionally she places her backpack precariously on a stair’s edge. Anna hears the patter of feet behind her, and suddenly her backpack is sprawled at the bottom of the stairs - its contents scattered haphazardly. A boy leading a girl by the hand bolts past, down the long corridor.
“Hey! Watch where you’re going!” Anna shouts to the pair.
“Anna…who are you talking to?” Don questions, his tone is strangely concerned.
“Those idiots!” Anna motions, “They knocked all my stuff over.” She bends down and snaps up the backpack. “Now I have to clean all this up.”
“Anna, your backpack fell. No one knocked it over.”
“Yes they did. You just couldn’t see because that hat was covering your eyes.” She picks up a book from her feet and walks along the bottom steps collecting fallen pencils.
“I saw your backpack fall. I was watching you redo that math problem over and over and your backpack just tipped over. It’s not my fault you put it on the edge of the stair.”
“No Don, didn’t you see those people? There was a girl and a guy. They came from behind us and ran past my backpack and knocked it over. It was probably an accident, but still they should’ve had the courtesy to help me pick everything up.”
“Anna, no one ran by.”
Shaking her backpack in his face, “Then how do you explain my backpack falling? Objects require a force to move don’t they?”
“What about gravity?” He retorts.
“OK FINE. Maybe my backpack did fall because of gravity. Whether or not they knocked it over doesn’t matter. You’re telling me no one ran by and obviously someone did, or else I wouldn’t have seen them. You can’t tell me you never saw them.”
“I never saw them.”
“You didn’t even hear them? They were pretty loud dashing over here.”
Don shrugs, “I haven’t seen or heard anyone come by in about ten minutes.”
“Go back to sleep Don. Before you know it you’ll be so tired that a fire will be at your feet and you won’t know it.”
“Whatever.” Don pulls his cap back over his eyes, crosses his arms, and lies back against the steps.
