Adopted By The Biersack's Part Ten

Two weeks into the school year, and I was already dreading my back-to-school experience more than I could ever imagine. I thought that getting back to a real high school was what I wanted, but after being cooped up in the whorehouse for two years, I wasn’t so sure. Don’t get me wrong, I was happy to be back to a normal routine and making friends, but because of my luck, I ended up at the worst possible school I could’ve ended up in. I thought things were going to change. Clearly, I was wrong.

November, Malachi, Cyra, Calloway, and I were as close as a group of friends could be. I’d only known them for two weeks, and I already felt like we had known each other for two years. We’d hung out at the café almost every day, working on homework and chatting up a storm. I hadn’t been this happy in a very long time.

I walked down the hallway to English, kicking around the air with my combat boots and listening to Motionless In White. I was in a pretty good mood, because I knew my English homework was being handed back today, and I was pretty sure it impressed my teacher hardcore.

My English teacher, Mr. Smith, had grown to become my favorite teacher. He was a very interesting and deep person, and I knew that if I ever had to go to a teacher for advice about anything personal, it would be him.

I turned to the door of my English classroom and saw a paper on the door that caught my eye. It was an advertisement for the school’s talent show, and there were several of them posted up and down the hallway, planted there to recruit talented students to come and showcase what they had. I ripped the flyer off the door without a second thought and walked in the classroom, kicking around possible ideas of what song I could sing for the show. I already knew that I wanted to sing, because that was the one thing that I knew I was exceptional at, but there were so many amazing songs for me to choose from.

November was already in class, so I went over and sat down at my usual seat next to her. Calloway’s usual seat, the one behind her, was empty. That lazy ass was always running late. I tossed my backpack down on the ground next to my desk and pulled out my binder for the class, covered in stickers of my favorite bands that I made myself. The bell was going to ring any minute, so I took the flyer for the talent show and slammed it on November’s desk. She had headphones in and didn’t notice that I had arrived, so she jumped halfway out of her seat when she saw me slam the paper on her desk.  She yanked her headphones out of her ears and stared at me, an evil glare on her face.

“Can I help you?” she asked me, sounding very irritated and pissed off. I waved the paper in front of her until she grabbed it out of my hands, “what’s this?”

“A flyer for the school’s talent show. I need help deciding what song to perform,” I told her. With my words, her face lit up, and she handed the paper back to me.

“Dude, I know how to play piano. I’ve been playing since I was 5, and I can learn how to play a song pretty quickly. We should do a song together!” November exclaimed. I beamed and gave her a high five for her fantastic idea.

“Let’s go for it. The auditions are next Tuesday, so since it’s Wednesday, we have about a week. What song do you wanna do?” I asked her. She pondered for a minute before replying with a question of her own.

“Do you have a particular kind of song that you want to do?” she wondered, “like, more fast paced, slow song, love song, show tune?”

“I want to do a song that will allow me to use the biggest part of my voice and convey a message to people,” I replied. Almost as if she knew my question before I said it, she held her Ipod up in front of me with a song on it.

“Skin by Sixx:A.M. Your voice can go from big to soft and pretty and back. Plus, it conveys a very deep and important message,” she explained. The bell rang, and Calloway ran into the room and over to his desk before Mr. Smith could even see him. He practically dropped his binder when he got to his seat.

“I fucking love that song. Let’s do it,” I agreed, and November reached over and gave me a fist pound. Mr. Smith went over the white board and started writing something on it.

“What are you guys doing?” Calloway questioned. November turned to him and explained the story about the talent show. I turned around to face the board and noticed Raoul, Stanton, and Rufus chatting away about God knows what. My face twisted into a look of disgust as I saw Raoul’s eyes quickly dart over in my direction and then back to his group. The mere thought of me even crossing their mind for a split second, enough for them to see if I was in the room, made me sick.

“That’s awesome,” I heard Calloway tell November, “I didn’t know you could sing Toril. Well, I knew you could because you write songs, but you’ve never sang for us before.” Mr. Smith walked over and shut the door, which was the signal that anyone else who walked in was late and that class was starting. He walked over to his desk and picked up a stack of papers, and I knew it was our homework assignment/project from the previous week.

“We have to start practicing anyway. There’s no way we could do it at the café,” she reminded.

I thought about bringing them over to my house. Brock was off on a work trip, Andy wasn’t coming back until tomorrow, and Amy was hanging out with one of her girlfriends all day, and she told me that she would be back around 10 that evening. So even if they stayed over until 9, I wouldn’t risk them finding out who my adoptive family was. Plus, I’d been truly dying to have them over, but I never had an opportunity.

“We could practice at my house after school,” I offered, “I don’t have a piano, but I have a guitar. It’s not the same, but it could still work for today. Plus, my parents aren’t home, so we’d have the house to ourselves.” The two of them exchanged pleased glances before turning back to me.

“Let’s do it,” Calloway accepted. November pulled out her phone, and I knew it was to text Cyra and Malachi and let them know of the plan.

“Sounds like fun. I’ll tell Malachi and Cyra now so I don’t forget to tell them later. We can just go there instead of going to the café,” she added. Mr. Smith came by and set November’s returned assignment on her desk, then Calloway’s, then mine. I already knew was my grade was before I even flipped it over.

“Nice job Toril. You’re quite talented,” he told me before making his way over to the other side of the room. Our project had been to write a two page short story about anything we wanted. We got to develop the characters and create a world of anything we wanted, which was what I wanted to do with my life. All of the characters and place names had to be original. If we wanted a restaurant, we had to make up a name, and if there was a band or music artist mentioned in the story, we had to create them ourselves. We had character profiles and such that went with it, so that was also part of our grade. I turned my story over to see a big red A beaming back at me.

“How did you guys do?” I asked my friends. November held up her B and Calloway held up his D, clearly not pleased, “Calloway, how did you get a D on a creative writing assignment?” He took off his glasses to clean them, but November took them away before he could. He ignored her and let her mess around with them, mocking him for how “blind” he was.

“Well, it says that one of the characters was weak and the plotline wasn’t consistent. Plus, there were a lot of spelling and grammar errors. I suck at anything that falls under the category on English,” he groaned. He leaned back in his seat, stroking a hand through his short brown hair and huffing.

“Including speaking it?” November laughed. He snatched his glasses and put them back on his face.

“Shut up woman. How are you guys so good at this, especially you Toril?” he wondered. I shrugged my shoulders and put my story in the right pocket of my folder with the rest of my returned assignments.

“I had Toril help me with mine,” she confessed.

“I started playing guitar when I was nine, and I started creative writing when I was 10. I guess you could say I was raised on it,” I informed. Mr. Smith was back at the front of the room, and he gestured to another student, a preppy girl, and myself.

“You all did a great job, but I was particularly impressed my Toril and Jayden’s stories,” he told the class. I looked at this Jayden girl from across the room, and she glared back at me. She didn’t look happy that he was not only impressed by her story, but mine as well. Her eyes pierced me from her place five desks away, and I figured that she must’ve been the teacher’s pet until I showed up. I scowled at her and turned back to the much more friendly faces of November and Calloway. The teacher got a look on his face as if he remembered something else and turned back to the whiteboard, writing something more underneath what he had already written up there.

“So you said that no one would be at your house later?” November checked, and I nodded, “Are we going to meet your parents at all?” I shook my head so quick in response that it should have been up for questioning.

“My mom is out with one of her friends and won’t be back until late, and my dad is out of town on a work trip,” I told them. It still hurt to call them my mom and dad, but for now, I was going to have to put up with it.

“Do you have any siblings?” she wondered. I bit my tongue to keep from spilling the truth out all over the classroom floor.

“I have an older brother. His name is Andrew,” I said.

“What’s he like? Get you get stuck with a brother that hates you?” Calloway teased. He pulled a can of Sprite out of a side mesh pocket on his backpack and cracked it open, the sweet sound of fizzing soda and the lemon lime aroma filling the air. Some of it spilled over onto the desk, and he glared up at November, knowing that she had probably shaken it when he wasn’t looking. She just laughed, clearly giving away the fact that it was all her doing.

“I don’t know. I haven’t actually met him yet. He’s been out at…school since before I showed up. I guess he’s a lot like me,” I told them. Mr. Smith signaled for the class to face forward and pay attention, so I turned back around in my seat.

Off at school. Yeah right. That fucker was off on tour…and he was coming back tomorrow. I nearly jumped out of my seat when I remembered that I would be meeting him tomorrow when he came over for dinner. He was supposed to be back a week before, but him and the band were starting to make plans for an upcoming music video, so they didn’t want to leave while they had all of these ideas boiling around in their brains. My heart started pounding. What if he didn’t like me? What if he was nothing like I thought he would be? I was absolutely petrified. I put my hand over my heart to try to calm it down without making it  look like I was having a heart attack and tried to focus on the English lesson and the day ahead.