Since I was a relatively light sleeper, I awoke by the sound of paper rustling. When I opened my eyes, I was blinded by the daylight flooding our room and noticed my roommate carefully placing his books and whatnot in his backpack. I could see that he didn’t want to make any noise, that could wake me. Too late for that.

I wondered why his alarm clock didn’t wake me, but didn’t bother too much. I closed my eyes again and tried to get a few more hours of sleep. I didn’t hear Angel make any more sounds, but he also didn’t leave, which made me a little uncomfortable. Reluctantly, I opened my eyes again, to see if he turned to stone or something, only to notice him staring right back at me. The moment he realized I wasn’t asleep, he jumped back and squeaked in a pitch that shouldn’t be allowed for humans. Especially not in the morning.

“What?” I growled.

At first, he didn’t answer and just looked to his feet nervously, but after a pause, he opened his mouth “I’m sorry, but won’t you come to class?”

He is joking, right? I couldn’t help but snort at that question. “Do I look like the type to ‘come to class’ to you?”

After yet another pause, he shook his head and spoke a quiet ‘no’, which I did catch, though. Did he just insult me? I chuckled and closed my eyes again. “Whatever. I wanna sleep. Leave.”

I heard the door clicking and sleep once again took over me.

Sleeping always brought back memories of the past. My old schools, my old ‘friends’, even though one couldn’t exactly call them that, my old fucking life.

It was all as messed up as me. Having been sent to nearly every boarding school for teens ‘struggling with behavioural issues’ that exists in the country did not clear that mess. It only made it worse. Those schools claimed to help people, but honestly, they didn’t give a fuck about us.

The parents had an easy way to get rid of their problematic children, as they were sure that they were doing their best parenting, whereas the teachers just profited from the pay of a private institution. Their last concern was to help anyone.

Children from these schools rarely made it to something bigger in life, that was the harsh reality, and everyone was aware of it. Even though the rules of my previous schools were strict in theory, no one minded them anyway. 'Why have rules in the first place?' I often wondered. They probably only wanted to keep up the appearance. If some teacher was having a bad day though and suddenly started caring, we had to bear the arbitrary penalties. I got used to it, though. The messed-up life certainly suited me.

The time had come again, I was thrown out of my previous school, because I was too much for them to handle. I was sure to be put in yet another one of these schools, so that the vicious cycle could start again.

Not in my wildest dreams had I imagined, I would be stuck in a place that was built for the people that were nothing like me. I didn’t belong here. Yes, I hated my previous schools, but they worked for me. They didn’t care, I didn’t care. 

It’s different here. I hope that they don’t care, so I don’t have to care.

For the third time today, I slowly opened my eyes and was met with a brightly lit, empty room. My roommate hadn’t come back yet. Wait, what even is his name? I briefly thought about yesterday’s first encounter with him and realized that neither he nor I did introduce ourselves. I wasn’t sure, if I wanted to ask him about his name, though. It could get him the wrong idea that I want to be friends or something, even though I made my resentment towards this school and its students pretty clear. Thinking about it didn’t help, so I stopped and instead got up from bed.

I was sleeping far too much these days. In the past, I was quite disciplined when it came to sports, so I wanted to include it in my daily routine again. What else was my daily routine, though? Going to class was clearly not on my plan, so I had nothing to do in this stuffy place.

I decided to get some fresh air, so I quickly got ready, put on some jeans and a sweater and headed outside of the building. It was empty in the area, except for the students running laps around the field and some teachers strolling around, patrolling the area. The gate that led to the front entrance of the main building, through which I went yesterday when I arrived, was firmly closed and there were walls all around the school grounds. They won’t let me go that easily, will they?

I didn’t want to be caught by the teachers while exploring the school grounds because they would probably make me go to class. So, I tried avoiding them through sneaking to a part of the wall, that was relatively well hidden by bushes and trees, with no one around. That’s my chance. I needed to get out of here. It was only one day, since I got here, but it was already suffocating. With one quick motion, I put my hands on top of the wall and climbed over it. Finally, I was able to breathe again and started strolling around the city centre. It being a Tuesday noon, there weren’t a lot of people here, which I genuinely enjoyed. I was feeling quite hungry, so I got myself two bagels from a nearby bakery. I sat down on a bench and started eating.

My headphones were a constant companion of mine, and the noise-cancelling did a great job, shutting out the rest of the world, while pleasing my ears with the best music there is. If only I could just stay here forever and not worry about a single thing. I knew that it was only foolish to hope for this and started strolling around the streets for maybe one hour, before taking the same way back and returning to the school grounds and my room.

I opened the door to said room with it not being empty this time. Angel was sitting on his desk, scribbling stuff in his notebook while balancing a second pen between his nose and upper lip. Hairpins tugged back the strands of hair from his face, and he was wearing round glasses, I didn’t see on him before. Did he not hear me coming in?

I made my presence clear by slamming the door shut and entering our shared room. As soon as Angel heard the loud noise, he was jumping out of his chair, and the pen fell to the floor. The same round eyes stared at me, but he didn’t say anything. I grabbed a new set of comfortable clothing and went to the bathroom to shower again. When I exited, Angel seemed to have forgotten my little welcome and was once again fully immersed in his studies. I sat down on my bed to finish yesterday’s Netflix series. I was bored.

“My name is Misha,” I heard my roommate say after some time. I looked over to him and wasn’t exactly sure what he expected me to say.

“Good for you,” I retorted and watched his cheeks redden a bit. He should probably get the hint. I didn’t want to talk to him, I didn’t want him to speak to me, and I wanted to get out of here.

This is so gonna be my worst year of life.