Chapter One: Koven

“I’ve got a bad disease. It’s from my brain where I bleed.”

~The Red Hot Chili Peppers~

I’ve known for a long time that I wasn’t going to live long past my eighteenth birthday. I have a bad disease that is slowly killing me from the inside. The doctors said that there isn’t a cure for my disease and they aren’t sure how much they can do for me. There’s an operation that they could perform, but there’s a sixty percent chance that I could die on the operating table or that I won’t pull through the healing process.

There are some days when I have bad pains, like a nauseating migraine or a flu-like stomachache. Between the pains and the doctors’ visits, I’m absent from school a lot, which doesn’t always bother me that much since I’d rather be spending my precious time doing things that I may never be able to do. I could be traveling and seeing the beautiful world. I could be swimming in the deep blue ocean, where its breezes circle salty aromas around me and the sunshine lightly strokes my face.

The pains aren’t the worst part of my disease either. There are frequent moments when I have nosebleeds, and just as they are frequent, the nosebleeds are also sudden. There was one time back in freshman year when I was sitting in the cafeteria eating lunch with my friends and blood started to drip out from my nose. People who sat at the tables near me started to freak out, as if they’ve never seen blood before. It was quite embarrassing.

Not too many people besides my mother, family, and doctors know of my disease. Since I’m absent from school quite a bit my mother and I had to get a certified letter written out by my physician to the school and school board so they know that I’m not just skipping class or something. The principal had to inform the teachers of my condition so that if I pass out in a classroom or the hallway they would be aware that I could be dead.

I’ve told my two closest friends about my disease so that they will know that every day to me is precious and there’s a chance that I may suddenly disappear. The rest of the student population at my school doesn’t know about anything. I couldn’t bring myself to tell because I don’t want to be treated with sympathy; I just want to be myself and be seen as normal.

“Welcome to yet another year of high school to those of you who were here last year!” exclaims the perky blonde woman who is standing in the front of the classroom. Her bright blue eyes are fixated on the other students and I as we all sit on metal chairs. There’s a small group of students who have set their chairs a little further away from the rest of the class, they must be some of the new wave of freshmen. “To those of you who are new to the high school, welcome to choir. My name is Miss Howarth and I’m going to be your choir teacher.”

“She’s such a hyper freak,” I hear a girl whisper behind me to the girl who is sitting next to her.

“I know,” the other girl agrees. “I heard she was a lesbian, do you think it’s true?” Rumors in high school spread like flies and that’s one thing I hate about my peers. Last year there was a rumor spread about me of why I was absent so many times during the school year. I don’t know who started it, but someone started telling people that I was gone a lot because I had to see a psychologist. It was also said that I was seeing a psychologist because I was suicidal and tried to hang myself in my basement, which is not true at all.

“Anyways,” Miss Howarth says, snapping my attention back to the classroom. “Since today is the first day of school we are just going to go over some of the class expectations and rules. We probably won’t actually start singing until next Monday. I have to decide where I would like people to sit according to their singing style, whether it be soprano, alto, or tenor.”

The classroom door suddenly opens and a girl slowly walks into the room. She hands Miss Howarth a yellow slip of paper. Miss Howarth takes the slip with a smile and reads it as the girl stands in front of the class nervously. My guess is that she’s a new student to the district, because I’ve never seen her before and for some reason something inside me is telling me she isn’t a freshman.

The girl has shoulder length black hair and the deepest royal blue eyes I’ve ever seen. She’s wearing a pair of snug blue jeans with a single hole in the right knee and a navy blue tank top underneath a black zip up sweater. She has a black backpack slung over one shoulder and black eyeliner thinly outlines her beautiful eyes.

“Welcome to the school district Sabrina,” Miss Howarth says. “Well since it’s the first day we don’t have assigned chairs, so you may take a seat anywhere you’d like to.” The girl smiles slightly, then walks over and sits in the chair next to me on the right. I look up at her for a moment to take one last look at her eyes before class ends.

“Hey,” she says to me and smiles. “I’m Sabrina. Sabrina Hoffman.” She extends her right hand toward me to shake. I sit there for a second then finally shake her hand.

“Hello,” I say shyly and pull my hand away again. Sabrina lets out a small chuckle, probably at my confused expression. Students at my school don’t normally shake hands in a formal greeting like that.

“You’re supposed to give me your name in response by the way,” she says. “Unless you would like me to call you Boy.” She smiles again, trying to be friendly I presume.

“Riggsley,” I say. “My name’s Riggsley, but I go by Riggs. Sorry, I’m not really used to people shaking my hand.”

“I can tell,” she says. “Well it’s nice to meet you, Riggsley. You have a fascinating name.”

“Fascinating?” I ask with a laugh. “It just reminds me of that brand of gum. Wrigley’s I think is the name.”

“You poor thing,” she laughs. “You were teased as a young child weren’t you?”

“Unfortunately,” I reply. “Just between the two of us though, I hate gum.”

“I like you,” she laughs. “You’re funny.” Then the bell suddenly rings and echoes through the halls, telling everyone that first period is over. I gather my things, which consists of a single black and grey striped jacket complete with hood and it zips.

“I’ll see all, if not, most of you tomorrow,” Miss Howarth says as I begin to make my way to the door.

“Riggsley?” I hear someone ask. I turn my head to see Sabrina standing next to me. “Um, since I’m a new student and all, do you think that maybe I could sit with you at lunch or something?”

“Well, my friends and I usually leave the school for lunch,” I reply.

“Oh,” Sabrina says with a disappointed look. “I guess I’ll see you around then.” She pushes the heavy door open and just as she takes a step into the hallway; the sudden aroma of vanilla and wild flowers swirls around me and fills my head. And as the scent swims around my brain, I imagine a beautiful scene of a picnic on a warm spring day, surrounded by vibrant green grass and wild daisies. I picture myself sitting on a soft blanket on the grass with a picnic basket full of goodies like a warm raspberry pie and whipped cream.

I shake my head to clear my wandering mind for a moment. My thoughts often drift away from reality and I end up being late to classes or never getting some homework done. I hurry out of the door to go find Sabrina because the truth is, I feel bad for denying her attempt at making a friend. Not only that, but I think she’s pretty and she’s the first pretty girl to ever want to eat lunch with me.

I quickly find Sabrina standing at the corner of the Band and Choir hallway looking at what I presume is her schedule, trying to find her next class. I should probably help her out and show her around the buildings a little bit. Finding classes here can be kind of confusing at first, considering there are four separate buildings that all together equal Cadence Nobel High School.

I sneak up behind Sabrina as quietly as I can and begin to look at her schedule from over her shoulder. Her next period is Home Economics, which is in Building C on the second floor in room 203 with Mrs. Letterman. I have the same exact class except for I have it sixth period.

“Mrs. Letterman is pretty nice,” I say, causing Sabrina to jump a little.

“Don’t do that!” she exclaims and playfully pushes my left shoulder back. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you that you shouldn’t sneak up on people like that?”

“I may have heard it once or twice before,” I laugh.

“You’re lucky,” Sabrina says.

“Oh and why’s that?” I ask.

“You hardly know me,” she replies. “I could be packing and shot you as you snuck up on me.”

“You know, that thought totally crossed my mind too,” I say jokingly. “I figured that I’d take me chances. So, do you need help finding your classes?”

“Maybe a little bit,” she says and smiles at me. I don’t know when it happened but while we had engaged in our silly conversation we walked out of Building A and we are now walking toward Building C.

“Well, your next class is going to be on the second floor of that building,” I say, pointing to Building C. “And my next class is in the building right next door, Building D. If you’d like to meet me near the bench in between the two buildings I can help you find your next class.”

“That would be great,” she says, just as the warning bell rings, letting us know that we have two minutes to be in our classes, or we’ll be marked late. “I’ll see you in an hour.”

“Oh,” I say. “Before you go, I was thinking that maybe you’d like to join my friends and I when we go out for lunch?”

“I’d love to,” she says with another smile. She turns around then and runs inside Building C.

“Oh shit,” I mumble, remembering that the warning bell had just rung. I run toward Building D and manage to slip into my classroom on the first floor just as the late bell rings.

“I saw you talking to that girl,” my best friend Patrick whispers to me as I sit down in the seat next to him. “She’s cute, what’s her name?”

“Sabrina,” I reply with a grin. “She’s new, so I invited her to join us for lunch. Is that okay?”

“It’s fine with me,” Patrick says. “But you know Eli might have something against it. He’s been whiny lately. I think his girlfriend is being a you-know-what again.”

“I would like the talking to stop now please,” says Mr. Humphrey, my Mythology teacher. The class quiets down, including Patrick and me. Mr. Humphrey is more of a strict teacher, but he likes to be lively and make his classes interesting. I had him last year for Creative Writing. “Thanks. Now, welcome to Mythology, today we will be discussing what we will be learning in this class.

“I like to start the first semester with a practice quiz to get an understanding of how much each person already knows, or thinks they know about Roman and Greek mythology. So, that’s what we will be doing tomorrow, but today we are just going to go over my classroom rules and what’s expected throughout the school year.” And this is the point where my mind wanders.

There are frequent times when I just don’t want to listen to anyone anymore, except for my own thoughts. My mother says I like to daydream and she swears that I have selective hearing, like I just block out things that I don’t really care about. I’ll admit it though, sometimes I do block out things that are unimportant to me, and classroom rules just happen to be one of those things. It’s not that I don’t follow rules in school or anything; it’s more along the lines of being monotonous. The rules of each classroom tend to be the same and I don’t feel the need to listen to them being repeated several times a year for four years straight.

Instead, I play out the conversations Sabrina and I might have during our lunch outing today. Perhaps I could open the awkwardness of meeting my other friends with a joke to make everyone laugh. If Eli is in another one of his cranky five year old moods a joke is the best way to go. Then again, Eli never takes up new people in the best way. He always feels like he has to protect me.

I’m not the most outgoing person in my school and people tend to pick on me because of my being shy. It’s really not that I’m a shy person, I just don’t want to get too attached to people since I’m not necessarily going to live too much longer, which is why Eli probably won’t be too thrilled about Sabrina joining us for lunch today. I invited Sabrina for two reasons though. Reason one was because she seemed lonely because she is new and I don’t think she has made any friends yet, and reason two is because I want that sense of being a real teenager. I just want to know that feeling of being normal at least once before I’m gone.