Agent Reptilian: Exploiting Gold|editing

Chapter twenty one: First day of school (part 1)

After depositing Salman and Kiya at their school, we halted our trek on top of the grassy hill that overlooked the highschool.

A light breeze blew, swinging the palm trees side to side as they stood proudly in a linear pattern across from each other, starting from where the cars were beginning to roll up into the school, all the way to its front foyer where two pairs of double doors were wide open.

Rusty red bricks were stacked upon each other, massive windows appeared every several spaces of brick. Thick, dark green vines crept up on the edges of the building like tentacles, altogether creating what was known as "Palm Woods High School".

But there was one thing that didn't make sense.

At the entrance of the high school, right outside it's mouth allowing students in, 4 officers stood, dressed in their dark blue uniforms and armed with pistols and tasers.

Four walk through security gates were placed in a line and students waited one by one, peeling off their bags and handing it off to the officers who sifted through students' personal belongings then permitted them to walk through.

"What is going on? Why are there police officers going through all of their stuff? And why are they calling them to the side?" Nix looked perplexed. I shifted my sight from Nix to the three girls that had been called to the side and one of the female officer's patted their chests, backs and legs. The officer made some sort of gesture with her hands, hardly visible for Nix and I to catch from the distance we were at but a few seconds later, the girls that had been stopped began taking their shoes off and handing it to the officer.

"I don't know." I looked around, taking my time to glance at the crowd of teenagers around us and noticed the same look on our faces was shared by many of the other students.

"I mean, is this normal? Is this something that happens in normal schools? You should've told me Al!" Nix hissed at me. I ignored Nix who was nervously chewing on her nails and tucked strands of her hair behind her ear every few seconds which kept slipping off due to it's thick texture.

"I don't know how much things have changed but it has been almost seven years since I went to a public American school and that was an elementary one. I don't know anything about their highschool system-heard it's pretty bad but I didn't know you had to go through airport security." I muttered under my breath.

"What the bloody hell is going on?" Both of us heard a deep voice with a British accent speak from behind us and turned around, coming face to face with a tall boy with aviator glasses sitting on his face. It was the boy's dark, silky looking hair that had caught both the Nix and I's attention.

"Uh-uh." Nix was at a loss of words. "How do I look Al?" She leaned over on my shoulder.

I flicked her on the forehead, "Awful. Did you forget what you are wearing?" Nix's eyes moved downwards to the faded grey shirt and maxi skirt she wore that reminded me of an old lampshade.

"Uh no. We just came to this school today. It's our first day." Nix timidly spoke, mostly looking at the grass. I rolled my eyes and noticed the boy wasn't even looking at Nix. He was staring at the cops just like most of the people around them.

"Dhruv! Dhruv!" Another distant voice spoke. Christ Almighty help this dude. Varadkar!"

I shifted my head and saw two girls making their way to the boy.

"I'm ignoring you lot after the blunder that took place Friday night." The boy replied to the voice that came from behind him but continued facing us. I felt Nix tense up beside me. Friday night. As in the night the shootings took place. Blunder would be a word I would've used alright. Especially since I had heard a woman scream "Stop that idiot". Any one of them could've been the idiot referred to.