“Will you just stick it in already?”

“Oliver, I can’t. It’s too big!”

“I don’t care. Just stick it in!”

“I’m telling you that it’s too big to fit!”

“Well, try!”

“Fine!”

I pushed forward and Oliver moved up, grunting as he tried to help me. We both gave up after Oliver finally realized that it wasn’t going to fit.

“Well, now what?” Oliver asked with a frown.

I shrugged. “Now I put my gym bag in the locker room,” I said, letting the giant bag drop to my feet.

“You can’t! Thalia’s stuff is in the bag,” Oliver reminded.

“Well, then I’ll take her stuff out and she can put it in the girl’s locker room,” I said, bending down and unzipping the bag.

“Here she comes,” Oliver said, nodding.

I looked over and saw Thalia bounding down the hallway. She stopped in front of us and glanced at me curiously.

“The gym bag didn’t fit in your locker?” she asked.

I shook my head and straightened up, holding her clothes out to her. “Not with our stuff and Oliver’s stuff in it. So I’m just going to put it in the locker room.”

She took her gym clothes from me and shrugged. “No big deal. I’m going to go put these in the locker room. I’ll be right back.”

“Wait for us at my locker, Thalia. We’re going to go stick our bag in the locker room too,” I said.

Oliver and I made our way to the boys’ locker room and went inside. We zigzagged through the rows of lockers until we came to the one we shared.

Oliver put in the combination and held the locker open for me. I shoved the gym bag in there, relieved when it fit.

“Finally,” I said as Oliver shut the locker, clicking the lock into place.

“I’ll say. I still can’t believe it was too big to fit in a regular locker,” he said with a sigh, sitting down on the bench.

I sat next to him, bending down to tie my shoe. Two guys entered the row and opened up their lockers, probably getting changed for first period gym class.

“But did you see what he was wearing?” one of the guys asked, shaking his head.

“What he always wears. It looks like the rainbow threw up on him,” his friend said with a shrug.

Oliver and I glanced at each other and rolled our eyes. It didn’t take much imagination to know who these two guys were talking about. There was only one boy in our entire school who ever looked like the rainbow had thrown up on him.

Oliver and I stood up and left the locker room, going over to Thalia who was already waiting for us. She pushed herself off of my locker and met us halfway.

“Ready for class?” she asked.

We both nodded as the warning bell exploded overhead. The three of us made our way to our first period class and took our seats.

“Substitute,” Thalia whispered.

“Score,” I whispered back, holding my hand out to her for a high-five.

The substitute teacher picked up the attendance sheet when the late bell rang and moved to the front of the class. She looked around the room at the mostly empty seats.

“Why is this class so empty?” she asked in confusion.

“Because it’s first period. Most people skip it,” Oliver supplied helpfully.

“Teenagers,” the substitute grumbled under her breath. “Alright, I’m going to take attendance.” She began to call out kids’ names.

“Thalia Light?” Thalia raised her hand, calling out “here”.

“Theodore Light?”

I raised my hand. “Here,” I announced.

The substitute glanced at the two of us curiously. “Twins?” she asked, and we nodded. “Well, Thalia is a very pretty name.”

“Thank you,” Thalia said with a smile.

“What? My name is ugly?” I grumbled.

Ignoring my comment, the substitute continued to read off name.

Thalia giggled as I pouted. “Aw, cheer up Theo! You just have too much of a common name,” she said.

“Joy,” I said, rolling my eyes.

The substitute passed out worksheets for us to do and sat down at the teacher’s desk. Oliver got up and sat down with us.

“Shall we work?” he offered, gesturing at our papers.

“I suppose,” I said with a sigh.

“Are we hanging out after school?” Thalia asked after we had been working for a few minutes.

“I’m free if you guys want to,” Oliver said with a shrug.

“Yea, I guess we can,” I said, leaning back and cracking my back over the chair.

With that apparently settled, we went back to working until the bell rang. We went off to our second period class, changing in the locker room before heading on up to the track in the gym.

“I just want it to be study hall already,” Oliver said as we began to walk around with Thalia.

“I want it to be time to go home,” Thalia said with a sigh. “School is so boring. I can just tell that today is going to by painfully slow.”

“Every day goes by painfully slow,” I reminded her.

“Uplifting as always, Theo,” Oliver said.

“I do what I can,” I said, smirking.

“He’s just so weird,” a girl said, walking by us with her friends. “I mean, isn’t he embarrassed? Did you see what he was wearing today?”

“He never gets embarrassed,” one of her friends said. “The sad part is that he would probably be super attractive if he wanted to be.”

“He kind of is attractive. Just way too bright and out there for any of us,” another girl said with a shrug.

They continued talking as they walked away from us. Oliver and I shared another eye-rolling look.

“What do you think he’s wearing today that has so many people talking? I thought people were used to him by now,” I said.

“You never really get used to someone like that,” Oliver said, laughing a little.

“I guess you’re right,” I said with a shrug.

“Alright, alright. Let’s not talk about him. Let’s just walk,” Oliver said, giving me a playful shove forward.

“So Theo, isn’t that your dream girl playing volleyball down there?” Thalia asked, elbowing me in the side and pointing.

“Thalia, don’t point,” I said, blushing a little and pulling her hand down.

“Just tell her you like her,” Thalia said, pulling her hand out of my grasp.

I peeked over the side of the track, looking down at the girl playing volleyball with the other kids. Her hair, tied back in a ponytail, bounced as she jumped forward to spike the ball.

She stepped back into her position, fixing her ponytail. She was a pretty girl, with tanned skin and bright blue eyes. She was fairly tall, and well built. I knew she was very athletic, and a heartthrob of the school.

“Aleksandra is really attractive. You should ask her to senior ball,” Oliver said, peeking over the track at her as well.

“Nah. Alek wouldn’t go with a guy like me,” I said with an unconcerned shrug.

“A guy like you? Theo, come on! You’re not ugly!” Thalia said.

“Stop right there,” I said, holding my hand out to her. “I do not need my twin sister telling me how sexy I am. That’s just weird.”

“Oh get over yourself,” she said, pushing my hand away. “I wasn’t going to say you’re sexy. I’m just saying that as a girl admiring you in a non-creepy, non-incestuous way, you are an attractive boy.”

“Tell me I’m pretty,” I said, turning to Oliver and batting my eyelashes at him.

“Theo! I’m being serious!” Thalia said, whacking me in the arm with a pout.

“So am I,” I said, rubbing my arm. “I figured it was time I tell Oliver that I’m in love with him. Right Oliver?”

“I thought our love was clear after that wildly passionate night over the summer,” he said, slinging an arm around my shoulders.

“I hate you guys. You can never take anything seriously,” Thalia said with a sigh.

Oliver pulled his arm away from me and grinned at Thalia. “Sure we can, Thalia! We take everything seriously!”

“Bull shit,” she grumbled, starting to walk again.

We followed after her, both grinning now. I snuck another glance over at Alek as she spiked the volleyball again.

When the period ended, we went back to the locker room and changed. We suffered through our third period class until the bell rang, ending that class as well.

“Study hall time! Finally!” Oliver shouted, throwing his fist in the air as we walked down the hallway.

“For once, I share your enthusiasm,” I said.

We walked down the hallway and into the cafeteria, where senior study hall was held. We took our seats at our usual table.

“Time to relax,” I said, folding my hands behind my head and leaning back in my chair.

“Don’t fall over and crack your head open Theo,” our study hall teacher, Mrs. Clark, said as she watched me.

I waved my hand dismissively. “Wouldn’t dream of it, Mrs. Clark.”

Mrs. Clark checked her attendance and sighed. “Three new students into this study hall today,” she said. “And two kids who left it.”

“I’m one of the new students!” a girl said, skipping into the cafeteria. “Hi Mrs. Clark!”

“Hi Lana!” Mrs. Clark said cheerfully. She began to talk to the Lana girl.

“Hey Theo, look who one of the new kids is,” Thalia whispered, smirking.

I looked over and mentally groaned. Great, now Thalia was never going to leave me alone and probably ruin my life.

Alek walked into the room, talking with some of her friends. Her hair was done, water falling over her shoulders and framing her face.

She followed her friends over to their usual table and sat down with them, laughing and pushing her hair out of her face. She smiled, her perfectly straight teeth flashing.

“Jeez Theo, stare a little more obviously why don’t you?” Oliver said, watching me.

I snapped my gaze away from Alek, blushing lightly. “Shut up,” I mumbled.

The bell rang and I looked around the cafeteria. I only spotted Alek and Lana as the new kids, but Mrs. Clark had told us there would be three new kids.

“Who else do you think is a new student?” Oliver asked, apparently thinking the exact same thing as me.

“I don’t know. Maybe they forgot they had study hall now,” I said.

But then someone pushed the door of the cafeteria open and we all looked over. I groaned as they stepped into the room.

“Great,” I hissed. “Study hall with him.”

The boy now standing in the cafeteria caught everyone’s attention, just like usual. He was tall and well built, but that wasn’t what drew everyone’s eyes to him. It was the way he was dressed.

He was wearing tight, bright-green jeans held in place by a rainbow belt. A slim fitting T-shirt covered his top half. The shirt had little jewels on the shoulder, and the center had a picture of some woman I didn’t recognize.

His hair was a nice shade of brown on the side, but it was up in a dark purple fohawk. His arms were thick with various types of bracelets, and he had a baby-blue scarf wrapped around his neck. His ears were pierced up and down on both sides, and he also had a nose ring.

His eyes were ringed with light blue mascara, and he had black eyeliner on. His piercing ice-blue eyes swept the room.

He turned and strut over to a table. His walk held a mixture of laziness and confidence, his head held high but his shoulders slumped.

He sat down at the table, and the kids there instantly began to talk to him. He talked back to them, his hands flailing as he spoke, his several rings on his fingers.

“I’m embarrassed for him,” I said, watching him speak.

“Aw, I don’t know. If he didn’t dress so exotically, he’d actually be really, really hot,” Thalia said, eyeing him carefully. “I like his natural hair, not the dark purple. That shade of brown hair is really pretty. He also rocks the stubble look, which most guys don’t.”

“Seriously Thalia, I’d kill you before I let you date him,” I said.

“You don’t let me date anyone, Theo. You’re my brother, not my mother,” she reminded with a sweet smile. “You can’t tell me what to do.”

“As your brother, I forbid you from staring at him for more than five seconds,” I said, covering her eyes.

“Theo!” she whined, pulling my hands away from her face.

“Dimitri Ivanov,” Oliver said, watching him as he continued to flail his hands in wild gestures. “He sure is an interesting one.”

“Way too flamboyant,” I said, propping my elbow up on the table and resting my cheek against my palm. “It’s bad enough that we have lunch with him, but now we have study hall with him too.”

“Just ignore him,” Thalia said.

“It’s kind of hard to ignore someone like Dimitri. Is that glitter in his hair?” I squinted at it.

“Yep, that’s definitely glitter,” Oliver confirmed.

“You know, I hate homophobes. Really, really hate them. But when I see someone like Dimitri, I can understand how they throw the word faggot around,” I said, shaking my head in disgust. “How can he even go around looking like that? Hell, why do his parents let him?”

“Maybe they hope they can sell him to a circus and make a good amount of money?” Oliver said with a shrug.

“Don’t be such jerks. Let the guy do what he wants. It’s his life, not yours,” Thalia said, pulling out a book and flipping it open to read.

“Yea, but we’re the ones who get stuck looking at him,” I grumbled, dragging my eyes away from him.

Oliver and I played tic-tac-toe together until the period was over. We went off to fifth period, and suffered through the slow day until it was lunch time.

Thalia slid my lunch across the table to me as she sat down. Oliver sat next to me and the three of us began to eat.

“I heard that several kids got their schedules completely changed around. Has Alek appeared in any of your other classes?” Thalia asked me.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “And neither has Dimitri, thank god.”

“Dimitri is in my math class,” Thalia said.

Math was the only class that Oliver and I didn’t have with Thalia. We had taken an easy math, while she had chosen to take a hard one. Our math classes were the period before lunch.

“But don’t you take smart people math?” Oliver asked.

“Just because he dresses like Lady Gaga mixed with Adam Lambert, it doesn’t mean he’s stupid,” Thalia said, rolling her eyes. “He’s actually pretty smart.”

“You and your smart people math,” I said with a sigh.

“Nerd,” Oliver said, disguising it as a cough.

“Just because you’re a moron, it doesn’t make me a nerd,” Thalia said, shooting Oliver a charming smile.

Oliver pouted as I snickered. We ate our lunches, heading off to eighth period together when the bell rang.

We sat down and I tapped my fingers on my desk impatiently. I just wanted the day to be over already. It was dragging on forever.

The bell rang and our teacher stood up. “Alright class, today we’ll be continuing with Hamlet,” she said.

The door opened and, go freaking figure, Dimitri strut in. I swear that kid was never on time for class. He always had to be fashionably late.

“Dimitri Ivanov?” our teacher, Mrs. Slate, asked, pretending she didn’t know who he was. Every teacher knew Dimitri.

“That’s me,” Dimitri said, his voice musical.

“Right, so you’re our new student in the class. Please be on time from now on,” she said, marking him down on the attendance seat.

What? I had to have this period with Dimitri too? God, could this day get any worse?

“Dimitri, just take a seat there next to Mr. Light,” Mrs. Slate said, impatiently gesturing at the empty desk next to me.

…I really should have seen that coming.

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