Embrace the Shadows

Ch 12

-Paris-

With a high pitched, no matter how much he would deny it, yell Paris Jackson threw himself to the floor to dodge the shot from Tyson Inoculis during the dodge ball game on the last day of school. Paris attended Meriwether College Prep, which is supposed to be a "progressive" school, in downtown Manhattan…this basically translates to sitting in beanbag chairs instead of desks, teachers wearing ripped jeans and rock concert t-shirts instead of Polos, and tests on how to make explosions instead of reaction tables.

-Flashback-

Today was exam day before the summer break and things hadn't exactly been going well. In first period, English, they had basically been banished to the break yard to recreate the atmosphere of Lord of the Flies and he had to deal with his two biggest enemies at the school, Matt Sloan and Tyson Inoculis. Matt was the basic playground bully and was nothing special bar his targeting of him but Tyson was different. Tyson had gotten into Meriwether on a scholarship due to talents making and fixing things and was actually pretty popular due to being smart and strong, he was the size of a freaking bear, along with having the most expensive clothes and anything else Paris could have wanted. He had tried befriending the giant boy at the beginning of the school year but Tyson had just laughed at him and would never explain why. Today Tyson tinkering with…something while shooting comments on how he was looking forward to dodge-ball later. Eventually our teacher, Mr. de Milo came back out and inspected the damage inflicted by Matt Sloan and the others and declared that we had understood the book perfectly along with a warning not to become violent people.

The next exam was Science with Mrs. Tesla, he could never understand why Tyson would always chuckle at her name, and we were told to mix chemicals till we succeeded at making something explode. It wasn't three seconds after she finished speaking that Tyson managed to make an orange mushroom cloud in a trashcan while grinning like a fool. After the room was cleared and the hazardous waste removal squad called she began praising Tyson through the roof about being a natural chemists as no one had every managed to ace her exam in under thirty seconds.

The next exam was social studies were we drew latitude/longitude maps. After finishing with a couple minutes to spare he opened his notebook and stared at the picture of his crush Annabeth, the daughter of Athena, back at camp-half blood. The problem was that she saw him as a friend at most and was crushing on his foster-brother instead of him. Thinking about his foster-brother, Percy, he scowled angrily, Percy always got everything while he, Paris, got nothing. Before he could think any further the picture was ripped from the binder by Matt whose eyes widened, "No way, Jackson. Who is that? She is not your—".

"Give it back!" he demanded embarrassed as he tried to grab the photo only for Sloan to give it to his idiotic friends who chuckled dumbly at it and tore it up to make spit balls.

Just as this happened the bell rang and he sighed before leaving, just outside the room he thought he heard a girl's voice whisper out "Paris!" making him look around confused, no matter how much he would try to deny it, he knew that no girl would be caught dead calling his name. Before he could find the source of the whisper he was caught in the tide of students and dragged off to gym where our coach had promised a free for all dodge-ball game.

Getting to gym they were immediately sent to the locker rooms to change into the gym outfits, sky blue shorts and tie-dye t-shirts, and as always he felt a shudder run up his spine at Tyson. Tyson always stood in the most visible spot when he changed which always displayed his prominent muscles and scars which the giant boy seemed to take great pride in. When a girl asked him why he was so proud of the scars Tyson smirked and replied "Scars are tattoos with better stories, some of these I got fighting a bear that was trying to eat my brother…I wanted the bear to have some mercy which it wouldn't have gotten if I'd let my big bro deal with it.".