I APOLOGIZE SO VERY MUCH FOR THE CHEESY SUCKY NESS OF THIS CHAPTER! Unfortunately There is no way for me to make it better without completely rewriting it, and it contains some very needed background.

Also, the linked picture is Octaveus, plus the scars and things that will be described later in this chapter.

OCTAVEUS
I STARED at the low brick building across 666th Street. (Seriously, who names a street 'Satan Street?') This is the third school I have attended this year, and all because whenever I got discovered we had to move. It's starting to get annoying, having to move schools almost three times a year.
Beside me, my older brother Jessie nudged my shoulder. "Here comes your tour guide," he said, pointing at the doors of the school. A man and a woman walked out; the woman carried a clipboard and pen. She saw me and waved me over.
"That's my cue to leave," Jessie said and patted my shoulder. "Please try not to reveal us again, okay? I'm getting tired of having to move." He walked away down the sidewalk while I glared after him.
"Octaveus!" The woman called out to me. I quickly dashed across the street, careful to keep my beanie on my head. I don't have a reason for it; I just like it. The woman smiled at me, though she didn't actually meet my eyes. She was wearing a blue dress, with her dark hair braided down one side.
"You're pretty fast," she commented. "You should try out for cross-country. We have a wonderful track here." She didn't seem to notice that as soon as I stopped running, I limped. Then again, not many people do notice.
"Okay," I glanced behind her at the doors to the school, knowing that I wasn't going to try out for anything. Students walked back and forth inside, some stopping to look at me through the glass.
"Octaveus," the woman said to me, still not looking me in the eye, "this is Principal Kaine." The man smiled warmly and held out his hand, though he wouldn't meet my eyes either. He had close-cropped sandy hair and blue eyes. He was wearing a navy blue shirt with a fancy-looking white N-S logo on it and jeans. I shook hands with him and couldn't help but notice how sickly pale my skin was compared to his.
"Welcome to Northside High School," he said. He gestured behind him toward the doors. "Shall we start your tour?" I said yes, and he led me into the school. The woman with the clipboard walked through a door on my left as soon as we were inside the building. 
The group of kids that had been watching through the transparent glass dispersed. A few of them caught my eye and gasped, tapping their friends and whispering. I fixed my gaze on the ground.
"This is the Commons," Principal Kaine said, stopping in the middle of the space in front of the doors. The floor was polished light grey tile. There were tables lined up along the wall to my right. The walls were painted cream-white, making the room seem a lot brighter than it really was. "It's where you will have your Study Halls and where any school club meetings will take place.
"And this," he walked up to the set of smaller wooden doors that the woman with the clipboard had gone through and opened one, holding it open and gesturing me into the room. "Is the office. You'll check in here every morning for the first couple days and check out after school." I scanned the room. The floor, instead of polished tile, was carpeted in scratchy blue-grey fabric. The walls were painted sky blue and the ceiling was white. A row of black chairs sat against the wall opposite the check-in desk. A narrow hallway led off to the right, lined with rooms. I guessed those were the teacher's offices. One room right inside the doorway of the narrow hallway was marked as the nurse's office. The wall behind the check-in desk was lined with rows of framed awards. I could spot at least five dedicated to Principal Kaine.
   I turned my attention back to the principal. He was speaking to the lady behind the check-in desk. She was short (at least, compared to me and the principal, but I'm tall), wearing a flowery purple dress and her blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her pink glasses perched on the bridge of her nose. Behind them, her blue eyes sparkled kindly.
   She and the principal finished their conversation and she smiled at me. I found myself smiling back. Unlike most people I've met, she didn't flinch at the sight of my eyes or ask if I wore contacts. I knew immediately that she was going to be my favorite teacher in this school, even if she wasn't really a teacher. She made her way around the desk, smiling brightly.
   "Hello!" She thrust her hand out to me and I shook it. "I'm Grace, the secretary!"
   "Octaveus," I introduced myself, smiling. Principal Kaine cleared his throat. I nodded goodbye to Grace and followed him out into the Commons again. I realized I was still smiling and quickly fixed my face.
   Principal Kaine led me down multiple hallways, explaining what rooms were where and listing all the teachers of that subject. Soon we were back at the Commons and Principal Kaine was ending the tour.
   He handed me a schedule and a paper planner, both of which I folded and put in the pocket of my jacket. "The school opens at seven o'clock every morning," the principal said, "but your first class will start at nine thirty. There is a four minute passing period between each class so that you have time to stop by your locker or use the restroom before your next class. Any school sports or clubs will be posted on the school website, or you can also view the annual times on the last page in your planner. So," he clapped his hands together, "make sure to bring your drawstring bag and folders tomorrow, and don't lose your schedule. We won't be able to print you another one so late in the year."
   The bell rang as the last class of the day ended. Principal Kaine held out his hand to me for the second time that day. "I'll see you tomorrow?" I shook his hand and nodded. He smiled like the matter was settled and walked into his office.
   Kids swarmed around me, all heading toward the doors. I caught one girl with straight red hair and blue eyes staring at me from the other side of the Commons. I quickly turned and followed the swarm out of the building.

Jessie was waiting for me at the other side of the street. I dashed up to him.   
   "You'd better be careful," he said to me as I stopped next to him, "showing your speed in front of so many people." He sounded like he was telling me that for my sake, but I knew that's not how he meant it.
See, Jessie's that arrogant older brother that acts like he hates everyone. If you have an older brother, you might understand what I mean. If not, well, then don't take my word for it. I highly doubt that your friend's older brother treats them like this. At least, I hope they don't. I still have scars on my knuckles from Jessie. He does have his moments though, as much as he hates to admit it (and probably won't ever admit it). He's not always so. . . aggressive; he just has these times when he gets really aggressive and takes it out on me.
   "I'll be fine," I retorted. He scowled at me.
   "Not with that attitude, you won't."
   "Let's get home," I said, trying to avoid further conversation. "Gwen will be waiting for us."
   Jessie snorted, but didn't say anything back. We walked side-by-side back towards the headquarters. As we walked, people on the sidewalk stared and swerved around us. Jessie laughed, his mouth curled into a smirk.
   We were used to this kind of behavior from humans. Wherever we went this is how people acted. I can't blame them, really. If I were a normal human and I saw two tall, muscular guys walking towards me and glaring, I'd get out of their way quick. At least Jessie has a normal eye color. His eyes are brown. Mine are yellow. I get weird looks just because of my eye color. And that's minus the fact that our pupils are vertical slits. Let's just say, we get weird looks a lot.
    That's why I grew my hair out; so that it covers my eyes partially and makes it harder for people to see them at all. The only problem with that is, then people assume I'm emo more often. (Though I'm not saying they're wrong.) Jessie has longer hair too; he just grew it out to annoy my dad. And no one calls him emo. If you saw us walking down the street, you probably wouldn't be able to tell that we're related at all. He has shoulder-length brown hair and a slight tan, I have longish messy black hair and skin so pale that I look like a vampire. Or dead, either one. He has brown eyes, I have radioactive-yellow eyes. He has arms and legs muscled like a gymnast's, I have arms (and abs) like a bodybuilder. (The only thing that ruins that image is that I'm skinny; like, really skinny. Skinny enough that someone could mistake me for being unhealthily skinny. I only look unhealthily skinny because of how muscled I am, though. I'm just as skinny as I should be for my age, really.) I don't usually show my legs (because my parents don't let me), so you wouldn't be able to see them, but they're more similar to Jessie's. The only thing we have in common is our body shape; tall and skinny, but not ungracefully so (I'm not saying that I'm very graceful, either), broad shoulders, large eyes, high cheekbones, fair skin, muscled arms and legs. And maybe that we both have shoulder-length hair. But mine is more wavy than Jessie's.
   As the headquarters came into view, I started to run. That's another thing; we're inhumanly fast, so I don't get to run much. Our top speed is thirty-five miles an hour. (And I'm not allowed to run in the house. The last time I tried to run on tile, I tripped over my own foot and fell. Let's just say, I couldn't walk for the next week.) I sprinted across the street, and ran down the sidewalk so fast that people barely had time to get out of my way. I slowed down suddenly and stopped in front of the headquarters, which was built underneath an old restaurant that had been shut down for years.
   Pedestrians stared at me, wide-eyed, then just turned around and continued on with their lives as if nothing had ever happened. Thank God for clueless Yankees. Jessie walked up to me, shaking his head. He didn't say anything as he opened the door of the restaurant and we walked inside.

The headquarters was built underground so that my choroni could be better hidden. Some of the more feral choroni have their headquarters in deep valleys in the forest. Others live in abandoned mansions. One, I've heard, even owns its own fully-operational five-star hotel in Vegas. We like to keep it simple.
   Jessie and I walked into the restaurant. The floor used to be white tile, but now most of the tiles are missing or have big chunks taken out of them (which is saying a lot, considering that each tile is about three feet long and two feet wide), and the tiles that are still there are covered in moss. The walls are literally vertical slabs of wood leaned up against the concrete interior of the wall. (They used to be painted, but the paint has faded so that you can't even tell what color they were painted in the first place.) The entire place smelled like musk.
   Jessie immediately paced into the center of the dining area and pulled up one of the broken tiles on the floor.
   I stood over him, watching the door to make sure that no crazy humans had followed us in. (It has happened before; and a very confused pizza guy.) The tile came loose with a loud crack, and Jessie slipped through the hole.
   I glared at the door one last time and followed him in, pulling the tile back over the hole after me and making sure that my fingers were out of the way of the jagged edges.
   Darkness enveloped me and I slid down a slippery slide-like tunnel. I braced myself for impact as I spotted a dot of light below me. I hit the ground, bending my legs as if I were landing a jump. I stumbled as I landed, gaining a few chuckles from the corner of the cavern. I recognized the glowing brown eyes staring at me from the shadows.
   "Oh, like you didn't fall a few times," I snapped. Jessie laughed again and stepped into the artificial light.
   "No, not when I was almost fourteen I didn't."
   I bared my teeth at him. He pushed me.
   "When will you two stop acting like five-year-olds?" A girl's voice called from the shadows at my left.
   Jessie snorted. "You're younger than both of us, Gwen. I was five when you were born. I wouldn't be talking."
   I heard Gwen get up and pace over to a wall. There was a light flick and the rest of the lights came on.
   I was facing a wall lined with rings of couches. A coffee table was placed in the middle of each couch ring. The walls of the cavern were made of hardened red clay, with shelves inlaid in the clay across one wall. The entrances to eighteen tunnels filled up another wall. Each tunnel leads to a different family's den rooms, as well as the infirmary and entrance room. Kerosene-powered lamps hung from the ceiling.
   Gwen was standing next to one of the couches in the nearest ring, her arms crossed over her chest. An open book hung from one hand, another one lay on the couch next to her. Her ears flicked, annoyed. Her long tail swished against the floor behind her. She blew her curly black hair from her face, her bright green eyes reflecting the annoyance displayed by the twitching of her tail and ears. She was dressed in a white skirt that went down past her knees and a cream colored tank top. Jessie and Gwen both have the full Choronus look, like my dad does. I look more like my mom in that way.
    She uncrossed her arms and sat down on the couch with a sigh, opening her book again and beginning to read. She looked up from her page. "You're not going to sit down?"
   "Oh," Jessie said. "Sorry, I thought we were still glaring at each other." He plopped down on the couch across from Gwen's. I sat next to her and peered over her shoulder at the book she was reading.
   "Harry Potter? What's that?"
   Gwen seemed happy to change the subject. Her eyes lit up when she described it. "Oh, it's amazing. It's about this boy that's a wizard and--"
   "Yeah, yeah, Gwen, we don't care," Jessie interrupted her. He whipped off his baseball cap and threw it on the couch beside him. His tall brown cat ears pointed toward the ceiling. There's another thing we don't have in common. His ears are tall and covered in brown fur. I have normal human ears; they're just a little pointed. He shifted on the couch. "My tail is getting cramped," he said. "I'm gonna go change my pants." He jumped off the couch and trotted over to the tunnel that leads to our family's den rooms.
    "Come on," Gwen nudged my shoulder. "Mom and Dad will want to hear about your tour."
    She gathered up her books and made her way over to the tunnels. I took off my beanie and followed her.

A few seconds later, I joined Gwen in the drop-off room of our family's dens.  
   The drop-off room was almost like the entrance room of the headquarters, with red clay walls and two tunnels, one that leads back up to the entrance room and another that takes you straight to the abandoned restaurant six-hundred feet above. The floor was made of red-brown tile with a slightly darker floral pattern carved into each tile to create one giant, repeating pattern of lotus flowers. (My family crest is a blooming lotus flower, by the way.) A mahogany door led out of the drop off room on the wall north of where the tunnel sticks out of the ceiling. Multiple diamond chandeliers hung from the ceiling, flooding the room with bright white light.
    I didn't stumble as I landed this time, but the velcro on my high tops (Jessie claims I look like an emo DJ with my black high top shoes, dark jeans, and fringe; I say he doesn't look much different, minus the 'emo' part) caught on the hem of my jeans, pulling my pants down slightly. I hastily pulled them up and straightened, turning toward Gwen.   
   Fortunately, she hadn't seen my sloppy landing; she stood facing the doorway, as if willing Jessie to come open and slam it in her face. He tends to bully her like that, just because she is younger than him. Fortunately for her face, the door stayed closed.
"C'mon," I said to her, placing my hand on her shoulder. She looked up at me with her large green eyes, her curly black hair framing her pale face and almost hiding her ears. At that moment, she looked so much like my mother that I was about to call her that.
    "Do you ever feel like Jessie doesn't like you, that he only likes himself and everyone else's feelings don't matter?" Her question caught me by surprise. I didn't know how I was supposed to answer her. The truth was, I did feel like that. When I was younger, he used to bully me the same way: pretending to hold a door open for me, then slamming it in my face; closing my hands in the broken tile that covered the tunnel to the headquarters when he let me go in first, leaving my fingers cut and bleeding, then denying it to my parents when they noticed that my knuckles were cut open. (He never did that to Gwen, luckily, otherwise he'd have no fingers, because I would have ripped them off). Now he gets to beat me up in training.
    He wasn't always so heartless though. Sometimes he has these brotherly moments; like when I was twelve and decided to take my dad's motorcycle for a joyride (long story) and then he distracted the police so that I could get away (even longer story). As much as he denies it, I know that somewhere deep down in his cold, icy soul, he loves us.
I opened my mouth to speak, then closed it again. I looked at Gwen empathetically, but couldn't find anything to say. She stared back at me; I could see the reflection of my eyes in her pupils, two yellow dots in a sea of darkness.
   Before either of us could say anything else, the mahogany door opened to reveal Gwen's friend Anna. She was wearing a baggy Twenty One Pilots 'Blurryface' T-shirt that didn't completely hide her busty figure, her long golden-blonde hair tied back in a French braid that reached all the way down mid thigh of her white sweatpants. Her thin, cream-colored tail brushed lightly against the floor at her feet.
   See, to me Anna is like another sister. In my defense though, we did practically grow up in the United States knowing each other; she met Gwen in some daycare when she was four, and they have been friends ever since. I remember being almost fascinated with the way she talked (I didn't know much English then) and she'd been curious about my accent (Gwen couldn't speak much French at the time, so my parents just skipped to English for her; Jessie learned English quicker than I did, so I was still predominantly French-speaking).
   We were both a lot different then. For one, Anna's hair was shorter. It was only down to about her shoulder blades and was more white-blonde than gold. Her eyes were more pink than maroon as well. I was more soft-and-cuddly. Wait, I'm still soft-and-cuddly. Nevermind.
    When we first met, I remember she and Gwen were comparing crayon artwork, and Gwen saw us walk in and jumped up to greet us, then insisted that she introduced us all to Anna. While Mom and Dad talked to the daycare lady (they'd asked her to make sure Gwen got along with the other kids and wasn't off on her own reading or something so that she actually socialized with people), Gwen dragged me and Jessie over to Anna and introduced us. Jessie didn't think much of her, but I was fascinated with her way of speech. She seemed pretty curious about me too, so I'd guess that she hadn't ever met someone who spoke all French and almost no English. I remember we'd had a conversation about how different France was from here (and about where France is because hey, we were six and four, and to tell the truth, to us France could have been down the street). I'd tried to teach her how to say friend in French (it's ami(e), just in case you were wondering), and she'd told me how to say candy in English. (We were kids, that's all we'd cared about then. Candy and sugar.)
   We were both bad teachers at the time, so neither of us learned anything from the other. Now, I can speak in fluent English (though I can't hide my French accent) and Anna can say friend in French. And, not to toot my own horn, but I'm pretty good at singing in English too. Just ask Anna; she walked in on me playing In The End on the piano once. (And I may or may not have been singing in a really bad impression of Chester Bennington's voice. While having random voice cracks when my voice couldn't go any lower. Yes, I said lower; I have a high voice for a guy. Don't judge me.)
   She was more like a sister to me then.

ANNA
To tell the truth, I've had a crush on Octaveus Fleur since I first met him. When I met Gwen, I was fascinated with the fact that she'd come from a different country. We'd shared stories about where we were from, since I'd never been to France and she'd never been to North America before then. She'd said that she never actually learned how to speak all French before they'd moved, so she spoke more English than the rest of her family at the time but could still understand them when they spoke in French. I'd asked her if she had any siblings, and as soon as she said that she had two older brothers, I started quizzing her on what it was like to have siblings, since I don't.
We were drawing and talking about what New York was like when her parents came to pick her up, and I admit, I was scared to follow her. Everyone in her family was tall, except for her mom, and Gwen had told me basically everything about her family except for their names, so I knew that one of her brothers wasn't open with strangers. The only problem was, I didn't know which brother or why he didn't like new people.
So I'd just watched Gwen run up to her parents and hug them, then run over to her brothers and start talking to them. One of her brothers (I'd guessed he was the older of the two) looked like he'd just woken up, his brown hair was hanging in his face and was just really messy in general, and he was wearing the hood of his jacket up over his ears. He didn't seem like he was paying attention to her at all, but the other brother (Octaveus) was talking with her in French and I didn't know for sure, because I don't speak French, but I thought he was also joking around with her. He'd had shoulder-length black hair that partially covered his eyes. His hair had been messy too, but his looked like he'd at least tried to fix it.
Gwen seemed to have gotten excited when he asked her something in French. She'd grabbed his hand and dragged him toward me, and that was when I noticed his lantern-like yellow eyes. The older of her two brothers followed them toward me, and I was half expecting him to have yellow eyes too, but his eyes were brown. That had confused and startled me a little bit at the time. I'd thought, 'How come he has yellow eyes but Gwen and the other one don't?' I hadn't really thought about it further after that. At first when Gwen started dragging the younger of her two older brothers toward me, I'd thought he was pulling backward, but then I noticed that his weight seemed to be perfectly balanced between his two feet. He'd had an uneven gait, and I'd noticed that he leaned down on each foot as he stepped with the other, and lifted his weight off of the foot that was actually on the ground when he stepped.
She'd introduced me to them, but I wasn't listening further than that; I was too focused on staring at the yellow-eyed brother's arms. Gwen had told me that they were from one of the battle-focused choronis in France, so I'd thought that her family was going to be like most of the other families in my choroni; not overly muscular but still strong, skinny, with longer legs, larger hands, and large eyes.
Her brother defied most of that. He was skinny, but he looked unhealthily skinny (I didn't have the guts to ask if he was starved though) and his eyes seemed larger than normal. His hands didn't look any larger than they would normally be if he were human, though he had longer fingers, and his arms were very muscled. And I mean like, very muscled. I could see the shape of his arms through the sleeves of his hoodie. The skin on his face looked deathly pale. His yellow eyes had thick black lines in the pale skin around them, so it looked like he was wearing eyeliner. (The eyeliner look seems to get worse with the older he gets. Not that that's a bad thing. In my opinion, it makes him look better. Though I think he has started wearing eyeshadow.) I know, it's rude to stare, but I was four. It's not like I could help myself. Besides, if you're four and think a boy's cute, you want to get close to them. Because you have almost no self control.
Anyway, after Gwen had introduced us, he'd smiled shyly and said "Hi," in rusty English. I'd smiled and said hello back, and realized how different his French accent sounded compared to my voice. Jessie had stayed back and only snorted when I'd said hello to him, so I'd thought he was the anti-social brother. Octaveus had stood close to Gwen, almost like he was protecting her.
Now, then, I was very social, so I didn't usually think before I went to introduce myself to someone. So, because I was a social four year old with a crush, I went up to Octaveus to hug him. He immediately backed up when I started toward him, his pupils dilating to the size of dimes and his hands curled up against his chest, but that hadn't stopped me. I'd wrapped my arms around his waist and hugged him. (That was about as high as I could reach at the time; he was a tall six-year-old, and still is tall for his age.) He'd stood there for a second and I remember him saying something frantically to Gwen in French, and I'd thought I heard her whisper quietly to her brother, "It's okay, she won't hurt you." He'd then looked down at me and I'd known that Jessie wasn't the anti-social brother; and he wasn't anti-social because he didn't like new people.

After that day, Gwen and I would always hang out together at the daycare, then when she started first grade her parents put her in the same school as me, so I saw her practically every day. Then we started inviting each other over to our dens for sleepovers, so we hung out even more after school. I remember when Gwen was giving me the tour of their den the first time I'd come over for a sleepover, when we'd passed Octaveus's room, I'd asked if we could say hello to him, and she'd said that maybe later we could. Then later when we passed his room again on our way to the living room, the door was cracked open a little, and I'd heard voices coming from inside the room. So, because I was also a curious eight-year-old, I peeked into the room through the cracked-open door.
Gwen's Dad (whom I now call Gabe) was kneeling on the floor next to the bed (which was positioned right across from the doorway), Octaveus was sitting on the edge of the bed in front of his dad. Oc's face was paler than it usually was (if that's even possible) and his normally bright yellow eyes were dull and glazed over with pain. His legs looked rigid and tense. Gabe was talking quietly to him in French, and to me it'd seemed like he was trying to comfort his son, but Octaveus wasn't listening. His eyes closed and he'd leaned forward slightly, his arms wrapped around his stomach. Gabe gently grabbed his son's shoulders and sat on the bed next to him, pulling his son closer and whispering to him, this time in English.
   "It's okay," Gabe had whispered softly to Octaveus as his body convulsed, his arms tightening around his chest. Gabe had stroked his son's hair until his muscles loosened. "It's okay. Ignore the pain, fils. Just a little longer. We're getting you help, don't worry. The pain will go away soon."
He'd rubbed his son's shoulders as Oc started shuddering and his breath started coming in short gasps. Gabe started whispering to him in French again, and I'd had a feeling that he was just repeating what he'd said in English a few moments ago. Gabe had looked up and saw me in the doorway, and I'd noticed that his eyes were red and puffy. He hadn't told me to go; he'd just stared at me, the normal cheerful look in his amber eyes gone, replaced by worry as his son convulsed against his side, his yellow eyes half-closed.
Octaveus says that he doesn't like to show his pain because he thinks it shows weakness, but if I hadn't seen him and known he was hurting, I would never have known how to correctly bond with him.
After then, whenever I was over for a sleepover and Jessie was being himself (that is to say, an abusive jerk) and decided to scare us, Gwen and I would go wake up Octaveus (Jessie usually decided to scare us at eleven at night, and Oc was almost always asleep by nine) and he'd let us stay with him until Jessie left, which just ended up with the three of us sleeping on his twin bed, half on-top of each other. Fortunately, Octaveus didn't mind being used as a pillow. Or a living heater.
Anyway, instead of sleeping in Gwen's room at sleepovers, we'd always end up sleeping in Octaveus's room.
Eventually he got used to being woken up by us, which is probably a good thing for him.

OCTAVEUS
Anna's dad was on a three-month-long business trip to Japan, and her mother lived in Arizona, so she was staying with us until her dad got back. She went to the same school as Gwen, so it wasn't really much different than if she were to come over for a sleepover after school. Except that it was much longer than one night.
Gwen smiled at her friend. "How long ago did you get up? Last time I saw you, you were lying on the couch watching Twilight."
"Oh, the movie ended about five minutes ago. I've been trying to avoid Jessie until you got back." Anna flicked a strand of hair that had escaped her braid out of her face. Her maroon eyes sparkled as she looked behind Gwen at me.
"Hey, Octaveus."
"Hey," I said awkwardly.
Anna smiled and turned back to Gwen. "Oh and by the way, your mom made muffins." The only word from that sentence that I heard was "muffins". I bolted through the doorway and ran for the kitchen, followed closely by Gwen and a very confused Anna.
I heard Gwen say to her friend, "He loves food, especially muffins." I skidded into the kitchen and almost ran into the dining table. (Another demonstration of why I can't run inside the house.) I immediately spotted the pan of chocolate chip muffins sitting on the counter. I lunged for the pan, but someone intercepted me and pushed me backward.
"No muffins," a woman stood between me and the food. She was about three inches shorter than me, with long curly black hair and green eyes like Gwen's. She wore a white dress printed with pale pink lotus flowers and a white apron. She crossed her arms over her chest; she was holding an empty box of muffin mix in her left hand.
"But Mom!" I complained. I widened my pupils and begged.
"No 'buts'," she said sternly. "And don't use the kitten face on me, young man! Those are for tomorrow. If you're so hungry, why don't you go eat something from the fridge. Dinner will be ready in about an hour."
I scowled and stalked off to my room. I could hear my mom and Gwen chuckling together behind me. I showered and changed out of my school jeans and put my beanie on my dresser then went back out to the kitchen. A chicken was cooking in the oven; my mom and Anna sat at the table, discussing Anna's homework. She-- unlike me-- didn't have to start a new school today, so she'd been going to the same school since school started this year. Gwen sat across from them, reading her book.
"Hey, Octaveus," Anna spotted me in the doorway. "Can you help me with my math? I don't get this problem."
"Sure," I walked over and peered over her shoulder, one hand on the back of her chair the other hand flat on the table. "Which problem?"
"This one." She tapped problem three on the page. I craned my head forward.
"This one is actually simpler than it looks," I said tapping the page. "So, since the five is positive and the ten is negative, you just basically get rid of the negative on the ten, then subtract five from ten, and then, the ten had the negative first, right? Then you take the answer to ten minus five, and add the negative, since the number ten is larger than five, the answer has the negative, even though technically positive five is a bigger number than negative ten."
"Huh?" she looked at me, confused.
"Just write it down."
". . . okay?"
I straightened, just as I heard the front door open and bang shut. My ears swiveled toward the sound as someone stomped through the house. I heard Jessie shout from his room, "OCTAVEUS! Dad wants to talk to you!" and then Dad walked into the kitchen.
My father was a tall man, with wide shoulders, messy brown hair, and cheerful orange-brown eyes. He had brown ears and a brown tail, like Jessie. My mom doesn't have the ears or tail; her ears are pointed human ears, but she still has the eyes and teeth. Dad was still wearing his work clothes; dirty grey pants, a grey T-shirt, a grey sweatshirt (it used to be white) with spots of plaster crusted on the front, and dusty brown boots. He saw me standing next to Anna's chair and smiled, setting his work bag down on the counter as he made his way towards me.
"Octagon!" He hugged me and ruffled my already-messy black hair, making it even more disheveled than it was before.
"Daaaaaaaaaad," I complained, ducking away from him. "I'm not six!"
"I know," he responded. "But when you have a nickname that fits so well with your name, it's hard not to call you that."
I sighed and ran my fingers through my hair, trying to get it to look how it normally did. I failed. I stopped trying to fix my hair, knowing it was useless.
"So," Dad pulled out a chair and sat down. "How was the tour of your new school?"
"Oh, right," Anna said, turning in her chair to look at me. "I forgot that you started a new school today."
I decided to ignore Anna's comment. "It was good," I said as I leaned against the table. "The school's not too big, so it shouldn't be hard for me to memorize where everything is. The principal seems nice, too."
"That's good," my dad said. Gwen looked up from her book and glanced at Anna-- who seemed very focused on what I was saying, though she wasn't watching my face-- then smirked at me. I ignored her too.
I was glad when Jessie changed the subject by slamming his bedroom door and cursing in French as he stomped down the hall. "GWEN! I'M GOING TO KILL YOUR CAT!"
Gwen's face went white and she got out of her chair and shot down the hall. I could hear her and Jessie arguing. "Leave Ginny alone!"
"Why do I need to? She peed on my bed!"
"Only because you hid her litter box again!" There was a loud meow and a lot of hissing.
"Put her down!" Gwen cried.
"She peed on my bed!"
"I don't care if she peed on your bed! That doesn't give you the right to-- Hey! Don't hold her like that!"
Jessie walked into the kitchen, holding Gwen's ginger tabby by the scruff. Gwen ran into the room after him, tears welling in her large green eyes. "Mom, tell him to put Ginny down!" She wailed.
"I will after your cat learns to not pee on my bed!" Jessie shouted at Gwen, shaking the cat with every word. Ginny growled and hissed at her captor, swinging around trying to claw him.
"Jessie, put the cat down," Mom stepped in before Jessie threw Ginny across the room. He gritted his teeth and-- reluctantly-- dropped the ginger cat onto the floor. The cat streaked across the floor, her tail fluffed up, and leaped into Gwen's arms. Jessie fixed our mother with a withering glare and (after retrieving the carpet cleaner and a roll of paper towels) stalked back to his room and slammed the door.
Mom closed her eyes and silently shook her head. Over the next hour we ate dinner silently (the only reason Jessie came out of his room again).
Afterward, I went back into my room to gather some things for school. As I walked past Jessie's room (he had returned to it after dinner), I heard loud rock music blasting at full volume behind the door. Somehow he seemed to be comforted by extremely loud music. I don't know why or how. Then again, my music is depressing and loud, so I shouldn't be criticizing.
I opened the door to my room and stepped inside. Now, I'm not exactly what you'd call "neat and tidy". Clothes were strewn ankle-deep all over the floor, only a small path cleared to allow walking space to my bed, which had a bunch of random books scattered all over it. The wall behind my bed had a few posters of my favorite band (Fall Out Boy) taped up. The other walls of my room were bare, except for dark green paint so dark that it was almost black. A mahogany dresser leaned against the west wall, all of the drawers open with random pieces of clothing hanging out of them. On the east wall there were two large bookshelves, also mahogany, each shelf filled almost full (except for the books on my bed) of large novels. An empty electric guitar case was propped sloppily up against the side of one bookshelf, the actual guitar nowhere to be seen. Next to my bed (on the north wall), was a small bedside table with a lamp and the book that I am currently reading sitting semi-neatly on the surface. From the ceiling hung an expensive diamond chandelier that shed a yellowish light on everything else in my room. In my brother's words, my room was the "definition of Octaveus Chance Fleur: emo".
I walked over to my bed and swept my arm over the surface, adding a bunch of novels to the stash of randomness on the floor. I threw the schedule that Principal Kaine had given me on my pillow and sat down on the space I'd cleared. I quickly made a mental list of what I needed for tomorrow, then started wading around the room, grabbing things off shelves or the floor then marking it off on the list in my head. The only thing that I had not found, I realized as I made my way back to my bed, was my drawstring bag. The one thing on my mental list that I really needed. I plopped myself down on the clear space of my bed and tried to think of where I could have left it. Just as I was about to get up and check in my closet (which normally I would not advise doing), I heard a knock on the door.
I looked up to see Anna leaning against the doorframe, smirking at me as she looked around the room. Her long blonde hair hung loose around her shoulders, so that it stopped halfway down her calves.
"How do you find anything in here?" She asked, looking at the piles of stuff on the floor.
"Oh, I have a system," I said, standing up. "Everything has its place. For example," I picked up a pair of jeans from the floor. "This belongs over here." I threw the jeans to the floor at the foot of my bed. Anna smiled and laughed. I smiled too. "And this belongs over here," I grabbed a book off my bed and dropped it on the floor. Anna laughed again, this time I joined her. "And this--" I bent down to pick up something else off the floor, but I stepped on the book I had dropped and fell flat on my back, my head hitting the wooden frame on the bottom of my bed.
I heard Anna gasp, and I looked up at her. She had one hand over her mouth and her maroon eyes widened in surprise. Then we both burst out laughing. I used the corner of my bed to haul myself to my feet and almost fell again because I was laughing so hard. Anna doubled over in the doorway with more laughter.
"Why are you two laughing?" Gwen appeared in the doorway behind Anna, holding Ginny and scratching behind the cat's ears. She looked from Anna in front of her in the doorway to me standing next to the end of my bed. Anna straightened and struggled to control her laughter.
"Nothing," she said, wiping the tears from her eyes. She lightly pushed past Gwen and turned to walk down the hall. Gwen frowned at me (though I don't know why), then followed her friend down the hall.
I stopped laughing and sighed. I muttered to myself, trying to get back to searching for my drawstring bag. I walked over to the sliding wooden doors on the west wall beside my open dresser and pulled the doors open. As soon as I opened the doors, I was immediately hit in the face with a runaway hanger. I stumbled backward with my hand pressed against my eye and winced. I glared at the hanger that had hit me, which now lay on the floor, cussed it out in French, then turned my attention back to the closet.
On the inside, it looked just like the rest of my room; which is to say, like the walls had swallowed everything in the room, digested it, then threw it up again. The hanger racks were filled with empty hangers and the hangers that weren't empty had random articles of clothing draped over them. The floor was layered with all the clothes from the empty hangers-- mostly jackets or sweatshirts-- that a) had fallen off the hanger or b) that I'd "forgotten" to hang up again after I washed them. One time, my mother had vowed to help me clean my room. She'd almost fainted after she opened the door, and ditched the idea.
I flicked through the hangers. Jessie often says that I have girl hands. Just because I don't have my father's large, calloused hands and he does does not mean that I have girl hands. So what if I have long, skinny fingers? The only bad part about me arguing about this is that my dad agrees with Jessie. Traitor. Dad's usually the one who sides with me.
I finally found the drawstring bag; it was draped over one of the hangers at the back of the closet (which was about three feet deep). The black fabric was dusty in some places where other hangers hadn't rubbed against it while I was moving them to search for it. I blew the rest of the dust off of it and threw it onto my bed. I glanced at my alarm clock as I made my way back to the bed-- it was 7:30 -- and decided to go to sleep early.
Most people would probably think that Choronuses would sleep all day, being part cat. The truth is, the Choronuses in my current choroni hardly ever sleep. The most we'd ever sleep at once is three hours. It would depend on the choroni that I lived in, but my choroni is one of the battle-specialized groups. They are trained from birth to sleep no more than three hours at night and to sleep lightly. The good thing is, my choroni in France was also battle-specialized. Now, upon hearing that we specialize in combat, you're probably thinking that Choronuses in this choroni are buff and sleep with daggers under our pillows. That's not entirely true either. Choronuses in this choroni are built for quick combat, not full-out wars. Take me, for example. I'm not completely buff. Sure, I'm more muscular than I should be for my age, and I'd look buff if I were a human. And I got my fangs early. But that's because of a special disorder I have. Most of us are just as muscular as a normal, really muscular human might be. Though some of us do, in fact, sleep with daggers under our pillows.
I changed out of my day clothes into a loose T-shirt and grey sweatpants with a bunch of rips in the knees, flicked the rest of the stuff off my bed, and lay down on top of the covers. For some reason, today had really tired me out. Yeah, whenever I start a new school it's a little stressful, and I'm always tired after, but today seemed . . . different. 
My thoughts wandered to the redheaded girl I had caught staring at me. Something about her seemed different as well, but I couldn't place my finger on it. She'd reacted just how most people react to seeing me for the first time: she'd stared at me. But somehow her staring at me felt different from whenever anyone else stared at me; almost like she's important in some way. Before I could ponder further about this, exhaustion finally overtook me, and I closed my eyes.

I opened my eyes to find Anna shaking me awake.

I apologize greatly for the cheesiness and slow pace of this chapter. It is by far the slowest chapter in this book, so that's a plus, but this chapter still sucks. Everything will speed up a bit from now on, and begin to make a bit more sense into the plot.
—Snake Eyes