Indiana, Invincible - Chapter 2, Part 1

by Maryam in A Land Of Desert And Sun

As I enter the class, the door swings shut behind me, and I breathlessly take my seat. Thank GOD, the teacher's not here yet. I arrange my notebook and pen neatly on my desk, each side by side - we haven't recieved our books yet.
Yeah, that's a thing about our school: you don't buy the books yourself. It's paid for at the beginning of the year.
I twiddle my fingers, waiting.... People are talking, laughing, screaming (yes, one or two cases of that, too), and suddenly I feel a tap on my shoulder.
I trun, and see a nervous-looking girl with the shiniest, sleekest-looking long blod hair I've ever seen; she smiles, and even this seems a bit hesitant. 'Um... I'm going to sit here,' she says, pointing, with a bit of a jerky movement, and then abruptly sits down in the chair she indicated next to me.
The girl smiles nervously, and I smile back. Behind her suddenly appears the black boy who helped me up. I grin at him. He smiles back. 'Hi, can I sit here?'
I shrug. He sits.
We sit there in silence for a few seconds, just smiling awkwardly at each other. The boy says, a few minutes later, adjusting his cranberry-red vest he's wearing on top of a white shirt, 'Are you new?' I nod. 'I'm Indiana.'
I stick out my hand, and he shakes it. 'I'm Enoch, and this is Jenny,' he nods at the girl, who grins bashfully.
I grin back. 'Thanks for helping me out back there,' I tell Enoch, who smiles and shrugs. 'It was nothing,' he says, in an accent that sounds a bit... I can't really place at the moment. But he quickly continues.
'So, you're from.... where?' 'Well, I'm not really sure how to answer that, I'm, well, pretty much a cocktail,' I grin. 'A lot of things. I've got a Russian, American and Czech passport, so...' I pause, and look around confusedly.
'Hey, isn't the professor supposed to come in?'
Jenny's voice comes from behind me for the first time:
'At the beginning of every year, we have a free period. Just to get use to each other again. It's nice.'
She leans on the table. I say, 'So you've both been here a long time?' 'Six years for me,' Enoch says, 'Eight for her.' I widen my eyes and look to Jenny. 'Wow, practically your whole life, hm?' She nods. 'Since I was in third grade.' 'So you guys are really used to it, huh?' They both nod. Enoch says, 'Yeah, pretty much. I know half the people here. See, that's Karen.'
He gestures to a serious-looking girl who is jotting something down in a notebook. 'Tied at top of the class, five years in a row. Last year, Liam got the better of her. You know, Liam Rheston. The' - 'Yeah, I know.' 'Anyway, that group over there is the sort of cool group. There are two, actually, but this is the less-profile one. Lily, Pansy, Sherine, Jameila - do NOT pronounce it any other way that Jam - i- la, or she'll kill you, and all those others - the boys here really don;t belong to any particular group, unless it's Liam Rheston's. But, let me tell you something,' he fixes me with his startlingly light eyes, 'the boys in there are only afraid of him, the girls in there only want to be his girlfriend. Nonetheless,' Enoch continues, with a slight smile on his face, 'it's a pretty powerful group. Anyway, the professors here can be pretty strict with some people and lenient with others, and the most important thing is your first impression, so' -
Enoch pauses as - well, what d'ya know? - in comes Rheston and the whole jolly gang, laughing at something. They deliberately turn towards me, but before they can do that, I deliberately turn the other way and address Enoch.
'Continue?'