Son sat at the counter facing the picture window, and through the intricate yet meaningless web of droplets and streams on the glass, she saw a narrow street drowning in hard rain. Melancholic, cold, sedative, the body temperature declined as the smell of a rainstorm ascended further and further into her nasal cavity; she took another whiff of the air, but then some other much heavier scent took over. The sound of high heels striking the black and white tessellated floor so prototypical of an old-fashioned diner.

“Here’s your black coffee,” the waitress coming from behind said, “aren’t you supposed to be in school? Or are you one of those good-for-nothing scallywags who fancy themselves pretty names?”

“The drop-outs don’t have a name. You were thinking of the Idahos.” 

“Like I said, pretty names. What can I get ya?” The waitress sounded about forty, possibly tall, plumb in physique, likely caucasian. Son could’ve just turned around to look at the waitress to confirm her educated guesses, and as to not appear rude by having her back against her; she didn’t. 

“An enormous amount of chocolate chip pancakes topped with sliced banana, bacon bits, maple syrup, and a knob of butter, not margarine, real butter, please. Two breakfast sausages, one egg, sunny side up. And a glass of wheatgrass.” 

She had ordered way too much food, but she was hoping they would help compensate for the lack of intake she was bound to subject herself to for the coming few hours, maybe even days; whenever stress got the better of her, all appetite was lost.

Some geezer, most likely a janitor, dropped a coin into that crumbling jukebox in the corner. She was convinced that the whole schooling district, with its student population approaching sixty thousand and more, had sunken into the twilight zone, some in-between limbos separating the real and the spurious; it bordered on two countries, it buffered the gentrified suburb against the unrelenting wilderness of permafrost mountains and untrodden woodlands, it was built by the adults yet run by the student, a hideous amalgamation of the old world and the new, a place where jukeboxes could be found singing next to children with smartphones in their hands…

A little girl inside of you ~~

How she wishes for her dream come true ~~

There is a story her eyes could notice,

There is a story her mind had yet to choose, 

There is a story her eyes would have to notice,

There is that story her mind wrote the opus… 

The song was garish and dreadful, and she failed to finish the food she ordered, as expected. Stomach capacity was the main issue. She wanted to not waste any food, but how appropriate would it be for her to just walk into the school with a bag of packaged leftovers?

The umbrella was not made to endure such heavy rainfall, nor was her coat for that matter, or her checkered skirt, or her black canvas shoes. After realizing that she would have no way of stopping herself from getting drenched walking from the diner to her school, she decided to discard the umbrella entirely, which was broken beyond repair anyway, and just stroll right into the rain. Less than three steps away from the diner’s doors, she was already soaked from top to bottom, icy cold water ran down her chest, and her sable black hair collapsed into her skull. There were ponds in her shoes.

Cars that went by would honk at her; driving a car was a symbol of social status amongst high schoolers. The birch trees chimed with the falling raindrops; they were no kindred spirits, they would have howled at the smallest breeze. The sound of raindrops crashing on the pavement was untuned, but occasionally some notes would come through the brick wall of noises, notes that sounded like a gathered crowd, and police sirens. On the telephone pole was a soaked-through poster:

MISSING PERSON

Have You Seen Him

Mark Corrigan

Missing since Sep 22nd

The building her class was held in was tall and brutalist in style, practicality was all the architect had in mind when designing the monster. To accommodate the ginormous student population, the school was split into eight cardinal sections, each with dozens of the same classroom buildings, and her classroom sat at the very Northeast where only a few blocks away, the dark woods awaited. In hard rains, police cars could be seen surrounded by gawking middle schoolers who had gotten off school earlier than high schoolers. Two policemen were stationed near the cars, with plastic bags wrapped all over their uniforms. She walked right up to them. 

“Excuse us, lass,” one of them was in her way. 

“I am returning to class,” a tinge of fear bubbled in her throat, she tried her best to not look at the officer’s face. 

Thunders struck in the distance. The officer stood aside. 

Emerging at the door, bedraggled and with a bag of leftovers in her hand, she found herself standing in front of dozens of her peers right in the main hall; some looked at her funny, some paid her no attention at all, some approached her. 

“Are you alright?” Some faceless blonde came up, she had thick brows, a protruding forehead, sharp jawlines, and small eyes; Son decided that they were not acquaintances, so she simply nodded to the question and went on her way. 

In the hallways, most gathered into clusters, and some wandered around lonesome minding their own business. She left a glistening trail of water wherever she went, bringing about leers and mocks galore. When she came to her own locker, the padlock was missing, and the inside had been searched through, with notebooks torn, textbooks defaced, and a calculator missing; that’s what you get for leaving a locker opened for an entire week without even showing up in school, she berated herself, you get searched, and most likely robbed. There were no valuables in her locker besides the ti86 calculator, which cost her…  

“Son!” A voice called for her, recognizable by the way it trailed off at the end like a skydiver falling off a cliff, and by its hoarseness. “Son! You rat bastard!”  

Son turned around to be met with a girl and a boy; the girl had deep brown skin, freckled cheeks, slanted eyes, and hair color like that of fertile soil, while the boy had a droopy nose, a mouth that looked like a slit across the cheeks, a retracted jawline, and two bulging eyes. The former must be Whelk judging by the voice, but Son wasn’t sure about the latter; could be Chris, but Joy also had a retracted jawline and eyeballs that could easily roll off the sockets.

“The principal wants to see you…” the voice was thin, slightly trembling, so it was Chris, not Joy. 

“The principal called for us, he knew Mark is part of our friend group…” Whelk leaned into her and whispered, “goddamn you, do you know where Mark Corrigan is?”

“How can I possibly know that?” Son glared at her.

“Awful… suspicious… awful…” Chris mumbled to himself. 

“I have zero idea where Mark has gone,” Son insisted, “believe that or not is up to you.” 

“Damn you, Son,” no longer whispering, Whelk was practically shouting into her ears, “I know you were close with Mark, real close, but I don’t know if you were close enough to know that he was screwing Fluorite Tanning when he wasn’t screwing you! And now that he is gone, there are only two possible candidates that I could imagine being the culprit; it’s either Ethan or you, and by god, if I wouldn’t bet my money on you!” 

“I needn’t know about his affair with the football team’s captain’s girlfriend for me to have a normal conversation with him,” Son quietly retorted, “and I have no idea where he went so stop the barking.”

“Nobody knows you here, Son,” Whelk was squeezing those words through her gnashing teeth, “a goddamn weirdo, a freak is what you are. Ugly as anything, smells like shit all day with that disgusting lotion of yours. Nobody knows you, nobody trusts you. You are an unwelcome stray that Mark shouldn’t have taken in in the first place. I hope to God Cole will grill you like a piece of dead meat that you are.”

“This man was sitting next to the principal,” Chris said, “I think he is the deputy sheriff.”

“Anything happens to Mark, we are blaming it on you.” 

“Maybe Ethan had the Idahos do him in,” Son said as she slowly trailed away from the pair, “he could already be dead. I could care less.” 

She went to the changing room to dry her hair. In the mirror, she saw a person: sable straight hair cut short, the bang almost entirely concealed her eyes when she lowered her head, which she always did during a conversation; her eyes had almost no white, her nose was sharp and tall, her cheeks freckled, her lips chapped and pale, her neck and her collarbone stained with pink calamine lotion; this one in the mirror must be herself, and it looked as though it was smiling, even though she didn’t smile at all. She was handling the stress better than she had thought.

“Ms. Syun,” the man behind the desk, who must be the principal Mr. Cole, was phocine in physique and generously embellished in attires, his rotund facial features spread evenly across the oily flat face, small nose, small mouth, small eyes, small everything. In the corner, a man sat in an old-fashioned armchair, writing something on a notepad; he didn’t acknowledge Son’s entrance. 

“You are late,” the principal said, “what is in your hands?”

“Chocolate chip pancakes.”