Gioele's POV

The sound of rain is my third favourite white noise. The second is fire burning, and the first one is the heartbeat.

I think I've always been a misfit, but not in a bad way. 

Growing up outside of the well adjusted cliques may have given me some small issues along the way. But the good thing was: people thought I was funny. 

It was the morning of the 15th of January, 2017, in northen Italy. Life had been moving forward devoid of traumatic experiences  for a while now, people hadn't had enough of playing Pokémon Go yet, and I thought I could overcome the horrid affair that was waiting for me, with simple, pious desire. 

The piled up bodies on the bus were crushing me against the window. The road outside was being whipped by heavy rain. When I breathed through my mouth instead of my nose, the air was almost bearable. 

My earphones were playing the Yu-Gi-Oh opening song for the sixth time, the one that goes: "se vincerai sarai il più forteeee! Se perderai, nell'ombra resteeraaai" followed by some incomprehensible babbling, that was the singer's attempt at speaking English. That song had been stuck in my head for the past two days, and the only way I knew not to hear it with my brain, was hearing it with my ears. 

I never even liked Yu-Gi-Oh. I never understood how to play the cards game, and my stupid child's mind couldn't figure out what did Ancient Egypt have to do with hair shaped like a starfish. 

Th bus went over a pit and made a little jump. I went with my obligatory "wee". I didn't even try to hide it, everybody knew I was weird. 

I stared enchanted at the rain hitting the big road of the schools of Udine. 

Plic, plic. 

There were many kids pressed on the sidewalk that were elbowing through the crowd to try and keep an umbrella over their heads. 

In the lane opposite from the bus, there was a black car. I couldn't tell car brands apart, but I liked looking at the wheels spinning. But, in order to be able to see them clearly, the car had to stay parallel to the bus, and the few time this miracle happened, it never lasted for long. 

Someone pushed me again against my corner, and I pressed my forehead against the cold window. For a while I just stared at the condensation of my breath. "Gioca la partita, vinci la fatica, questa è la tua vita, Yu-Gi-OooOOoooh!"

From the window, I could see the gates of the Classical Studies High School opening wide, to let in a horde of soaked students. The bus stopped, and I felt a rush of cold wind against my shoulders. Behind me, a handful of passengers must have left at the stop. 

There were seven more minutes left until my destination, and now I could start counting the parallel cars. 

When I saw the distant poplars trees of the cemetery I lifted my forehead from the window. Some of my classmates thought it was creepy that our school was built in front of the cemetery. 

I didn't agree. For starters, between the school and the cemetery there was a corn field, so it wasn't correct to say that it was "in front of". Secondly, cemetery were nice places. People tried hard to make them cute, because they thought that the dead should rest around flowers and nice statues. 

Our cemetery was very nice. There were many squirrels and a lot of angels statues. There was one right before the exit that looked like a Weeping Angel from Doctor Who, with the Roman robe and the hands covering the eyes. That was my favourite angel. I always stared right at him whenever I walked past him, because Weeping Angels can't move when you look at them, but if you blink they break your neck. Actually, according to Doctor Who lore, when Weeping Angels hunt they send you back in time and feed on your temporal energy. But sometimes they are in a hurry so they break your neck. 

It would be cool to be sent back in time, but since you can't know if it's gonna be the time travel of the neck breaking, I always stared at the angel whenever I walked past him. 

But I only went to school on foot when the weather was nice, and that day it rained, so I had taken the bus. 

I don't like the bus much, because it's always full of smells and people yelling, but if I'm on the bus I can count parallel cars. 

When the bus doors opened in front of my school, the Yu-Gi-Oh opening song was in the middle of its ninth reproduction. 

It bothered me a great deal that it wasn't ten, and that the song wasn't over yet. It was like an itch I couldn't scratch. 

So, since I could do nothing about it, I shook that problem off. Dogs actually shake after a stressful event. I used to raise my shoulders and open and close my hands like angry duck beaks. I waited for all the people in front of me to get off before I did so myself. 

I set foot on the gravel. That morning I had seen three parallel cars. One had been gray, one had been white, and the third had also been gray. It didn't mean anything, I knew it, just like I knew that the Weeping Angel couldn't really bring me back in time or break my neck, but it was nice to entertain myself with my mind every once in a while. 

...

I spotted my classmates on the courtyard and I settled down in the back of the class, IV D - cookery school. 

I proceeded with my daily intake of social interaction. Matteo Palumbo had been my desk mate for over three months, and every morning we said "Hello, how are you?" "Well, and you?" "Well." And then, blessed silence for the rest of the day. 

Ezran, the boy with red dyed hair, took Matteo to the side as soon as we were done with our daily pleasantries. 

The rain let the wind push it, and for a moment it changed direction. Plic, plic. All the umbrellas on the courtyard oriented in unison.  They were like ship's sails that were trying to capture the wind. 

Alice Rossetti took one step back to include me in the circles of chit chatting. I tilted my head and stared at the hundreds of minuscule droplets that were hitting my umbrella. 

"Plic, plic." I whispered. 

When the school's doors were opened the flow of students went through the funnel entrance. I made myself small, trying to slither grazing the wall so that I wouldn't be hit by the sprays of the umbrellas that were being closed and beat like carpets. My umbrella was rainbow colored. I know "rainbow" isn't a color, but when I was in kindergarten I heard a girl saying that it was her favourite color, and I like to repeat it.  

I didn't shake my umbrella that was rainbow colored on the other students, because I'm not an animal. I dragged it along, dripping and dripping, through the gigantic entrance hall, down the stairs and across the hallway. 

It was Friday, so the day would have started with four hours of cooking lesson. If you are on the fourth year of a cookery school, this shouldn't bother you much. But if you're on the fourth year of a cookery school and you can't cook, this could inspire some worry, especially in the day of the decision for the internship. 

I wasn't very gifted for my field of specialisation. The teacher knew it, my peers knew it, nobody made a big deal out of it, me least of all, but that day it was a dramatic issue. 

I walked into the changing room where there was an umbrella stand, that, for some reason, only I used. 

I dropped my backpack in the further corner, above the last little bit of bench, and I started to take out my uniform. The shoes alone weighted at least one kilogram and a half, because there was a metal plaque on the tip to protect your toes if something falls on them. 

I took out my black trousers with white stripes, my cook's hat - that really looked more like a baker's hat -, my white apron, and my double-breasted jacket with embroidered on the side: Don Milani Cookery School, and below that: Gioele Dagostino. 

It's not De Agostino, and it's not D'agostino. It's Dagostino. 

 I've had that uniform since my first year of high school, and I still couldn't fit in it properly. I looked like a clown, but with brown hair instead of red, and with thin lips instead of thick. Even without my uniform I looked a lot like an anchovy: skinny, withered, a dumb look and a brain as small as a bread crumb. 

I buttoned up the last button and took my notebook. 

In the changing room there weren't any windows because we were underground, and my classmates were making too much noise to hear the rain outside. It was a shame. 

The sound of rain is my third favourite white noise.