Chapter Text
Wednesday, July 24, 10E414
Today is the first day of my last year of high school and quite honestly, I don’t think I could muster up even a dollop of enthusiasm. I’ve got a future already. I’ll work for Stride, make my own line of dolls and live a detached life of debauchery, head back to Volcaldera or something. Maybe make some ironic hentai games for the gooners living in their parents’ basements. My alarm has been going off for what feels like an eternity before I get annoyed enough to turn it off and get myself out of bed. Time to get dressed, I guess. I pull on a pair of black pants, long sleeve white shirt with red collar and sleeves, red canvas sneakers and top off my look by putting on my prescription mirrored shields, protecting my photosensitive eyes from the inevitable barrage of sunlight they’ll have to weather after I leave my room. A quick visit to the bathroom to brush my shoulder-length blonde locks, brush my teeth, and I’m out, grabbing my backpack on my way to the living room.
My bro is waiting for me in the kitchen, staring out the old Victorian window at the street outside. He’s sipping on a mug of Decaf, coffee for people who like the taste of burnt soil but hate getting jazzed about it. He looks at me when I close my door and nods coolly in my direction, then looks back out the window to eye nothing in particular as he speaks to me. "Morning. I'll walk with you to your new campus today after you get something to eat." he says, his voice carrying with that emotionless, robotic tone he’s known for.
"Oh man, brand new campus with brand new people? Can't wait." I reply with sarcastic enthusiasm. I pour myself a glass of apple juice and down it as I toss a breakfast sandwich in the microwave. Two minutes and my breakfast is ready to be eaten alongside the remains of my drink. I’m finished in no time, wiping my hands off with a paper towel. “Alright, I’m good to go when you are.
"Sure thing." My bro turns and crosses his way into the living room to pull an orange flannel shirt over his white tee. He takes off his triangle-shaped black lens sunglasses and replaces them with a pair of sports sunglasses with orange mirroring, pulling a baseball cap over his head. Kirk usually puts more pride in sculpting his hair than I did before I started trying to grow it out, so the transition to hat land for him is a bit jarring but I don’t let it show on my face.
The house Bro got for us is a small two-story Victorian next to the creek. It challenges every apartment we've lived in for floor space by at least double. Two bedrooms, one upstairs used by my bro, and one downstairs used by me, each with their own bathrooms. There’s a study that connects the kitchen-living-dining room to the patio that encases the house on all sides. Possibly the best part is the large yard, giving Bro and I plenty of space if he wants to break out his SCA gear and do some sword sparring. My bro dabbles in Medieval Reenactment and renaissance stuff. It’s one of his ironic interests; he's actually got one of those goofy ah suits of armor in his room that he's never actually worn. Really, the SCA is just some kind of ironic formality for him that he uses to justify teaching me to fight with swords, a useless skill no-one needs in the modern day. But sword fighting in chainmail Gambeson is a pretty gnarly way to stay in shape.
The streets here are stupidly thin. Like, one-and-a-quarter lane thick, not including curbside parking space. The streets were clearly laid out in the 1800's when cars weren’t a thing and have been this way since. We hang a left from our house and follow up the thin street, heading away from Main. If a car parked on both shoulders of this street, you could barely fit a 2-door coupe through the gap in the middle. Instead of the high rises and apartment complexes, the canopy above me is made of willow and oak trees, creating a natural shade; instead of the concrete and glass behemoths I'm used to, there’s clear skies and nature. On top of that, it was quiet. Way too quiet. Quiet enough I can hear myself thinking without the help of a musical drone drowning out the sound of urban living and I kinda hate it. In the middle of summer like this, the air smells like dry grass, though this close to the creek there’s a little more of a forest stream smell. On the other side of the street, the yards are raised about a half-story using concrete retainer walls and looking up one of the streets that connect to ours, every house beyond that is raised further as the ground slopes up and away from our street, the lowest one. It didn't take five minutes to walk from our street up the hill to the main road and follow the shoulder. From up here, it's easier to see the rolling hills that surround the valley this little town is nestled in. Scenic California, covered in dead grass, dead grass, and more dead grass. Oh, did I mention the dead grass? It's a smörgåsbord of yellow. Not a lot to see aside from an occasional tree defiantly standing in the middle of a dry field, somehow the greenest thing for miles.
It's not a long walk. Maybe another 5 minutes until I can see the campus or at least the way up to the campus. 'School Street', a certified hood classic, guaranteed to be found in every town, just like 'Church Street'. A big retainer wall marks the edge of the campus, setting the grass overhead when we're walking up the sidewalk next to the retainer wall. A big metal and stone sign built into the wall says "Welcome to Amareaux High School! Home of the Singing Herd!" alongside what looked like some kind of Ox. An Aurochs if I had to guess honestly. I still find it kind of funny that schools use animal mascots considering how much of the population is actually some kind of anthropomorphic humanoid. Bro stops at the side of the sign and turns towards me. "I've gotta visit a couple of the teachers here before I have to be home for a video conference. There anything you wanna know before you head up?"
"Hold up. You know some of the teachers here?” I ask, slipping my hands into my pants pockets.
"Yeah, I do. They’re the ones that recommended the area when I said I wanted to move out of Sarco.” He explained.
I click my tongue at that. So, he talked to other people about the move long before he mentioned any of it to me. I guess that’s not totally abnormal for him, I’m usually the last dude to know anything when it comes to my bro’s plans, but it’s news that he was planning this move before it happened. “Good to know, I guess.”
"Anything else?” he asked.
“Man, did I win the lottery, or something? I’m getting’ free answers left and right for any question that just pops into my mind? Nah, I know the drill. Go to school, get good grades, come home, repeat.” I replied. Honestly, I've got tons of questions, actually. But I know Kirk. He's testing me. Wants to make sure I can just go with the flow in any situation. Making sure I'm just as unshakable as him, so I can survive in the cannibalistic world of CEOship when I inevitably outdo him and start my own business.
The air goes stale between us, just briefly before my bro fishes something out of his pocket. "Here." He says, pulling a small wad of cash out of his wallet and handing it to me. I take it, of course. Care packages from my brother could carry me a couple of weeks easily, not to mention keeping my computer updated and my hobbies well furnished. "If anything happens, you know how to reach me." he finally added before nodding over his shoulder, gesturing me up the slope and walking off to my right, up a staircase through the retainer wall where some of the classes stood. Now, I stood alone at the base of the incline. Nowhere to go but forward.