Chapter 4: Elsie

                                    

                                          
All the events keep me up most of the night, my brain replaying them in my head and trying to process them. When I finally fall asleep around 4 in the morning, it's only to be woken up by the annoying sound of my alarm 3 hours later.
I groan, absentmindedly silence my phone to stop the deafening sound and snuggles deeper into my pillow.
Except that, a moment later, I come back to reality, my eyes suddenly wide open. I struggle to disentangle myself from the sheets and almost fall. I reach for my phone, dropping it on the floor by accident. I pick it up, knowing the phone case I specifically bought protects it from my everyday clumsiness and check the time.
7:45
This must be a damn joke! I closed my eyes for three seconds!
I quickly grab some clothes from my unpacked suitcase — blue cargo pants and a loose colorful hoodie — and change into them. A bathroom stop and some packing later, I run out the door holding a tote bag with a notebook and some pens. I catch a glimpse of Timothy watching me from the kitchen island but he says nothing and keeps scrolling on his phone. Doesn't this idiot have class?
Well, hell if I care.
I go down the stairs, throw a hi at someone in the common room without looking and hurriedly enter a building. After consulting a map on a wall and nearly tearing my hair out, I enter the right classroom. I look at my phone.
8.00 am
Right on time.
It looks as modern as the rest of the premises. Almost every seat is taken but there are still two that suit me; in a corner in the last row. I take one, take out my stuff and look at the teacher — a middle-aged woman with a rough-looking gray dress, dull brown hair and eyes. Although she doesn't make any comment, she looks at me disapprovingly. She heaves a sigh, shakes her head and starts her lesson.
It's math, the subject I dread. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love mathematics, just not math classes. Not because I'm bad at it; that's quite the opposite. With each teacher, I am so frustrated and bored out of my mind that I don't pay attention and respond. Sometimes, I feel guilty thinking about how I made a few of them cry. But even without listening to ninety percent of the lessons, I still answer all the questions of the tests correctly.
This once, everything goes smoothly. The students are at the end of a chapter I haven't studied yet so figuring out what everything means takes me about half an hour and turns out a bit entertaining.
The three next classes are pretty fine too. I arrive almost late to all of them — this building is insanely huge! -, always just in time so I don't get scolded. Apart from that, I manage to catch up quickly and when lunchtime comes around, I head to the cafeteria. Apparently, today is match day. What sport? I have no idea, but it seems important, meaning this afternoon's lessons are canceled. I'm hoping to take a look around and find somewhere decent for skateboarding.
I didn't talk to anyone so far, except two teachers that wanted to know if I needed more explanations or what I had learnt so far at my previous college. What most of the students did was eying me warily. Fortunately, I had managed to hide my collar with my thick wavy hair, it was already embarrassing enough to wear, let alone showing it to everyone. I still noticed a lot of people wearing similar neckbands, although each one of them were white and without a pendant. My gaze even fell on someone petting the head of another student, some persons sucking on pacifiers and even weirder things.
A friend explaining all of that to me would be very helpful. I didn't make any today, don't even know how to but I will make efforts to socialize tomorrow. I'm giving myself a day off.