It felt like I had never gotten ready as fast as I did that morning, rushing to school and terrified of being late. Of all days to oversleep—it just had to be one of the very first days of the school year. Reckless, honestly. As if on purpose, my alarm hadn't gone off—not even the faintest sound—and only later, when I jolted out of bed at my mom's words that I'd overslept, did I notice it was completely broken.
Throwing on my clothes in a hurry, not even bothering with the usual tea and sandwich before school, I mumbled a quick, barely coherent "Bye, Mom," and slammed the front door behind me, silently cursing my own lack of organization and constant absentmindedness.
"Lily!!" my mom called out loudly as she stepped onto the landing, holding the helmet I had, apparently like an idiot, forgotten. By then, I was already two flights down the stairs. "You forgot this!"
Abruptly stopping on the next step, I smacked my palm against my forehead, amazed at my own forgetfulness. Not wanting to run back upstairs and waste the precious time I didn't have, I just shouted back:
"Throw it, Mom!"
"Will you catch it?"
"I hope so," I said, leaning my stomach against the railing as I looked up to where she was standing, arms stretched out in front of me. Mirroring my movement, Mom held my helmet out over the gap between the staircases that dropped all the way to the ground floor. After hesitating for a second, she let it go.
"Thank God!" I exclaimed a moment later, my voice echoing through the stairwell as I caught my "headgear" and let out a relieved breath, instinctively crossing myself three times. I'm not even sure why I did that.
Mom let out a short chuckle, then muttered something under her breath as she headed back inside, but I didn't catch it—I was already darting downstairs like an arrow, painfully aware that the clock was ticking. The last thing I needed was to barge into biology class after the bell and spend half the lesson listening to one of Missis Johnson's lectures and moral sermons. That old woman definitely knew how to put someone in their place—and she never held back.
My favorite ride was waiting for me right outside the entrance—oh, my beloved motorcycle! Slipping my leather backpack over my shoulders, with a couple of notebooks, some books, and a pen inside, and pulling my helmet on, I could already imagine just how many traffic rules I'd have to break to make it to school on time.
Our school was so huge that finding the right classroom on the first try wasn't always possible. The enormous building was now swarming with gloomy teenagers, brushing past me and filling the air with the noise of their conversations. Meanwhile, I stood by the schedule board, squinting at the blurry lines that were supposed to tell me where our biology class was.
Yeah, my eyesight had gone to hell. Ruined by long, sleepless nights spent buried in textbooks for the subjects I hated most, desperately trying to make sense of all that written nonsense.
Pulling my glasses out of my backpack and spotting "209" next to "Biology" for Class 11-B, I let out a heavy sigh, realizing I'd have to drag myself all the way up to the fifth floor. Just wonderful—especially considering our school didn't have an elevator. So, you know, all on my own two feet.
My watch shown 8:24 a.m. And if I don't collapse from exhaustion somewhere on the stairs, I might actually make it to class before the bell.
Hopefully.
Pulling myself together, I hurried toward the classroom, already feeling that the next forty-five minutes would be absolute hell for me. Yeah, I didn't like biology. Partly because I didn't understand it. But my hatred for the subject really flared up when I found out I'd have to take it for admission to the university I wanted.
Endless cramming late into the night—just to do well on quizzes and tests, to answer perfectly in class so that a decent grade would appear on my report card, and at least some knowledge would stick in my head—was draining more and more of my energy. It was slowly killing my desire to go into medicine. But by the time I'd, frankly speaking, grown disillusioned with my choice, it was already too late to back out. Besides, my parents were set on me getting into med school.
"Lily," it seemed to me, came from somewhere behind. Still walking quickly, I turned around, but didn't spot a single familiar face that could've been calling me. Yeah… looks like someone's already starting to have auditory hallucinations. And everything would've been fine—if, the moment I turned back, I hadn't run straight into someone. Hard enough that my backpack, which had been hanging off one shoulder, slipped to the floor, spilling all its contents. Apparently, I'd forgotten to zip it up after taking out my glasses.
"Oh, for God's sake," I muttered under my breath with a tired frown, staring down at the textbooks and notebooks scattered across the floor. Though I doubted my words had gone unheard by the person I'd just collided with.
"I'm terribly sorry," a young man said, his voice laced with genuine regret. Crouching down just like me, he started helping gather everything back into my bag.
"Oh, it's totally my fault," I brushed it off, throwing him a quick glance. The guy looked really young—but not young enough to be a student. Dark, short-cropped hair, bluish eyes. A light stubble covered his angular jaw and chin, adding a couple of extra years to his appearance. I only realized I'd been staring at his face a little too intently when he, having gathered the remaining textbooks and notebooks, held them out to me and lifted his gaze to meet mine.
"Thank you," I said, snapping back to my senses and quickly looking away, taking my things from his hands and hastily stuffing them into my backpack. We stood up almost in sync, and he apologized once again for the awkward collision.
"It's fine," I replied with a faint smile.
And then—like a bolt from the blue—the most awful sound rang through the entire school, nearly making my eardrums explode. The bell. Yes. That bell. The one I'd been dreading hearing before I made it to the right classroom.
Forgetting about the guy, about the collision—about everything—I bolted toward "209," already knowing I was completely screwed.
"Loly!" my school friend and desk partner Victoria greeted me right by the classroom door, arms wide open. Mrs. Johnson still wasn't there, which struck me as really strange—this middle-aged woman was never late to class. Never.
"Have you heard the news?" Smith started, linking her arm through mine, but Lydia Scott—our class's self-proclaimed queen—cut her off:
"Turns out our Izzy is retiring!"
"Retiring? What do you mean?" I frowned at the dark-haired girl who had just dropped that bombshell, slowly taking my seat. But she, as if she hadn't even heard me, went on:
"They say a new teacher's coming to replace her. Supposedly young… and kind of good-looking."
"And you've actually seen him?" Victoria sneered, slouching in her chair and giving our classmate a skeptical look, while I, stunned by the news, let all of Lydia's following words just wash over me. But before Scott could fire back with some sarcastic remark, all the chatter and laughter that had filled the classroom suddenly died down, leaving such an eerie silence that goosebumps ran down my spine.
The sharp click of heels echoed from somewhere in the hallway, and then, in the open doorway, our deputy head appeared—Missis Lana Stone. She was a short, plump woman with a mass of white hair neatly tied into a bun. Scanning the class with her piercing gaze through her glasses and holding some papers in her hands, she stepped inside, followed by another person.
At that moment, I didn't even spare him a glance—my full attention was glued to Missis Stone. And I wasn't the only one.
"Take your seats, children," she nodded to those who had bothered to stand and greet the deputy head—unlike me. "You may already know that Mrs. Johnson has decided to leave our cozy school and retire."
Her voice was so high-pitched, almost like metal scraping, and it didn't match her stern appearance at all—the kind of look that usually made every student quake with fear.
"That's why I would like to introduce your new teacher, who will be with you until the end of the school year and, accordingly, prepare your class for the upcoming exams." With a seemingly magnetic gaze that had kept us frozen during her brief monologue, she pointed with one hand to the person standing beside her, allowing us a clear look at him.
Holy shi..! I almost dropped my jaw in astonishment, fully realizing that the guy standing before us was the same one I'd awkwardly bumped into in the hallway earlier. A slight smirk played across his face as he introduced himself:
"My name is Christopher Collins."
I shot him a skeptical look, and in my head, the thought rang loud and clear: "And this barely-graduated kid is going to teach us biology… and even prep us for the exams?"
My surprise—and a touch of dismay—knew no bounds. We'd all grown used to Mrs. Johnson. I could somehow understand her. I even went to extra lessons with her to finally grasp the material, to get it to stick in my head. And now?
Ugh… I could feel it—this year was going to be tough. Oh, really tough.