5

Passing by the schools "Biology" experiment, the group looked into the thick ramble of weeds covering what looked like a pond filled with dead fish.

"What the hell? Are those dead fish?!" Questioned Ben.

"Yeah dude get used to it, this school is full of shit like that." Answered a passing older student, sure of himself in the crowd. The three; Ben, Ralph and Josh knew that he must of known what he was talking about, and suddenly the school did not look as glamerous as it had just ten minutes before. They saw the palm trees lining the walkways for what they were, trash cans. The palm frawns on those trees, the plastic bags set inside to catch the bags. The three looked around, the paint on the walls was peeling, the kids realized they were not in this shiny wonderland that would bring them infinite. This school was not going to be the place of their years, their golden years would be spent sitting in cramped classrooms while funding was taken away, good teachers having to leave along with the good money. As the three of them all came to the same conclusion and let out a sychronized sigh Josh summed it up.

"Well so it goes."

He was directly talking about the dead fish in the pond, but they all knew what he meant. Disheartened the trio moved on to the gym, where they hoped their spirits might be lifted. P.E. was going to be a good class they knew it, despite the bad revalation directly prior to the first day of that class. Finally realizing they were where they needed to be, they walked into the gym and looked around. It was the classic idea of a gym, two sets of bleachers on either side of two raised basket ball hoops. The  gym was full of people, sophomores mostly sitting on the bleachers having done this before, with all the freshmen gathering around the teachers asking what to do. There were a few juniors and seniors, the ones who had failed either freshmen or senior year and had to make up this credit, the fuck ups. Now Josh, Ben and Ralph were not as dumb as the rest of the freshmen, and hearing a coach say,

"Alright I need everyone in my class, I'm Coach Parris, to go up onto those bleachers."

He pointed to the set of bleachers directly in front of the three. They looked at their schedules and realized they all had him as their coach. And they took their seats on the bleachers waiting for further instructions.

4

The typical bungalo had a ramp leading up to the left then curving up to the right, or rather sharply turning, to allow disabled students to gain access to the room. What Josh never understood about these was why? Why not just make the bungalo sit on the ground, another epic fail so typical of the way adults did things, if only kids ruled the world. All this thoughts rushed through his head as he walked up to the left, then back to the right accompanied by Ben and Ralph. Turning the last corner, a left turn into the room, Josh Ben and Ralph were greeted by a drab classroom with a white board circling half the class room on the left side of the room and the front half. A middle aged man of nordic decent sat almost defiantly in the front of the room, occasionally admiring his students as a king would admire his castle towers. Noting the strange behavior of his teacher, Josh looked around the room for any famaliar faces. He was greeted by two radiant faces he had seen many times before, Diana the same girl from English only two hours prior. And Vespa Bond, A slender girl physically made up much like Josh himself. Tall and lean you could tell she was an excellent athlete, she ran track and could easily beat Josh in a foot race without even breaking a sweet. When Josh walked by Vespa he simply asked how she was, nothing too friendly, he barely knew the girl, and she responded kindly as well, with the normal "oh it's so nice to see you." Normal mindless pleasantries. Eventually Josh Ben and Ralph made it through the classroom, which was packed full of students, all milling around as if they were in some sort of soup kitchen, not realizing that Mr. Angus' silence was due to the lack of students seating themselfs. Finally a mere fifteen minutes into the class period, all the students slowly, but surely, had realized that Mr. Angus was waiting for them to sit themselves, and did so. Once this was done, Mr. Angus finally took leave of his chair and stood straight up, looking around. Giving a slight chuckle he started out.

"There is something about freshmen. It get's me every year. You're all new to this school, unless you're some chuckle head and didn't pass geometry and are back again. God save the queen."

He sighed.

"Something you're going to have to learn is that in high school you don't wait on my every word, you don't wait for any teachers word. There will be some classes were you barely learn from your teacher. You have to learn from you, Tabula Rasa. Know what that means? Well some old fart, Locke his name was I think, said that everybody is born with all that knowledge up in their brain. Well we all know that's a load of horse shit. It's not, but hell there isn't all that knowledge in my brain either, I'm too old to be able to just spill out all of what I know about Geometry onto a white board. I wish I could, but the majority of the learning in this class will be from you kids. I will facilitate your learning, guide it, but you will be the ones learning. Not me. Now that we have that out of the way, any questions?"

Looking around Josh saw Richard "Dick" Warden's hand go up. A word about Dick; as Josh was realizing at football practice, Dick was just as smart as maybe a street light. He was the stereotypical jock, he walked with a swagger, couldn't pass remedial English classes, and thought everybody was looking at him all the time. Now Mr. Angus knew none of this as he pointed to Dick to ask his question.

"Yeah so doood, this class gonna be like, hella hard? Or are you one of those chill teachers who doesn't care."

To this Mr. Angus couldn't help but laugh.

"Listen kid, what's your name?"

"People call me dick"

Under his breath muttered.

"Yeah I can't tell why. Anyways! No I am not going to let you leave class whenever, I might of said you will be doing the learning, that doesn't mean I'm going to let you not learn. Sorry Dick but I get paid to teach, not to be all of your guys' friend and pal, I am not saying I am going to be apathetic to all of you. If you say, had to go to another class to make up a test, Then go for it. Just don't leave my class cause you looked down at the ocean and had a feeling the waves were calling for you, that won't fly. That clear Dick?"

Dick, who had stopped listening, a trait typical of him ask a question just to hear his own voice, Looked up and responded with a simple.

"O! ok dawg thanks it's all cool."

The whole time Ben and Ralph had emersed themselves with kicking Seth Damiens chair. Seth was no stranger. Even though they had only meet a few times, Josh knew him from football and Ben and Ralph knew him from their first period, Music appreciation. Seth finally turned and jokenly threatened Ben and Ralph, greeted Josh and turned around. Josh then tapped Seth on the shoulder and asked if his carpet matched his drapes, reffering to Seth's striking red hair. Hearing this Seth laughed and confidently and calmy replied.

"Hell dude why would I care, I shave anyways."

This scored instant laughs, Josh knew that neither him, nor Ben or Ralph really wanted to know wether Seth was kidding or not. Unknown to any of the four, both Diana and Vespa had overheard this conversation and were laughing hysterically, as young freshmen girls often do as desperate for attention they are and such. Quickly there after the bell rang and all forty five students rushed for the 8 foot tall, four foot wide door. The ramp was flooded with students, conversation became garbled as they denizens became mixed. Soon it became a simple race to the end of the ramp. Josh Ben and Ralph all knew they were all headed the same place. The gym, P.E. and then the end of the day. Excitly the set off for their next destination, Ralph leading them in song, singing to "Carry on my wayward son." A group favorite.

3

Walking down towards the schools cafeteria Josh and Ben meet up with yet another old pal, Ralph Blue; a funny basterd who was pretty damn fat to add to it. He had a deep voice and as soon as Ben and Josh heard him they knew it was him. And that's when everything went damn crazy, walking into the room the trio saw their teacher, they all knew his name; Mr. Quinn, from their schedules. But none of them had seen him yet, and as soon as they did. They couldn't help but laugh. He was about 5'3", had a classic come over and was extremelly Asian. He was wearing a stereotypical lab coat you see in science fiction movies and was brandishing a meter stick. The perfect Physics teacher. He explained to Josh that every student that sat in the front seat had gotten an A and dared Josh to try and break it. Hearing that, and obviously wanting to get an A, Josh accepted the terms and sat down next to Marvin Locke, a small kid who he knew from football. Noticing Josh Marvin turned to Josh and said,

"You know that this guy rides his pet panda to work everyday and he fuckin' eats freshmen. Shit man I don't know if I want to stay here or not. I think the whole 'sit in the front get an A' thing was a crock of shit."

Josh was dumbstruck.

"What the fu-"

He was cut off by Mr. Quinn who decided that with the bell he may as well start class, go figure. He walked to the front of the room.

"SILENCE!"

Every head turned and every conversation was dropped, even Ben and Ralph's, who had found their seats on the far left of the class room. Noticing he had the classes full attention, Mr. Quinn put down his meter stick he had been waving around like some sort of claymore right before he rode into battle against foes unseen. Turning to his new students he began.

"Now I know most of you don't care what I have to say. And I really have no feelings about what any of you want to say. I am here to teach you to master the art of Physics, not be your friend. And the stories you have heard about me are true. I eat freshmen I don't like, I ride my panda to school in the morning, I grew up with a herd of wild pandas and kick boxed Stalin twice, I lost once but that was when I was out of shape."

Sarcasm was dripping off of Mr. Quinn's tongue, everyone in the room knew he was joking. Josh immidiatly knew that this was going to be a good class. Looking around the students gave each other faces of complete euphoria. But were once again cut short in their ideas by Quinn.

"Listen to me, today we are watching a movie. NOT! Here is this work sheet, I am going to teach you about simple harmonic motion."

The rest of the class was spent learning about how simple Physics could be, it was quite enrapturing though, as Josh did not notice to his left the two girls he usually would be wooing over all period. After 45 minutes of Quinn's crude jokes, asking people if they were being racist when they answered a question wrong, and telling the class about his days spent in rural China as a panda poacher, the bell rang and the class shuffled out of the room. Only to realize the were all dumped out straight into the area where all the carts were located to buy food. That is about the time Josh realized in all the confusion earlier this morning he had forgotten his lunch money he had begged for from his mother.

Food was the last thing on his mind however, he Ben and Ralph all had to get to Ms. O'Donnells room to meet the rest of the gang for lunch to talk about the most exciting new times they were already having. They ended up meeting with Kenji and Doug and spending all of lunch in front of their English teachers room on the grass not even touching a morsel of food. There was so damn much to talk about; the girls, the teachers, the new school. Everything was different. The air was crisper, the subjects more matured, and the light even seemed to dance off of the palm frawns differently making the whole world come to the kids in a new light. They barely heard the bell half an hour later to go to class. And slowly they all drudgenly got up to go to class, Math was next for Josh, Ben and Ralph. Josh was always good at math, his father made it a point to teach him from an early age. But this lead to Josh growing sick of math and as such, he was dreading the class and knew it would turn into an hour of boredom every day for the year. But none the less, he got up, picked up his pack and headed to room B-2, the room of Mr. Angus according to his schedule. His expectations were not high, math teachers were always boring. He was bound to be greatly surprised once he climbed the ramp to the room.

2

As for lunch, Josh knew he had another two classes until he could make it to that 45 minutes of freedom. Walking along the schools row of tall palm trees watching the light fade behind the palms and then spring back at him, it reminded him of the days him and his had spent just playing football at the park, ditching 5th and 6th period for an hour or two at the park. That's around the time it hit him high school would be a much more rigorious institution, full of hoops to jump through as well as plenty of asses to kiss. His train of thought suddenly was interrupted by a quick shove from behind from a famaliar pair of hands, his old friend Doulas Young and Ben with him. They quickly remembered they were all together in their English. Suddenly growing excited to get to class and see who else was in that period with them, the three quickened their pace. As they went they chattered about their mornings, Josh and Ben both listened as Doug filled them in about his first two periods, the first of which was Algebra, He then changed the subject to a sophomore girl he saw in that class who apparently was pretty hot. Josh looked at Doug and laughed. Josh had yet to see Doug get a girl, Ben was more forgiving cause as he was not as harsh and understood Doug's excitement. Before they could continue their conversation they reached room 101, home of Ms. O'Donnell. The teacher they had heard loads about from their few older friends, about how she was the teacher that almost got fired because a story surfaced about her having some "relations" with her students that were not so tastefull. They were obviously just rumors throughout the student body the group decided, considering she was far too old for any student to want to have anything to do with, she was a younger women still in her thirties. Her blonde hair was quiet apparently died, she was short but from her body language quite peppy. Leaving their teacher out of mind the three took seats once they felt they had surveyed the class thoroughly. Once seated far in the back of the room as usual, they took notice to the people in the class. The first person they noticed was directly sitting in front of Josh, Kenji Iwamura, a short asian kid with hair like sonic the hedge hog turned and joined in the conversation. Once he had been added to the clique the four of them got onto the subject of Joshs involvement in the football team. Both Ben and Doug found Josh too small for football and constantly made it a point to let him know about it. Kenji had little to say on the matter, leading the conversation to petter out, aided by the teacher demanding the classes attention. Her small figure and extremely high level of energy lead the students to be drawn in by her going on about how English was the most important subject, a few actually believed her for an instant or two before they realized she was just prejudiced considering she taught it and had disillusionments of self importance that bled over to her work and her students. Once Josh tuned Ms. O'Donnell out he did exactly what every boy in the class was doing. Scoped the girls, he saw a famaliar face in Diana Fawkes, a plump beauty with a reputation as a slut, a beautiful one none the less. Farther ahead in the classrooms Josh laid eyes on one of the most beautiful heads of hair he had ever seen, the blonde hair he saw radiated pure beauty, "Wow." was all that escaped his mouth, the rest of the class period consisted of Josh, Ben, Kenji, and Doug all discussing where to eat at lunch. Despite slowly gaining confidence in this new strange place, they had very little knowledge of their surroundings. So finally the decided to meet back here by Ms. O'Donnell's room when lunch time came around. Almost on cue the bell rang once this decision had been made, and the four parted ways, only Josh and Ben realized they had their next class together. Laughing at this wonderful revalation they hurried off to their next class, Physics, with a Mr. Quinn as an instructor.

1

Josh Harkins knew when he rolled out of bed that early september morning, there was no going back. Walking through the hall of his undersized condo he shared with his mother, he felt the crisp air on his slender chest, he streched and forced his oaf of a dog out of the hall to the small porch so he didn't make the place smell even worse then it already did. After this Josh woke his mother Anne and then finally made his way to the bathroom and turned on the shower and sat on the toilet to wait for the heater to work on that hot water he so desperatly needed to wake up every morning. Plopping himself down he rested his head in his hands and felt himself leaving for dreamland, he imagined himself the king of high school, winning the friendship of all those seniors, the cool ones, the ones he watched earlier that summer running routes perfectly while he struggled in his bulky pads under the summer sun. He saw himself pulling the perfect girl, the beautiful girl he knew he would see in the halls one day or another. Josh kept dreaming for another ten or so minutes, until, the thick fog of steam the now piping hot water from the shower was giving off had covered his entire body in a coat of moisture. Forgeting about the day ahead of him he took ten minutes off from the world and took his shower. 
After he was finally through he got out, looked at his clock and realized he still had around half an hour until his mother would force him out the door to her car. Being so he took time eating his breakfast, cereal with a glass of water filled with some premium muscle growth formula. Recently the tall skinny lean boy Josh had decided he wanted to beef up to be just like all the older guys he had began to idolize on the foot ball team, the guys he knew would get all the pretty girls. Finally finishing his breakfast he moved back into his room, checking his myspace and seeing if he had gotten any messages from Cassie, his current girl of interest. The girl all his friends, and some people he barely knew, had said would "put out" at this point Josh was just shooting to get laid, the young 14 year old hormone struck boy didn't see any messages, however, and had to get dressed and throw his new binder into his new back pack without the butterflies of just having communicated with a girl who had his heart, at the time. Turning off his computer and applying his deodorant he finally, drudgenly, meet his mom and walked out the door right behind her, headed down the stairs to the cummunal garage, and got in the car. All without a word between the two of them. He was too damn nervous, and they had gotten into a dissagreement over walking the family's dog the day before.
As soon as his mom dumped him off at school, shit got real. He looked around, and had no idea where to go. Looking left he saw the Ocean down the hill, and looking right he could almost see his former school. But looking straight ahead he could see Fair Pond High school, with it's low roofed building, making it obvious the school was built in the late fifties during the giant public's works programs typical of that time. Thinking about none of this, just wishing to know where room 304 was, and wondering if Mr. Leopold would be a good german teacher, and of course wondering if any pretty girls would be in the class. Walking through the halls, Josh quickly found his close friends Ben Franko, asking each other where they were going they quickly realized that they were headed to the same place. Not surprising considering they had chosen German together the year before. Upon entering the class they both realized considerably quickly girls would be hard to come by in this class, only one was seated and she was considerably over weight. Josh knew that Ben even with his brewery to Josh's six pack would not think twice about even talking to the girl there. Girls aside Josh and Ben quickly noticed Jake Wylde an old friend from the same middle school as the former two.Inspecting the rows of perfectly alligned desks which they would soon come to know was typical of Mr. Leopold, perfection breeds perfection, they took their seats, positioning themselves in a triforce typical of the three they quickly began chattering with the rest of the boys around them, mainly about the sad lack of vagina's in the class room. Mr. Leopold, hearing the bell, moved to the front of the classroom from behind his new Mac computer and addressed the new students, explaining to them that this class was meant to be fun, but also as he knew that it was not required to graduate high school that his students were all planning to go to college, an incorrect assumption considering all freshmen were stacked into a language class no matter their choice. As for Ben, Josh and Jake the were all planning to attend a four year, and were quiet interested in what their teacher was explaining to them. They became lost listening to his first, of many, rant about his former life he lead in austria learning to speak German and to work in the book publishing trade. The Bell rang, springing all the young boys back to life and to reality. 
The three of them all had places to go, And for Josh Harkins, that place was room 501, Mr. Sprechenrecher's room, for pre-engineering class. Whatever the hell that was. Finally finding his way, and meeting Carl Weiss, a senior he had known since he moved to San Diego, in the class room. Josh was not so nervous with his older friend, who knew his way around the school with him. Carl went on about how this class was a pointless class that he was only taking cause he had to fill a period. Immidiatly Josh was intimidated once more when his teacher walked into the small room tucked up against the schools "garage", a large room filled with car parts and machines used to move cars and such around. Josh had seen large men before, in T.V. and such. But Mr. Sprechenrecher was by far the largest man Josh had laid eyes on in his life, all he would wonder was if his teacher would be able to fit between the door frames leading into the room. As Mr. Sprechenrecher made his way into the class Carl explained to Josh not to say anything about his weight, even in joking. Josh did not need to be warned, having already realized the obvious insecurity of his new teacher. His eyes darted from every kid, and he was mouthing words, most likely practicing his first words to the class. Even when the large man made it to the center of the small room he fidgeted side to side, Josh immidiatly felt sorry for the man, he had serious issues obviously. But as soon as he started speaking he gave off a sense of friendship that Josh was immidiatly drawn to, a good man, in an oversized body was the conclusion Josh drew from Sprechenrecher. Leaving the class when the bell finally rang, Josh asked Carl if there were any girls at all in this new school of his, Carl responded telling Josh that there were indeed, he just would have to wait to see them, Carl said it was just a matter of time, lunch at the latest. Until Josh saw the girls Fair Pond had to offer.