Monday, August 14, 2028
I was awake before my alarm.
5:30 a.m. The house was still, the street outside my window quiet in the particular way that only early mornings manage — not silent, exactly, but unhurried. Like the world hadn't committed to the day yet.
I laced up my shoes in the dark and slipped out the front door.
The air on Buena Vista Street was cool against my skin, carrying the faint smell of damp pavement and cut grass from someone's yard a few houses down. I started slow, letting my body remember itself, then found my pace and settled into it.
Eight kilometres. The same route I'd mapped out the week before — down Buena Vista, left onto Magnolia, through the quiet stretch past the park, then back around. The streets belonged to me at this hour. No one watching, no one careful around me, no one's eyes tracking me with that particular weight I'd grown so used to in Starlight Hills.
Just my feet on the pavement and the steady rhythm of my own breathing.
Running was the one part of my life I could control. It had been that way for three years — the one constant I'd built my mornings around when everything else had felt like standing on shifting ground. It kept me grounded. It kept me present. One foot in front of the other, over and over, until the noise in my head quieted down to something manageable.
I was back by 6:30, sweat cooling against my shirt in the morning air.
Inside, I moved through the rest of my routine without thinking: twenty push-ups, twenty sit-ups, twenty squats. Shower. Uniform. Downstairs
My aunt had left breakfast on the counter before heading out for her early shift. I ate quietly at the kitchen table, watching the light outside shift from grey to gold, going over my schedule in my head.
At exactly 6:50, the doorbell rang.
I already knew who it was.
I opened the door. Emilia Stevens stood on my doorstep, dressed and bright-eyed, radiating the kind of morning energy that should honestly be illegal before seven a.m.
"Morning, Maddie! Ready to go?"
"I told you," I said flatly, "don't call me that."
She grinned, entirely undeterred. I grabbed my bag from the hook by the door and stepped outside, pulling it shut behind me.
"Fine — Madison," she said, falling into step beside me with an ease that suggested she'd been doing this for years rather than for a day. "But one day, you'll let me call you Maddie."
I didn't dignify that with a response. She filled the silence on my behalf.
By the time we turned off Buena Vista and headed toward Olive Avenue, I had learned the following: Emilia had placed seventh overall on the entrance exam, landing her in Class A. She had chosen Spanish as her World Language and Accounting as her Elective. She was extremely pleased about all of this, and felt I should be equally pleased on her behalf.
"What about you?" she asked, glancing over with genuine curiosity.
"Class B. Spanish. Marketing."
"That's great!" She said it with the enthusiasm of someone who had just received wonderful news, as if my three-word answer had been a gift she hadn't expected.
I looked straight ahead and said nothing.
We reached campus at 7:30. The gates were already busy with arriving students, the morning buzzing with the particular energy of a first day — new shoes, new bags, the self-conscious awareness of being seen. We followed the flow of freshmen into the building, then parted at the fork in the corridor where Class A and Class B split off in different directions.
"See you at lunch," Emilia called after me, as though this too had already been decided.
I walked to Class B without answering.
The room was filling quickly when I arrived. I found my assigned desk — window seat, second row from the back — and settled in, setting my bag down and pulling out my notebook. Around me, students arranged themselves with the careful, unconscious calculations of people figuring out the social geography of a new room.
I kept my eyes on my desk.
"Hi — I'm Noah Jackson. Looks like we're desk neighbours."
I turned slightly. The boy beside me had dark brown hair and green eyes, and was smiling in the open, uncomplicated way of someone who had never once found it difficult to introduce himself to a stranger.
I gave a small nod and looked away.
He opened his mouth to say something else
.
The homeroom bell rang.
"Good morning, everyone. My name is Grace Williams. I'll be your English teacher and homeroom advisor for the next four years."
She walked in with quiet confidence — chestnut-brown hair, hazel eyes, the unhurried manner of someone who had done this enough times to know exactly how the first day would go. She paused at the front of the room and let her gaze move across the class once before continuing.
She explained the student ID system first, holding up her card as she spoke.
"Your ID functions as a barcode card. You'll swipe it at the reader on my desk within the first two minutes of every class — that's how attendance is recorded." She paused, making sure the room was with her. "If you're caught using a proxy or a forgery, the consequences will be severe. Your ID is also required to borrow books from the library, access club rooms, and verify your identity at the school gates, as you've already seen."
She walked them through the process once, live, calling students up one by one to swipe their cards for the first time. The system beeped softly for each one.
When homeroom concluded, she transitioned directly into English. The period was spent on introductions — each student standing, saying their name, something about themselves, sitting back down. I listened to each one with the quiet attentiveness I applied to most things, filing names to faces, noting small details. When my turn came I stood, said my name, said I had moved from Starlight Hills, and sat down again. No more than that.
World History followed. Then Mathematics.
Both periods moved in much the same way — teachers introducing themselves, students introducing themselves, the slow careful process of a room full of strangers beginning to take shape into something more. I participated when required and observed the rest of the time, watching the tentative early formations of friendships I had no intention of joining.
By the time the lunch bell rang, the morning had passed exactly as I had hoped.
Quietly. Uneventfully.
I collected my things and headed for the cafeteria.