Eyes brighter, I clip clop down the stairs, not giving a fuck about the racket my 'professional looking' shoes make anymore.

 " How was it?" she practically screams as soon as she spots me. A bunch of the crowd, the ones parked on the bottom step, swivel their heads. I shrug as I twist my way out of the building, the last forty hours of sleeplessness finally catching up with me.

Their faces are all different shades of anxious and uncaring, the expression only brand new adults can wear.

 

I narrate the set up upstairs, my tone masking the spikes of pure terror I was in, a mere half hour ago.

Flitting between cliques, I try to ignore the fogginess of late nights and empty coffee cannisters.

Another five minutes, and I plop down on the bottom step, collapsing into jelly. The currents of tension rife through my peers affect me not and I play with greek references in my head, the triumphant Odysseus.

 My eyes rake the campus, all five feet of it.

 

The junkies isolate themselves, condescending smirks at us kids.

The brains stress out over missed markings.

The invisibles mill around with words exchanged.

The seniors tease out our funk.

The spoilt show off their daddy bought treasures.

And friends, tentatively new, might-not-last friends laugh at and with as it happens.

It isn't high school. The faces are all different, unfamiliar, not comforting.

But not much has changed, has it?