Hydrophobia 101: B
Every highly prestigious, private Catholic boarding school needed the mandatory clichéd 'bad boys' and they happily took up the job for Saint Joseph's Academy. There was Jimmy with the long brown hair, 'Tooth' who was well over six feet tall and almost as round, and Rico with the dreadlocks. This is of course excluding their leader. They would hide behind the gym building and skip class and smoke cigarettes and drink beer and pass around dirty magazines. It was the thing that they did while waiting for the kids they beat up to get finished with class. They didn't entirely know why they did it, but they did. It was their niche.
And so there they were, leaning against the wall, wondering if it would be a better idea to sneak into the movie theatre or rob a gas station during the upcoming weekend.
The figure moving towards them didn't even register in their minds. He was, of course, the leader. He was the guy in charge. He was the one that helped them with their big decisions, such as the one they were facing at that moment. And boy did they need to get ready for a figurative swift kick in the nuts.
He was calm as he walked, as always, with his cigarette pressed between his thin, pale lips, moving slowly, leisurely. Staring down at the ground, his icy gray eyes were hidden by a curtain of washed-out green hair that looked a lot like mucus because of the way it was clumping together. He hadn't showered in several days because he hadn't gone home. His hands were shoved into the pockets of his navy blue dress pants that had holes ripped in the knees. His white shirt was stained by different things in different places and was also buttoned wrong while his black tie was tied in a lose knot well below his collar bone. His scuffed black shoes were worn and his toe was close to breaking through as he scuffed along the grass of the school's lawn.
He was right next to them when they finally noticed him as he threw his cigarette to the ground and stepped on it.
"Well, this is it," he said, his voice quiet and gravelly.
"What do ya mean, Jaysin?" asked Rico, rolling a pair of dice between his fingers in a nervous gesture.
"I'm out," he continued, "Got expelled and all that shit."
"Dude!" exclaimed Tooth, "You're grandfather is the freaking headmaster! How in the hell did you get expelled?"
"I got caught in the vents above the girls' locker room. And I kind of had a camera I had stolen from the AV lab."
The guys got a good laugh out of that while Jaysin just smirked weakly and looked down at the ground.
"So what are you gonna do?" Jimmy asked, sounding nervous. It was blatantly obvious to his friends that he was tweaking on something or another, more than likely several things at once
Jaysin shrugged, "Nothing I can do. I'm out. That's it. He's shipping me off to live with some other relative. I think it's an aunt or something. I'm probably never coming back so this is good bye, I guess."
"That's it?" Tooth asked angrily, "You're just leaving? You're just ditching us?"
Once again, Jaysin shrugged, "Pretty much, yeah," and with that he turned around and left them to stare as he made his exit. A car was already waiting for him.
X
"This is your room," Delilah Jones as she opened the pale blue linen curtains to allow sunlight into the immaculate white room. The blue of the curtains was the only colored fabric in the entire room, which was very big according to his standards.
It seemed very bare to him, used to the tiny cramped room he had gotten when he had resided with his grandfather. There was a large mahogany bed with tall posts that would allude to a canopy bed, but there was nothing to hang a canopy from. The windows were on either side of the bed that took up almost the entire wall except for a small nightstand on the right side. On the wall to the left of the bed was a mahogany desk with a flat-screen computer and printer on it that Jaysin was looking forward to taking advantage of and two doors, also mahogany. To the right side of the bed was a dresser, a tall one, and Jaysin wondered how one person could ever fill a dresser that size. Opposite the bed was a large entertainment system that fit into the wall. Looking at that 58-inch TV, Jaysin knew he was going to enjoy his new home.
He threw his beat up black duffle onto the bed and removed his worn blue dress coat that had covered his plain white t-shirt.
"I hope there is enough room for your things to fit in here," said Delilah, "When will they be arriving?"
Jaysin's black duffle contained three shirts, two pairs of pants, four pairs of boxers, three wife-beaters, nine pairs of hole-filled socks, a pair of flip-flops, his tooth-brush, a pencil, a sketch-book, his lighter, and a pack of cigarettes. That was all he had. He wasn't sure how he was supposed to convey this to his aunt.
"I have all of my things with me," he grated out, trying not to make it obvious that he was uncomfortable.
"Oh," said Delilah, sounding perplexed and a little shocked, "Well, I'll just have to take you shopping, I guess. We'll go as soon as I get back."
"Get back?" asked Jaysin.
Delilah smiled, "David is taking me to Paris this weekend since he has to be there on business this week. I meet him tomorrow morning. We'll be gone until Monday morning, but Duncan and the staff will be here if you need anything. Actually, I think Duncan will be having a party here this weekend. That will give you a good chance to meet some of the kids you go to school with before you have to go on Monday."
"Great," Jaysin strained out, swallowing his complaints the best he could. Duncan was a spoiled rich jock and more than likely his friends were all just like him. He in no way doubted that the party would be a bunch of skanky girls and drunken idiots having sex with clothes on while really crappy music played in the background. That type of thing made him sick.
He sat back down on the bed then jumped back up and glared at it. It was a water bed. Slowly, he sat down again. Delilah chuckled at this and politely excused herself from the room.
He rummaged through his duffle and pulled out his cigarettes and his lighter, the silver Zippo that the guys had gotten together and bought for him on Christmas since they knew he wouldn't be getting anything else. Jaysin's grandfather loathed his very existence and so the boy had been trying to get kicked out of his school since he had been admitted.
He pulled out a cigarette and placed it between his lips as he lit it. He snapped the silver top shut and opened the window. It was a little chilly out, but he really didn't care that much. Opening the little drawer on the table next to his bed, Jaysin put in the carton and lighter.
'Last pack,' he mentally chastised, 'After this, no smoking. No drugs, no alcohol, nothing. Don't get yourself kicked out again, you idiot.'
He sighed loudly and tapped the ash off of the tip of his cigarette and onto the carpet, not caring enough to do something to avoid burns. He couldn't help but wonder if it was actually possible for him to clean up for real this time.