It was a bright and early Monday morning. I walked along the cracked old sidewalk on the way to my bus stop. Today was the first day of high school. I've gone to a couple "Open house" nights, so of course I know quite a bit about the school already. Although it's new, and different so I don't expect myself to remember the layout. I hope that the teachers and other students would understand that. In fact, I think that was my biggest concern, getting lost and being late for class. 

The bus arrived, and I got on as usual. I was used to taking the bus, since I'd been doing it since Junior High school. I sat on the bus, listening to music, again as usual. Finally it got to my stop. I took a deep breath, and got off right in front of my new school for the next three years.

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I walked onto the campus slowly, butterflies- no, a hurricane twirling in my stomach. I knew that some of the people from my old school would be here, but I never really talked to most of them. I was pretty quiet for the most part. 

I walked past bunches of people, staring, trying to find someone I knew well enough to talk to while at the same time, trying not to look like a creep. Suddenly, like a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, I spotted Carly. She was one of my best friends in Junior High, and we shared a ton of interests. I sped up my pace, to go greet her. 

"Hey Carly!"

She turned her head slightly so she could see me, and waved.

"There you are. I thought I'd never find you, there's so many people here." 

I smiled, relieved to hear her quiet, calm voice again. 

We chatted for a while, to catch up with each other about some things that happened over the summer. We're both not really that active, usually playing computer games and such. Although she does have a lot of pets, including a super adorable horse. 

Soon the bell rang and swarms of people began to file into the school. 

"Where do you wanna do your work?" I asked, pulling out a paper with the floor plan.

"I think I'll try the library, wanna come with me?" She said, pointing to it on the map.

"Yeah sure, I'll look for you there." 

With that, we parted ways and head off to find our lockers. I found it, unloaded all my belongings and the proceeded to my assigned teacher's office. 

This school is kinda different. It's more of an independent learning system. There are no homerooms, just seminars and such. At the beginning of the year, you get assigned a teacher who will help you figure out what's best for you. They help with plenty of things, like time management, and making sure you finish things on time. There are also classes, like math, science, all that normal stuff. Except the teachers don't really teach. They just wait there and if you really don't understand something you can ask. But for the most part students just sit there and do their work independently.

After meeting with my teacher, and doing all sorts of introductory stuff I finally grab some of my work and head to the library. It seems way too loud to be a library, lots of students are inside, talking while working. I walk around the room aimlessly until I feel someone tug my arm. It's a familiar pain, Carly's sharp nails. 

"Ouch, didn't see you there"

"Blind.." She mutters.

"So are you," 

She smiles and rolls her eyes. Knowing we both wear glasses. Lots of people used to tell us we looked really similar from behind. We both have long black hair, and tanner skin. 

"So I heard there's after-school clubs here. Do you think you'd join one?" She asked, not even looking at her work. She always took forever to write. 

"Dunno, maybe if there's a really interesting one. Or if I had someone to hang out with in there." I shrugged.

"I think there's an anime club, but I don't know where it is, we'd have to check the list."

Anime. Something that I've recently been starting to watch more and more of. Many people dislike it, labeling it as childish. It's not true though. Yes, some anime can be for children but, there are all sorts of genres. Just like books, movies, and TV series. The only difference is that it's animated, and mostly in a cute Japanese style.

"Yeah, that sounds pretty interesting, are you going to join?" I asked, looking over. 

"I want to..It'd be interesting to see who else likes anime. But I don't want to go alone. Come with me."

She didn't even ask. It's not like I mind though.

"Sure. I'll just have to let my mom know I'll be a little late getting home."

I've never really been in a club before. They didn't have them in Junior High. Except for student council, but that seemed a bit boring.   

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Finally, it was the end of the day, and Carly and I headed downstairs to the board near the main office. This is where the big list of clubs, and their locations were. It was alphabetically listed, so Anime was near the top. The club was being hosted in the Japanese language class, which was on the third floor. The stairs would be annoying to climb, but I hoped it would be worthwhile. 

We arrived at the club room, and walked in slowly, looking around at everyone. Most of the people in there looked pretty average, and I wasn't really sure why I thought otherwise. I stereotypical otakus only exist in anime..maybe? At the back there was a really quiet girl, sitting next to two boys. One of them was holding her hand, I assume they're a couple, and the other boy was sort of just awkwardly sitting there. I think he was the third wheel, poor guy. 

A tall girl, with green eyes came up to us and I realized we had been standing in the doorway.

"Hi, welcome to the Anime Club! I'm Monika, the club's vice president."

I smiled at her, and said hi.

"I'm Olivia, and this is Carly"

Carly quietly said hi, and Monika apologized that the club's president didn't show up to school today. She told us that we could just sit anywhere we wanted and talk for a while, while waiting to see if more people would show up. Carly and I headed toward the back of the class and sat behind two other guys. I was kinda bored, and didn't really talk to that many people all day, except Carly. So, me being me, I stared at one of the guys in front of us until I could think of something to say.

"Hi....nice...bandanna" I said, looking at the bandanna wrapped around his head, and awkwardly shooting finger guns at him. 

He turned around, and Carly faced-palmed so hard it must've hurt.

"Thanks b" he replied. 

Feeling awkward, I turned to Carly and told her I had to go to the bathroom. It was true, because in Junior High I never went much during the day. It was always after school that I really had to go.  Usually I would just wait until I got home. Besides, while I was there I could text my mom and tell her I'd be getting home later. So I got up, and walked out into the hall, trying to find the nearest bathroom.

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I walked back into class, and found Carly talking to the guy with the bandanna. I smiled, and went back to my seat. Carly was pretty shy so I didn't expect her to talk to him, but I'm glad she is. I didn't really wanna interrupt their conversation, so instead I just sat down and played on my phone for a bit. I noticed the other guy, next to the bandanna man was scrolling through anime pages on instagram. 

Finally Monika stood at the front of the class and drew everyone's attention. 

"Hi everybody! Thank you for coming to check out the Anime club today, sorry there wasn't much going on. As you probably know, I'm Monika the vice president and I'm a second-year at this school."

She turned on the smart-board and there was a google slides presentation being projected onto the screen. She read off some of the things on it.

"Here's just a small presentation of what we usually do in this club. Usually everyone can bring a manga, or watch anime on their phone or something. At the end of some sessions we all get a paper and vote on which anime to watch as a group, I'll write the options on the board right after this. Anyway, other times we can debate anime related topics, have discussions and tons of other fun stuff too. There's also a suggestion box on the back table, you can write down a suggestion of something you'd like to do in this club and we'll try our best to include it."

She pointed to the back, where there was a shoe box decorated with anime pictures, and a hole cut through the top to slide papers in. 

"If you have any questions feel free to ask me ....or Lance, who's not even here today!"

She shrugged and began writing anime names on the board. 

I turned to Carly who had stopped talking to the Bandanna guy. We chatted for a bit, and talked about the anime names that Monika was writing on the board. We decided to vote for the same one. 

Before we knew it, Monika was telling everyone that the next meeting would be next week, and that we could all leave now if we wanted. I walked out with Carly.

"So, are you gonna join?" I asked her.

"Yeah I think so, as long as you come with me all the time."

"Sure, it seems pretty fun. Anyway, I'll have to get home now. My mom's probably cooking dinner."

I waved goodbye, and with that we parted ways.