ever added to how conspicuous he was.
Chris stormed ahead until he had disappeared from Oliver’s sight, leaving him to walk the unfamiliar streets alone. It was not the most pleasant walk of Oliver’s life. The neighborhood was tough, with lots of angry dogs barking behind chain-link fences, and loud, beat-up cars swerving along the potholed roads with no regard for the children crossing.
When Campbell Junior High loomed up ahead of him, Oliver felt a shiver run through him. It was a horrible-looking place made of gray brick, completely square, and with a weather-beaten facade. There wasn’t even any grass to sit on, just a large asphalt playground with broken basketball hoops on either side. Kids jostled each other, wrestling for the ball. And the noise! It was deafening, from arguments and singing, to shouting and chatter.
Oliver wanted to turn around and run back the way he’d come. But he swallowed his fear and walked, head down, hands in pockets, across the playground and in through the large glass doors.
The corridors of Campbell Junior High were dark. They smelled of bleach, despite looking like they hadn’t been cleaned in a decade. Oliver saw a sign for the reception area and followed it, knowing he’d have to announce himself to someone. When he found it, there was a very bored, angry-looking woman inside, her long red fingernails typing away into a computer.
“Excuse me,” Oliver said.
She didn’t respond. He cleared his throat and tried again, a little louder.
“Excuse me. I’m a new student, enrolling today.”
Finally, she turned her eyes from the computer to Oliver. She squinted. “New student?” she asked, a look of suspicion on her face. “It’s October.”
“I know,” Oliver replied. He didn’t need reminding. “My family just moved here. I’m Oliver Blue.”
She regarded him silently for a long moment. Then, without uttering another word, she turned her attention back to the computer and started typing. Her long fingernails clacked against the keys.
“Blue?” she said. “Blue. Blue. Blue. Ah, here. Christopher John Blue. Eighth grade.”
“Oh no, that’s my brother,” Oliver replied. “I’m Oliver. Oliver Blue.”
“Can’t see a Oliver,” she replied, blandly.
“Well… here I am,” Oliver said, smiling weakly. “I should be on the list. Somewhere.”
The receptionist looked extremely unimpressed. The whole debacle was not helping with his nerves one bit. She typed again, then let out a long sigh.
“Okay. There. Oliver Blue. Sixth grade.” She turned in her swivel chair and dumped a folder of paperwork on the table. “You’ve got your schedule, map, useful contacts, et cetera, all in here.” She tapped it lazily with one of her shiny red nails. “Your first class is English.”
“That’s good,” Oliver said, taking the folder and tucking it under his arm. “I’m fluent.”
He grinned to indicate that he’d made a joke. The side of the receptionist’s lip twitched up, just barely, into an expression that might have resembled amusement. Realizing there was nothing more to be said between them, and sensing that the receptionist would very much like him to leave, Oliver backed out of the room, clutching his folder.
Once in the corridor, he opened it up and began to study the map, searching for the English room and his first class. It was on the third floor, so Oliver headed in the direction of the staircase.
Here, the jostling kids seemed to be even more jostly. Oliver found himself swept up into a sea of bodies, being pushed up the staircase with the crowd rather than of his own volition. He had to fight his way through the swarm to get out at the third floor.
He popped out onto the third-floor corridor, panting. That was not an experience he was looking forward to repeating several times a day!
Using his map to guide him, Oliver soon found the English classroom. He peered through the little square window in the door. It was already half full of students. He felt his stomach swirl with anguish at the thought of meeting new people, of being seen and judged and evaluated. He pushed down the door handle and walked inside.
He was right to be scared, of course. He’d done this enough times to know that everyone would look over, curious about the new kid. Oliver had felt this sensation now more times than he cared to remember. He tried not to meet anyone’s eyes.
“Who are you?” a gruff voice said.
Oliver swirled to see the teacher, an old man with shockingly white hair, looking up at him from his desk.
“I’m Oliver. Oliver Blue. I’m new here.”
The teacher frowned. His beady eyes were black and suspicious. He regarded Oliver for an uncomfortably long time. Of course, this just added to Oliver’s stress, because now even more of his classmates were paying attention to him, and still more were streaming in through the door. A greater and greater audience watched him with curiosity, like he was some kind of spectacle at the circus.
“Didn’t know I was getting another one,” the teacher said, finally, with an air of disdain. “Would’ve been nice to have been informed.” He sighed wearily, reminding Oliver of his father. “Take a seat then. I suppose.”
Oliver hurried to a spare seat, feeling everyone’s eyes following him. He tried to make himself as small as possible, as unobservable as possible. But of course he stood out like a sore thumb no matter how much he tried to hide. He was the new kid, after all.
With all the seats now filled, the teacher began his class.
“We’re carrying on with where we left off last class,” he said. “About grammar rules. Can someone please explain to Oscar what we were talking about?”
Everyone started to laugh at his mistake.
Oliver felt his throat get tighter. “Um, sorry to interrupt, but my name is Oliver, not Oscar”
The teacher’s expression turned instantly cross. Oliver knew immediately that he wasn’t the kind of man who appreciated being corrected.
“When you’ve lived sixty-six years with a name like Mr. Portendorfer,” the teacher said, glowering, “you get over people pronouncing your name wrong. Profendoffer. Portenworten. I’ve heard it all. So I suggest you, Oscar, ought to be less concerned about the correct pronunciation of your name!”
Oliver raised his eyebrows, stunned into silence. Even the rest of his classmates seemed shocked by the outburst, because they weren’t even tittering with laughter. Mr. Portendorfer’s reaction was over the top by anyone’s standards, and for it to be directed at a new kid made it even worse. From the grumpy receptionist to the volatile English teacher, Oliver wondered if there was even a single nice person in this whole school!
Mr. Portendorfer began droning on about pronouns. Oliver hunkered down even further in his seat, feeling tense and unhappy. Luckily Mr. Portendorfer didn’t pick on him anymore, but when the bell rang an hour later, his chastisement was still ringing in Oliver’s ears.
Oliver trudged through the halls in search of his math classroom. When he found it, he made sure to beeline straight for the back row. If Mr. Portendorfer didn’t know he had a new student, maybe the math teacher wouldn’t either. Perhaps he could be invisible for the next hour.
To Oliver’s relief it worked. He sat, silent and anonymous, throughout the whole class, like an algebra-obsessed ghost. But even that didn’t feel like the best solution to his problems, Oliver thought. Being unnoticed was just as bad as being publicly humiliated. It made him feel insignificant.
The bell rang again. It was lunch, so Oliver followed his map down to the hall. If the playground had been intimidating it was nothing compared to the lunchroom. Here, the kids were like wild animals. Their raucous voices echoed off the walls, making the noise even more unbearable. Oliver bowed his head and hurried toward the queue.
Smack. Suddenly, he slammed into a large, foreboding body. Slowly, Oliver raised his gaze.
To