III

This early in the morning, there’s less than a handful of students walking this hall, making it so quiet that I can hear my heel click against the tile floor. Being in this hall this early morning makes me feel like I’m the only person alive or I’m walking into my condemnation. Making my way to the end of the hall, I turn and go up the stairwell that’s there. Looking out the tall window that’s there at every floor, I see that the wind is blowing even harder than it was when Elley and I were walking here. Making it up one floor, I exit to the hall that has my course room in it. After exiting the stairwell, I turn right and enter the first room on the same side of the hall for my first block class of the day, Oration.
Upon entering, I see the same things that I do everyday: students sitting on top of the desks, the teacher not there yet even though I’m late, and Leland and the same goddamn uniform that everyone has to wear. Leland is my only friend in this class, and he’s my speaking partner for the class. I don’t really know too much about his history, mostly because when asked about it, he becomes resentful and avoids answering the questions. What I do know about him though is that he comes from a very prominent family and that they bought him a very expensive apartment in the center of the city.
Walking over to my desk on the far side of the room and putting my bag next to it, Leland lifts his head off the desk just enough to prop it onto his hands, “Hey” he says in that tired, spacey-stoner voice. With his straight blond hair falling in and around his face, I can see the purple marks under his dark blue bloodshot eyes.
“Hey” I say, “Late night last night?” I already know the answer to that one; another late night of getting fucked up on whatever his connections want him to sell, probably with a dumbass group of freshmen. I went to one of his sampler parties once. The way he does it is to get a dumb group of freshmen to pay for just enough of whatever he’s selling at the time to get fucked up and invite them over. Then they all get fucked up together and he gets them hooked. Then they just keep coming back for more. It’s a really low way of doing it but apparently he’s one of the best dealers that his connections have.
“Fuck yeah, dude” he says with some enthusiasm. “Dude, we started with some crazy ass purple hearts that didn’t even affect me, so we moved onto a little bit of weed and they were trippin’ like crazy. Then we got out some X and we fucked the rest of the night.”
“Great”, I say with some sarcastic enthusiasm, “exactly what I want to hear after I walked here with the hottest chick I know and before the most boring class ever.”
“Yo, I know,” he says as if he never heard me, “but instead of giving everyone X, I gave the guys that were there placeboes and kicked them out at the end of the party, and gave only the chicks X. Dude, there was like seven chicks there, and they didn’t look like ass.”
“Are you sure? ‘Cause you’ve slept with chicks at those parties that looked like tens that night and were really like threes.” I had to point this out because it’s true and he can’t deny it. Leland was about to say something but by this time the teacher had written our objectives on the board and was beginning to talk.
Sitting through class, I couldn’t help but look out the close by window and zone out on the still falling snow. My mind kept returning to the image of that orgy; young, beautiful, naked girls in a luxurious bedroom. Blondes, brunettes, redheads; I could imagine them all there but the one thing that I added that wasn’t actually there was Elley. To the point of almost feeling it, I could imagine the heat of her body on mine, the sweat on our skins and our hair, and the touch of her skin below, on top of, and next to me. In my mind I could see the paleness of the moon and her skin combining to glow in the light and the flushness in her cheeks and on her chest as she climaxes. While I was thinking, the class had split up into pairs to practice orations for the last half hour of the class. Instinctively I performed the same actions of the class and, until Leland called me out of my dream-world, didn’t stop thinking about it.
“Okay, as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, it was insane last night.” Refocusing my attention onto Leland, I could see that he had become more awake, probably from sleeping through the first hour and a half of the class and had put on a smile that told me that he was reminiscing about last night.
“Yeah?” I say, being half focused on what he’s talking about and half focused on what’s going on in my head.
“Yeah dude. There was this blonde chick there with perfect tits looking to score something to pick her up at the end of the night. She was insane; flexible, tight, creative, and vocal as all hell. She kept saying things like,” raising the pitch of his voice, “oh yes, fuck me like that, right there, oh yes fuck me harder” and shit like that. It was unbelievable.”
“Yeah, I bet it was” I say. Now I looked over at the clock above the door to see it read 10:57. Almost over with, my first double block of the week is almost over, I think. From the clock, I turn around and drag my eyes over to the window. For the most part the wind had died down, but the snow was still coming down hard. Leaning down onto my hand, I stare out the window until Leland says that the class is going to end in a minute. Grabbing my coat and bag, we both head over to the door to wait for the bell to release us.
Looking over at the teacher, we see that he’s not looking and slip out the doorway and into the hall. Quickly we turn left and into the stairwell, making our way back to the main floor. “Hey Leland I got a question” I say as we’re making our way past the first landing and down the stairs to the main floor.
“Shoot” he says as we make to the main floor.
“If you’re doing so well selling drugs, then why are you still here?” Not knowing what his reaction would be to this question, I hung back a bit behind him and waited for his answer. It came as he was standing at the door to the main hall.
Laughing a bit, he replied “The only reason I’m still here is because my parents are giving the school a huge amount of money.” Seeing that I wasn’t making the connection, he added “The school will only see the money after I graduate. It’s a cheap way to make sure I graduate. Plus I can basically do whatever I want and not get kicked out.”
Exiting the stairwell, we both stayed to the right in the hall to avoid creating chaos in the halls and to make it faster to move through them. Most of the freshmen had figured this out by now, but there were still a few that went the wrong way, but it’s no where as bad as in the beginning of every school year went almost all the freshmen move how ever they want and slow down the halls.
“So what are you going to do with the rest of your morning” I ask. Heading back down toward the lobby, I notice that there’s a lot more students going to their language classes at this time.
“Oh, I don’t know, but I’ll find something to do,” he responds. “Why, what are you doing?”
“Not really sure. I think that me and Elley are going out to a café or something like that.” Making to the corner at the end of the hall, I turn it to see Elley standing in the lobby waiting.

IV

“Ok then, I guess I’ll see you later” Leland says as he’s headed out the doors to the street. I just give him a head nod to say later and walk up to Elley.
“Hey,” I say “Ready to go?”
“Um… almost. I’m just waiting for another friend” she responds in an airy tone, making me think she’s still daydreaming from her last class. While we wait for her friend, I walk over to the door to watch it snow. The wind had died down by now but the snow was coming down harder and thicker than before; only allowing visibility to be about ten feet. I stood there for fifteen minutes, letting the snowfall drift into my mind and settle my imagination of last night at Leland’s. I didn’t snap back to now until I heard Elley say “Here she comes.”
Turning to look I could see her friend was someone not from around here and was someone I’d never met before. The way she had her dark red hair done up reminded me of a southern belle, but her clothes were what seemed more out of place than anything. They were expensive, and out of place even though they were school uniform accepted. Her black shirt reflected light like it was made of silk and her black stockings led all the way up to her skirt. Mostly the stockings that were teasing me and leading my mind into darker areas of itself, but even with without them, she was pretty. As she moved up next to Elley, it was like seeing everything divided in half; making everything have both a light and darker side to it, and in this case it was to the extremes. Just from seeing her walk down the hall, and saying hello to Elley, I could see that this new girl had a wicked dark side to her.