Unaware, chapter 1.5
Continuing with the writing drive (even though I haven't gotten much actual writing done in the past couple of days), here is the next chapter of Unaware. Which is, interestingly, Chapter 1.5. (Who needs integer chapter numbers??) But seriously, there is a reason for the numbering. Chapters 1.x are all set-up chapters, and chapter 2 is where it starts to get... odd. (Seriously, the subtitle for chapter 2 is "A.k.a. "the real beginning" or when it starts to get weird... ^_^;")
So anyway, here's chapter 1.5. 1.9 (really short ^_^; ) to come tomorrow if I feel like it when I get home. (Mom and I are going to the Dells to meet up with one of her friends from college. Who knows when we'll get home?) Otherwise Friday.
Chapter 1.5
Lesson the First
As I said, they put me through way too many tests before they would let me into any classes at the Academy. And that was the truth, for the most part. Actually, there was one class that they started me in right away, despite the fact that the tests would take a full week to complete, and to this day I do not know if they had a name for that class. I never really gave it a name myself, I know, because there wasn't any real name to put to it. It was just... that class.
That class started the third day I was there, counting the day that I arrived. I woke up that morning to knocking at the door, which didn't really faze me. I knew that they would be sending someone to wake me up, because my things wouldn't arrive from home until at least the next day, and until then I didn't have even an alarm clock. But when I opened the door, it wasn't the principal, who had come to get Dad and me the day before, but some high school aged boy I had never seen before with bright green hair (which was the only way that I knew I had never seen him before at first, since I hadn't bothered to put my glasses on before going to the door and the world was more than a little blurry at the time).
"You're Arin, right?" he asked me when I opened the door, squinting at him. I nodded, which he apparently took as an invitation into the room as well. "My name is Jay. I'm here to be your wake up call, but also to start you with your first class. Fun, huh?"
"I guess..." I can't say that I was really registering anything that he said at that time, just responding by instinct. I had just woken up, so my brain wasn't quite functioning yet. I was still working on the fact that there was a green-haired guy who seemed younger than I was at my door to wake me up, let alone any mention of class that he might have made.
"I got a message from the receiving guys that your stuff got here over night, too. They said they'd bring it to your room. So we can head over there if you want to wear some of your own clothing instead of Adai's today."
The words that stuck in my head were "your room" and "your own clothing," which were more than enough to get the message through to my sleep-fogged brain. I had appreciated Adai's offer of clothing until my stuff arrived, but had almost regretted accepting when I saw the t-shirts that he offered me. For one, they were all black, and I have always hated wearing black (not because I don't like it, but because I have naturally pale skin and very black hair that is not dyed, and wearing black makes me look like some vampire wannabe or goth). But in addition to the black, the first one that I looked at said "You may be going to Heaven... but I'm having a lot more fun!" on the front in big, white letters. The idea of walking around an unfamiliar place with that on was more than a little unsettling. The other shirts were a little better, but still...
Of course, there's also the fact that wearing some other guy's underwear (even when it's clean) is kinda freaky. So no, there was no way in hell that I was giving up a chance to get some of my own clothing to wear for the day. Before I knew it, I was nodding emphatically and reaching for my glasses (because it's very hard to try and get an idea of where you're going when you can barely make our your surroundings), and moments later we were walking out the door and in the direction of the room they had taken me to the morning before.
I had no idea what time it was just then, but I had assumed that it was a normal rising time. So I was slightly surprised when we got to the room and Adai wasn't there. Jay had a spare key, probably the one that they would be giving me when I officially moved in, so that wasn't a problem. But then when we got into the room and I saw the alarm clock displaying 7:00 am in bright red, it made me wonder even more why the room was empty.
I think Jay managed to read my mind, or maybe just my confused face, because he started talking not too long after we got into the room. "Adai has early morning practice a couple days a week. My guess is today's one of those days. You shouldn't have to worry about him waking you up once you move in, though. He's been dealing with this since he started high school, and we haven't gotten a complaint about it yet. Besides, I may be planning some early morning lessons for you depending on how things go."
"Is he in sports or something?" I asked, just as I spotted my luggage and set to digging through the suitcase that Mom had packed for me with all of the clothing that I wore often in it.
"...Something like that..." I was far too busy looking for a particular shirt that I hoped Mom had remembered to pack for me to actually notice that he really didn't sound convincing at all. Some part of my brain just noted it, and I went on, semi-distracted, and completely clueless.
A minute or so later I emerged from the suitcase with the clothing that I wanted. The miracle of the entire situation was that I had somehow managed to keep all the other clothing in the suitcase, rather than having to hastily stuff everything back inside after I was done. I was more or less sure that I would never be able to repeat that, I and I started hoping that they would just let me move in that day, rather than making me attempt it again the next morning. Then I spent another minute or so digging through a different bag, trying to find where Mom had packed all my shower stuff. After that, I turned to Jay, told him that I was done, and the two of us headed out to the bathrooms so I could shower and get ready for the day.
It wasn't until we were already almost at the bathrooms that some of Jay's earlier words finally worked their way through my brain. He had said something about how he might be planning early morning lessons, and that, now that I had finally managed to realize it, set off several alarms in my brain. With that in mind, I turned to him with a look of surprise on my face.
"You... Earlier you said something about you might be planning early morning practices for me..."
"Yeah? That's not a problem, is it? Or are you just not a morning person? I'm not either, but sometimes we have to make sacrifices."
"You're going to be planning them?"
Then he actually smiled, or rather, grinned. "I was wondering if you would ever start with that... Yes, I will be planning them. After all, I'm the teacher."
"But you... You're only..."
"I wouldn't finish that statement if I were you." He didn't really sound angry, more like he was about to start laughing at me. "I'm at least old enough to be your grandfather. I might even be able to swing great-grandfather, but that would be pushing it and assuming that everyone had kids at a younger age than you are right now."
"But..."
"But I don't look it, right?" He smiled at me. "You're right, I don't look like an old man, and I don't feel it either. I guess that's because I'm not. Anyway, your first class, the one that I'm going to be teaching from now on, is on surviving and coping at this school. The material we cover isn't fixed in any way, since it will depend on you and what you already know and can do. I have a pretty basic idea of what I want to go over, but depending on circumstances there may be other things that we have to do before we can get to everything. It all depends on you."
"And," he said, clasping his hands behind his head and looking at me with an almost serious expression on his face. "We can start with the first lesson right now."
"What about my shower?"
"Lesson one is short." He grinned, looking more than a little smug. "We have a lot of rather unique people here at the Academy. By the time you've met some of them, the difference between my appearance and my age will seem like nothing. So I guess lesson one is that from now on you will be meeting a lot of people who are not what they seem. And since this is not always by choice, it would be a good idea for you to try to avoid coming to conclusions based on appearance until you get a better feel for what is the truth and what isn't here."
He then started walking again, but slower this time, and I followed him. While he walked, he talked, though I got the feeling that the main part of the "lesson" had been what he had just said, and that this was now just more information to back up the idea.
"Take the Estethian War, for example. Yeah, I know you've never heard of it. Few people from outside do, because it doesn't have much significance to anyone not involved. But it's one of the nastiest wars that I've ever had to study. The things that they did to each other in that war were beyond what even many so-called "villains" are willing to do, and most of that was because of the emotions behind it.
"And, it started because of a mix up. A young man of the Baggat family was engaged to the eldest daughter of the Estet family. But he was not aware of the peculiarity of the Estet family that the eldest child always, without fail, stops aging shortly after puberty. So when the Baggat heir went to meet his future bride, he mistook her for her younger sister and pushed her away rather rudely. This started a war that ended up killing off both families entirely."
"But it was just a mistake, wasn't it?" I had never heard of this war, or of either of the families that he was talking about. And really, the idea of a family where the oldest kid stops aging after puberty was just plain ridiculous. But he sounded like he wasn't lying, and there was something about him that actually made me believe him when he said he was a teacher, despite what he looked like.
"Yeah, it was. But a lot of mistakes can lead to things that no one ever foresaw, which is why it's a good idea to keep in mind things like this when dealing with unfamiliar people, don't you think?"
I was about to ask him if he was mad that I thought he was younger than me earlier, but right about then we arrived at the bathroom, and I really wanted to take my shower and get dressed. I didn't really feel awake until I had done those two things, and there was no way in hell that I would even consider going to have breakfast in the cafeteria in my sleep clothes. (And seeing as my stomach was starting to remind me that I hadn't eaten since the night before, breakfast was starting to sound like a good idea.)
Fifteen minutes later I was showered and dressed, and we were on our way back to the room I would be moving into in the near future to put away my shower things and my dirty clothing. When we got to the room, Adai was there, back from his morning practice. He didn't look even slightly sweaty, which made me wonder at exactly what sort of practice his early morning practice was, but I wasn't about to ask. That would be too prying, considering that I had had a single conversation with him and had spent less than five minutes in his presence total so far.
"Good morning!" Jay called out to him when he opened the door at the sound of Jay trying to unlock the door with that key of his. Adai cast a strange, questioning look at him, so he leaned to the side so he could see me behind him. "Survival class," he added, as if that explained everything. "But first came a shower, and now breakfast. You eaten yet?"
"Not yet."
"Wanna join us once Arin's gotten his stuff put away? Oh, and if you hadn't noticed, they dropped off his stuff while you were at your practice."
"I'd noticed." He looked back at the clock as he stepped aside and let me in to put my stuff away. By then it was 7:30; between my shower and the impromptu lesson we had somehow eaten up a half hour. "I don't have class until 10:30 today, so I guess I could join you. If he won't be there."
"Don't worry, he's at a conference in Italy all this week." Jay continued the conversation, though no one explained to me who they were talking about. "I wanna say it's about native species around the world dying out because of human influence, but that might have been the one last month. It's not my field of study, so I don't really pay attention."
"Doesn't matter. I just wanted to know if he would be trying to jump me this morning or not."
"Nah. Not today."
"Um..." I said, not really wanting to interrupt, though I was done putting my things away somewhere in the luggage where I would hopefully be able to find them again without too much trouble. More than anything, I wanted to know who they were talking about, but at the same time, I didn't want to ask. Asking would be rude, and embarrassing.
"We're talking about my boyfriend," Jay said, smiling. "Not reading your mind of anything. You just looked lost, like you wanted to know what was going on. He happens to have a bit of an obsession with Adai here, though he knows it's very, very bad for him to do such things. Not to mention illegal and likely to get him thrown in jail before he has time to argue that he didn't mean anything seriously."
"Your boyfriend?" I squeaked. It's not that I had anything against homosexuals, even back then... It wasn't my cup of tea exactly, no matter what certain rumors at my old high school seemed to indicate (and there was a very good reason for that, one that I don't care to get into at the time). But I had no problems with other people living the way they wanted to live. It's just that it surprised me. Had I been back home and a (male) teacher had just started talking about his boyfriend, especially about his boyfriend who had an obsession with a male student, it would have caused no amount of trouble. Of course, the Academy was not back home, not by a long shot, and this was just yet another thing to prove that it wasn't. It just caught me off guard.
"Yeah, my boyfriend." Jay had this silly grin plastered across his face. "He's a biology teacher in the high school division, one of the few male teachers cleared to teach for the girls' division along with the boys'. He teaches for the university division as well, so if you end up in any bio classes you might end up having him. But even if you don't, I'll make sure that you get to meet him when he gets back from Italy."
I got the feeling that Jay was quite proud of his boyfriend by the way he was talking about him, but more from the grin, not to mention the way that Adai was rolling his eyes and shaking his head the entire time he was talking. But that was only natural, and I was used to it, because it was much the same way that Dad talked about Mom when she wasn't around. Even though I had just met Jay that day, he seemed to be a good person, and it was nice to know that he was happy that way.
"Well then!" Jay exclaimed happily. "It's breakfast time, right?"
That was my first experience with Jay. It was also my first prolonged experience with Adai. Over the next few months they became good friends, along with Jay's rumored boyfriend, Edward. Edward, or Ed as he preferred to be known, was an oddly American Englishman (he had the accent, but aside from that, he acted - and spoke - just like any Midwesterner I'd ever met), and every inch the gentleman, except when he was around Adai. No one ever explained what it was about my roommate that made him change so much, but whenever Adai was around, Ed turned into a complete idiot and lost all of his cool. It was painful to watch most of the time, and I quickly figured out exactly why it was that Adai tried his hardest to stay away from him and Jay used every opportunity he could get to make sure the two of them were not in the same room. Not just because it made Adai less than comfortable, but also because it was just mean to Ed.
Because of my mid-semester entrance into the school, my classes were limited. For the most part it was just Jay's class, though that rarely felt like a class in the first place. I think we went into an actual classroom twice during the entire time, and both of those times it was because Jay had a complicated idea that he wanted to put down on a whiteboard before he tried to explain it to me. It was a different classroom both times we went, and I got the distinct feeling that he had just taken the first available room and used it.
For the most part, that class was just one long conversation between me and Jay, who happened to know quite a bit more than I did, so I learned while we talked. Topics were everything, and I don't really think there was any sort of grand plan to any of it, aside from the one he had mentioned that first day, how to help me survive in the world that was the Academy. Sometimes it was manners: who not to piss off because they were far more powerful then I would ever be and could get me kicked out of the school without batting an eyelash, what not to do during other classes that might be considered okay on the outside, and even what would be expected of me the next time I had to meet with Nelene. Sometimes it was rules: never go down a hallway in the "Special Education" building (which has absolutely nothing to do with special education in public schools... I don't even think there were special ed. type kids at the Academy) when the light at either end of the hallway was on; never use last names for anyone (except the chairman and certain high up staff); and, surprisingly enough, no sex. I didn't realize it at the time, but that last one was actually a special rule for me only. Had I realized it I probably would have up and left the Academy, but I thought it applied to all students.
Besides Jay's class, I did a lot of tests. Aptitude tests, achievement tests, placement tests, tests that I could not see any point to (those were the most common ones, in fact). Some of them were one time ones, like the placement, achievement, and aptitude ones. But when it came to the weird tests, they ended up giving me the same tests over and over again, on a fixed schedule, for no apparent reason. Nothing ever changed, but they did it anyway. I think the weirdest test, though, was that one...
Well, the test itself wasn't weird. It was just another one of those pointless tests where I had no idea what the hell they were doing, or what they were testing for. It was called "virgin potential," or something like that, and what made it weird was the stuff that led up to it. One day they had Jay ask me if I was a virgin, which surprised me. Aside from being told that I wasn't allowed to have sex, there had been zero talk of sex, or anything like it. (I mean, let's face the facts. I was an adult. I could make my own decisions about that kind of stuff.) And then Jay up and asked me if I was a virgin, with the only explanation being that it determined whether they had to do a certain test or not. Of course, I answered truthfully and told them that I was, so they gave me that test. I never did find out the results, and I didn't find out what it was supposed to be for until much later.
And that was my first half a semester at the Academy. Tests, classes with Jay, and lots and lots of free time. They wouldn't let me leave the campus (and that was something I shared in common with all the other students... Academy students do not leave, except very rarely for school sponsored field trips), but there was plenty to do there. The place, rather than being like a typical campus, was a lot like a complete mini-city that happened to be focused around learning. And I found out that Adai and I shared a lot of the same interests, so I learned a lot about the place just by having him show me what was fun to do.
So anyway, here's chapter 1.5. 1.9 (really short ^_^; ) to come tomorrow if I feel like it when I get home. (Mom and I are going to the Dells to meet up with one of her friends from college. Who knows when we'll get home?) Otherwise Friday.
Chapter 1.5
Lesson the First
As I said, they put me through way too many tests before they would let me into any classes at the Academy. And that was the truth, for the most part. Actually, there was one class that they started me in right away, despite the fact that the tests would take a full week to complete, and to this day I do not know if they had a name for that class. I never really gave it a name myself, I know, because there wasn't any real name to put to it. It was just... that class.
That class started the third day I was there, counting the day that I arrived. I woke up that morning to knocking at the door, which didn't really faze me. I knew that they would be sending someone to wake me up, because my things wouldn't arrive from home until at least the next day, and until then I didn't have even an alarm clock. But when I opened the door, it wasn't the principal, who had come to get Dad and me the day before, but some high school aged boy I had never seen before with bright green hair (which was the only way that I knew I had never seen him before at first, since I hadn't bothered to put my glasses on before going to the door and the world was more than a little blurry at the time).
"You're Arin, right?" he asked me when I opened the door, squinting at him. I nodded, which he apparently took as an invitation into the room as well. "My name is Jay. I'm here to be your wake up call, but also to start you with your first class. Fun, huh?"
"I guess..." I can't say that I was really registering anything that he said at that time, just responding by instinct. I had just woken up, so my brain wasn't quite functioning yet. I was still working on the fact that there was a green-haired guy who seemed younger than I was at my door to wake me up, let alone any mention of class that he might have made.
"I got a message from the receiving guys that your stuff got here over night, too. They said they'd bring it to your room. So we can head over there if you want to wear some of your own clothing instead of Adai's today."
The words that stuck in my head were "your room" and "your own clothing," which were more than enough to get the message through to my sleep-fogged brain. I had appreciated Adai's offer of clothing until my stuff arrived, but had almost regretted accepting when I saw the t-shirts that he offered me. For one, they were all black, and I have always hated wearing black (not because I don't like it, but because I have naturally pale skin and very black hair that is not dyed, and wearing black makes me look like some vampire wannabe or goth). But in addition to the black, the first one that I looked at said "You may be going to Heaven... but I'm having a lot more fun!" on the front in big, white letters. The idea of walking around an unfamiliar place with that on was more than a little unsettling. The other shirts were a little better, but still...
Of course, there's also the fact that wearing some other guy's underwear (even when it's clean) is kinda freaky. So no, there was no way in hell that I was giving up a chance to get some of my own clothing to wear for the day. Before I knew it, I was nodding emphatically and reaching for my glasses (because it's very hard to try and get an idea of where you're going when you can barely make our your surroundings), and moments later we were walking out the door and in the direction of the room they had taken me to the morning before.
I had no idea what time it was just then, but I had assumed that it was a normal rising time. So I was slightly surprised when we got to the room and Adai wasn't there. Jay had a spare key, probably the one that they would be giving me when I officially moved in, so that wasn't a problem. But then when we got into the room and I saw the alarm clock displaying 7:00 am in bright red, it made me wonder even more why the room was empty.
I think Jay managed to read my mind, or maybe just my confused face, because he started talking not too long after we got into the room. "Adai has early morning practice a couple days a week. My guess is today's one of those days. You shouldn't have to worry about him waking you up once you move in, though. He's been dealing with this since he started high school, and we haven't gotten a complaint about it yet. Besides, I may be planning some early morning lessons for you depending on how things go."
"Is he in sports or something?" I asked, just as I spotted my luggage and set to digging through the suitcase that Mom had packed for me with all of the clothing that I wore often in it.
"...Something like that..." I was far too busy looking for a particular shirt that I hoped Mom had remembered to pack for me to actually notice that he really didn't sound convincing at all. Some part of my brain just noted it, and I went on, semi-distracted, and completely clueless.
A minute or so later I emerged from the suitcase with the clothing that I wanted. The miracle of the entire situation was that I had somehow managed to keep all the other clothing in the suitcase, rather than having to hastily stuff everything back inside after I was done. I was more or less sure that I would never be able to repeat that, I and I started hoping that they would just let me move in that day, rather than making me attempt it again the next morning. Then I spent another minute or so digging through a different bag, trying to find where Mom had packed all my shower stuff. After that, I turned to Jay, told him that I was done, and the two of us headed out to the bathrooms so I could shower and get ready for the day.
It wasn't until we were already almost at the bathrooms that some of Jay's earlier words finally worked their way through my brain. He had said something about how he might be planning early morning lessons, and that, now that I had finally managed to realize it, set off several alarms in my brain. With that in mind, I turned to him with a look of surprise on my face.
"You... Earlier you said something about you might be planning early morning practices for me..."
"Yeah? That's not a problem, is it? Or are you just not a morning person? I'm not either, but sometimes we have to make sacrifices."
"You're going to be planning them?"
Then he actually smiled, or rather, grinned. "I was wondering if you would ever start with that... Yes, I will be planning them. After all, I'm the teacher."
"But you... You're only..."
"I wouldn't finish that statement if I were you." He didn't really sound angry, more like he was about to start laughing at me. "I'm at least old enough to be your grandfather. I might even be able to swing great-grandfather, but that would be pushing it and assuming that everyone had kids at a younger age than you are right now."
"But..."
"But I don't look it, right?" He smiled at me. "You're right, I don't look like an old man, and I don't feel it either. I guess that's because I'm not. Anyway, your first class, the one that I'm going to be teaching from now on, is on surviving and coping at this school. The material we cover isn't fixed in any way, since it will depend on you and what you already know and can do. I have a pretty basic idea of what I want to go over, but depending on circumstances there may be other things that we have to do before we can get to everything. It all depends on you."
"And," he said, clasping his hands behind his head and looking at me with an almost serious expression on his face. "We can start with the first lesson right now."
"What about my shower?"
"Lesson one is short." He grinned, looking more than a little smug. "We have a lot of rather unique people here at the Academy. By the time you've met some of them, the difference between my appearance and my age will seem like nothing. So I guess lesson one is that from now on you will be meeting a lot of people who are not what they seem. And since this is not always by choice, it would be a good idea for you to try to avoid coming to conclusions based on appearance until you get a better feel for what is the truth and what isn't here."
He then started walking again, but slower this time, and I followed him. While he walked, he talked, though I got the feeling that the main part of the "lesson" had been what he had just said, and that this was now just more information to back up the idea.
"Take the Estethian War, for example. Yeah, I know you've never heard of it. Few people from outside do, because it doesn't have much significance to anyone not involved. But it's one of the nastiest wars that I've ever had to study. The things that they did to each other in that war were beyond what even many so-called "villains" are willing to do, and most of that was because of the emotions behind it.
"And, it started because of a mix up. A young man of the Baggat family was engaged to the eldest daughter of the Estet family. But he was not aware of the peculiarity of the Estet family that the eldest child always, without fail, stops aging shortly after puberty. So when the Baggat heir went to meet his future bride, he mistook her for her younger sister and pushed her away rather rudely. This started a war that ended up killing off both families entirely."
"But it was just a mistake, wasn't it?" I had never heard of this war, or of either of the families that he was talking about. And really, the idea of a family where the oldest kid stops aging after puberty was just plain ridiculous. But he sounded like he wasn't lying, and there was something about him that actually made me believe him when he said he was a teacher, despite what he looked like.
"Yeah, it was. But a lot of mistakes can lead to things that no one ever foresaw, which is why it's a good idea to keep in mind things like this when dealing with unfamiliar people, don't you think?"
I was about to ask him if he was mad that I thought he was younger than me earlier, but right about then we arrived at the bathroom, and I really wanted to take my shower and get dressed. I didn't really feel awake until I had done those two things, and there was no way in hell that I would even consider going to have breakfast in the cafeteria in my sleep clothes. (And seeing as my stomach was starting to remind me that I hadn't eaten since the night before, breakfast was starting to sound like a good idea.)
Fifteen minutes later I was showered and dressed, and we were on our way back to the room I would be moving into in the near future to put away my shower things and my dirty clothing. When we got to the room, Adai was there, back from his morning practice. He didn't look even slightly sweaty, which made me wonder at exactly what sort of practice his early morning practice was, but I wasn't about to ask. That would be too prying, considering that I had had a single conversation with him and had spent less than five minutes in his presence total so far.
"Good morning!" Jay called out to him when he opened the door at the sound of Jay trying to unlock the door with that key of his. Adai cast a strange, questioning look at him, so he leaned to the side so he could see me behind him. "Survival class," he added, as if that explained everything. "But first came a shower, and now breakfast. You eaten yet?"
"Not yet."
"Wanna join us once Arin's gotten his stuff put away? Oh, and if you hadn't noticed, they dropped off his stuff while you were at your practice."
"I'd noticed." He looked back at the clock as he stepped aside and let me in to put my stuff away. By then it was 7:30; between my shower and the impromptu lesson we had somehow eaten up a half hour. "I don't have class until 10:30 today, so I guess I could join you. If he won't be there."
"Don't worry, he's at a conference in Italy all this week." Jay continued the conversation, though no one explained to me who they were talking about. "I wanna say it's about native species around the world dying out because of human influence, but that might have been the one last month. It's not my field of study, so I don't really pay attention."
"Doesn't matter. I just wanted to know if he would be trying to jump me this morning or not."
"Nah. Not today."
"Um..." I said, not really wanting to interrupt, though I was done putting my things away somewhere in the luggage where I would hopefully be able to find them again without too much trouble. More than anything, I wanted to know who they were talking about, but at the same time, I didn't want to ask. Asking would be rude, and embarrassing.
"We're talking about my boyfriend," Jay said, smiling. "Not reading your mind of anything. You just looked lost, like you wanted to know what was going on. He happens to have a bit of an obsession with Adai here, though he knows it's very, very bad for him to do such things. Not to mention illegal and likely to get him thrown in jail before he has time to argue that he didn't mean anything seriously."
"Your boyfriend?" I squeaked. It's not that I had anything against homosexuals, even back then... It wasn't my cup of tea exactly, no matter what certain rumors at my old high school seemed to indicate (and there was a very good reason for that, one that I don't care to get into at the time). But I had no problems with other people living the way they wanted to live. It's just that it surprised me. Had I been back home and a (male) teacher had just started talking about his boyfriend, especially about his boyfriend who had an obsession with a male student, it would have caused no amount of trouble. Of course, the Academy was not back home, not by a long shot, and this was just yet another thing to prove that it wasn't. It just caught me off guard.
"Yeah, my boyfriend." Jay had this silly grin plastered across his face. "He's a biology teacher in the high school division, one of the few male teachers cleared to teach for the girls' division along with the boys'. He teaches for the university division as well, so if you end up in any bio classes you might end up having him. But even if you don't, I'll make sure that you get to meet him when he gets back from Italy."
I got the feeling that Jay was quite proud of his boyfriend by the way he was talking about him, but more from the grin, not to mention the way that Adai was rolling his eyes and shaking his head the entire time he was talking. But that was only natural, and I was used to it, because it was much the same way that Dad talked about Mom when she wasn't around. Even though I had just met Jay that day, he seemed to be a good person, and it was nice to know that he was happy that way.
"Well then!" Jay exclaimed happily. "It's breakfast time, right?"
That was my first experience with Jay. It was also my first prolonged experience with Adai. Over the next few months they became good friends, along with Jay's rumored boyfriend, Edward. Edward, or Ed as he preferred to be known, was an oddly American Englishman (he had the accent, but aside from that, he acted - and spoke - just like any Midwesterner I'd ever met), and every inch the gentleman, except when he was around Adai. No one ever explained what it was about my roommate that made him change so much, but whenever Adai was around, Ed turned into a complete idiot and lost all of his cool. It was painful to watch most of the time, and I quickly figured out exactly why it was that Adai tried his hardest to stay away from him and Jay used every opportunity he could get to make sure the two of them were not in the same room. Not just because it made Adai less than comfortable, but also because it was just mean to Ed.
Because of my mid-semester entrance into the school, my classes were limited. For the most part it was just Jay's class, though that rarely felt like a class in the first place. I think we went into an actual classroom twice during the entire time, and both of those times it was because Jay had a complicated idea that he wanted to put down on a whiteboard before he tried to explain it to me. It was a different classroom both times we went, and I got the distinct feeling that he had just taken the first available room and used it.
For the most part, that class was just one long conversation between me and Jay, who happened to know quite a bit more than I did, so I learned while we talked. Topics were everything, and I don't really think there was any sort of grand plan to any of it, aside from the one he had mentioned that first day, how to help me survive in the world that was the Academy. Sometimes it was manners: who not to piss off because they were far more powerful then I would ever be and could get me kicked out of the school without batting an eyelash, what not to do during other classes that might be considered okay on the outside, and even what would be expected of me the next time I had to meet with Nelene. Sometimes it was rules: never go down a hallway in the "Special Education" building (which has absolutely nothing to do with special education in public schools... I don't even think there were special ed. type kids at the Academy) when the light at either end of the hallway was on; never use last names for anyone (except the chairman and certain high up staff); and, surprisingly enough, no sex. I didn't realize it at the time, but that last one was actually a special rule for me only. Had I realized it I probably would have up and left the Academy, but I thought it applied to all students.
Besides Jay's class, I did a lot of tests. Aptitude tests, achievement tests, placement tests, tests that I could not see any point to (those were the most common ones, in fact). Some of them were one time ones, like the placement, achievement, and aptitude ones. But when it came to the weird tests, they ended up giving me the same tests over and over again, on a fixed schedule, for no apparent reason. Nothing ever changed, but they did it anyway. I think the weirdest test, though, was that one...
Well, the test itself wasn't weird. It was just another one of those pointless tests where I had no idea what the hell they were doing, or what they were testing for. It was called "virgin potential," or something like that, and what made it weird was the stuff that led up to it. One day they had Jay ask me if I was a virgin, which surprised me. Aside from being told that I wasn't allowed to have sex, there had been zero talk of sex, or anything like it. (I mean, let's face the facts. I was an adult. I could make my own decisions about that kind of stuff.) And then Jay up and asked me if I was a virgin, with the only explanation being that it determined whether they had to do a certain test or not. Of course, I answered truthfully and told them that I was, so they gave me that test. I never did find out the results, and I didn't find out what it was supposed to be for until much later.
And that was my first half a semester at the Academy. Tests, classes with Jay, and lots and lots of free time. They wouldn't let me leave the campus (and that was something I shared in common with all the other students... Academy students do not leave, except very rarely for school sponsored field trips), but there was plenty to do there. The place, rather than being like a typical campus, was a lot like a complete mini-city that happened to be focused around learning. And I found out that Adai and I shared a lot of the same interests, so I learned a lot about the place just by having him show me what was fun to do.