Chapter 3 - Not the Best Start

Katherine goes to Hex Academy for the first day. It isn't exactly how she imagined her day would start off as, but what a first day she ends up having.

The first day was always the worse. Everyone worried about what they were going to wear, if they’d get to class on time, and if they would be with friends or people they could make friends with. Outfits should be nice, impressive, and the many wore the most expensive stuff.

All of this seemed to be different for Hex Academy. It was already three weeks into the year, and I was late. It took time to settle in to the new home, study for the test, and the giant paper process to go through. Finally, my mother dropped me off for my first day--a day that I had been anxiously waiting for. Since laying eyes on it, I had a change of heart and couldn’t wait. Walking into the lobby was beyond scary, and my legs were shaking wildly.

At the end of the lobby, in one of Hex’s uniforms, was a young man. His uniform was one of the school’s, and I’d be getting mine shortly. This guy’s was blue, and looked almost military. He stood straight up and very proper. “Are you Katherine Garcia?” he said, robotically. When I nodded, the guy gave a small smile and beckoned me forward.

“My first class is,” I started to say. The guy stopped in the middle of the hall, looked over his shoulder and gave me a look that shut me up immediately. “Sorry,” I couldn’t help whispering.

The guy moved on. He moved in steady strides, evenly spaced apart, and all the way down the hall before taking a right turn. I stopped next to him, taking a look down the hallway he was facing. A girl was at the end of the hall. For the first time, I got to see the female uniforms. They were blue, with a knee-length skirt.

“Yellow are for freshman, green for sophomore, red for junior, and blue for senior,” the kid who hasn’t told me his name yet said. That meant that he and the girl at the end of the hall were seniors.

“Well, well,” said the girl. Her long, black, curly hair bounced as she moved her head. Some of it covered her right eye. “We have a newbie.”

“Not now, Claire.”

“And why not? This is how we should weed out the freshman who don’t belong.” The girl--Claire--was staring me down.

Fear created goosebumps on my arms, the small bumps rising. She had an eerie aura to her, and looked like an evil person. I didn’t know what she meant by “weeding out the freshman”, but it didn’t sound good. Maybe hazing.

“She doesn’t have a Hex Driver yet-” the guy was cut short by only what I could describe as a glowing arrow. It whizzed by our heads, nearly clipping my ear and taking off the guy’s head. “Claire! What are you doing? You aren’t supposed to do that inside.”

“What is a Hex Driver?” I asked, my eyes jumping between the two seniors. Neither answered me.

“Simon, you have to be kidding me? Let me just take her out now. The Principal will thank me.”

“You’re insane,” I mumbled. My feet were trembling, but I backed up against the wall. Claire twisted her arm, and something shiny was attached to her arm. It was fancy, looked almost medieval, and what I took as a Hex Driver. Simon flashed his from under his sleeve, his glowing with a green light. “That arrow.” The image of it glowing, made what looked like electricity, zipping through the air next to my head. The buzzing, the powerful vibe it gave off.

Claire turned around, glancing back for a few seconds. She didn’t say anything, and didn’t have too. Simon stood straight up again. Claire started to walk and waved her hand once. I couldn’t tell you how happy I was that she was leaving, but everything that just happened made a million questions race through my mind.

Simon turned to me, and waved me to follow him. He wasn’t talking to me much, but he sort of stood up for me. That was something. A senior kind of stuck up for me to a bully that I already had gotten on the first day. “That wasn’t supposed to happen. Claire is what you’d call a rotten apple,” said Simon as we got to the cafeteria.

He turned and opened the double doors, opening up to a large room with hexagon shaped tables. A few kids were spread out all over the place, and half of them looked up. My face turned red, tomato red. “For the first day, you’re starting off with a Study Hall. Another senior will come by and talk you through your schedule and some policies we have around here. Also, they will explain the question you had before, about the Hex Driver.”

My head perked up, my eyes grew. Hex Driver. “Yeah, you and Claire have them, right?”

“Yes, it is a normal tool around here. It’s what we use for summoning our magic energy. That arrow was Claire’s Energy Arrow, a basic spell.” Simon said it so… matter-of-factly. I stared at him and he looked back at me with a blank expression.

“Magic? Energy?”

“Yes.”

There wasn’t much more that I wanted from today, with Claire and hearing about magic. Like, who believed in that? Simon was standing there, holding the door open. I took him up his gentlemen gesture and walked through the doors. One of the tables on the far side was open, and I sat there. Within a few minutes, I saw another senior, in a blue uniform, walking towards me to take a seat.

“We need to have a talk. You’ll learn what we do and how we handle things around here soon enough.”

Author's Note

Something about this chapter isn't really sitting with me right. Maybe I wasn't in the writing mood I thought I was in when typing it out. But nonetheless, it goes.