FSE

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The yellow hybrid school bus screeched to a stop at the curb of the sidewalk. The air brake popped, followed by a loud hiss, and then its twin doors split open. A grim looking badger in a loose T-shirt and blue jeans showed himself from behind the door. The adolescent red fox standing on the sidewalk glanced over to the windows where the other students sat, either doubled over sleeping, talking anxiously with their friends, or looking down at an LED screen.

"You coming, Mathieu?" the bus driver, Mr. Jenson, asked gruffly.

"Yeah," he replied without looking, whipping his long hair behind his head, and then turned to step onto the bus.

Mr. Jenson shook his head. "Always thinkin' aren't ya? Don't worry; you'll being doing a lot of that this sophomore year." Mathieu scoffed and continued to the back of the bus.

He saw his old friend from kindergarten, Jakob, a hyena, cuddling with his girlfriend, an exuberant leopard named Alexia. They greeted each other with nod. Further toward the rear of the bus were Gail and Minerva, two more of his friends and a couple as well. Minerva, a white mink, had her arms crossed and was looking out the window while her sable boyfriend stared contemptuously in the other direction. The two seniors had a fight the day before over how much money Gail had for both their class rings. With Minerva being the vain and shallow one, it was obvious who started that argument.

"Gail... Minerva..." Mathieu said to them slowly, nodding his head. Minerva ignored him, but Gail put up his fist, which he bumped with his. "No hard feelings, brother." Mathieu continued to the empty seat by the first emergency exit and sat down. He lifted his hulking binder onto his lap and threaded out his "vintage" MP3 player and headphones from the breast pocket on his black, short-sleeve button-up. He placed the tiny buds into his triangular ears, pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his snout, and watched outside the window. Then, the bus jerked and started moving again through the morning dew.

The next stop was the last one before the bus started for the school. Five more students climbed onto the bus: Felix and Crew, two tiger siblings with callous attitudes toward each other; Annabelle, an arctic vixen with a friendly, but apprehensive personality and short hair dyed black and blonde; Cris, a proud grey wolf as belligerent toward Minerva as cats are to mice; and Arch, a Thai cat with piercings and rings all along his ears and mouth. He was very careless.

The five of them took seats next to their close friends or sat alone in empty ones. Annabelle took hers next to Mathieu. The bus lurched.

"So how was your summer, Mathieu?" she asked, nervously scooting closer to him with her backpack in her lap. Having noticed her sit down, he turned and removed the ear buds.

"I saw my cousins in Tennessee, so I can't complain too much," he shrugged. "What about that concert you said you went to? How'd that go?"

Annabelle brightened. "I didn't think anyone remembered. Thank you!" she cheered. "It was awesome. So...um, how's your brother? I heard things were hectic this summer for him." Mathieu's brother, Allen, was reclusive and self-deprecating due to many years of those around him not understanding him. No one but Mathieu understood Allen for who he was, or could get along with him as well as he could. He hardly spoke of him, and only ever did with his friends. That's why Annabelle knew.

"Yeah," he nodded somberly, "he's doing just fine. Just wish he could've got out more."

Annabelle, resting her head on her backpack, and replied, "It's because of your dad isn't it. That's why..."

"Mmm hmm." Mathieu knew what Annabelle was going to say. She was interested in him the year before, asking him out on a date--which took three days to perpetrate. When she finally pulled her courage together, and plans were set for the next Saturday, Mathieu's dad didn't allow him to go because he didn't want him to miss his own birthday party with his family. Of course, Annabelle could have attended it instead, if it weren't for him also thinking she wasn't a good influence on Mathieu. But obviously that wasn't true.

"...And you don't want to start again because you're afraid it won't work out," Annabelle mourned.

Mathieu held in a breath, and then exhaled to release his sober feelings. "If. Only if it could work out. Then maybe we could make something of it. But it isn't now. I'm sorry." Annabelle kissed him on the cheek before moving to an empty seat. Mathieu turned off his music player and put it away. The remainder of the ride was in complete silence.

* * * * *

Furademy High was a towering four-story building covered in banners donning the school colors: red, purple, and yellow. Mathieu and the others on the bus climbed off and lumbered down the wide sidewalk to the faraway doors of the entrance. He looked at the top of the building as he walked. "Welcome back students of Furademy High!" was plastered on a drooping banner high above the entrance. Mathieu wondered why it wasn't welcoming the freshmen of that year, him being a sophomore. On his way in, he spotted two seniors smoking marijuana in a small alley. They eyed him a message not to tell, not that he would. He never had drugs, but he still didn't "snitch or ditch" like many would. Mathieu simply did not care.

The cafeteria was packed with the majority of students waiting for the bell to announce them to first period classes. Everyone was speaking loudly and obnoxiously with anxiety, something teachers and staff would call "excitement". But they were only riled for seeing their friends and spreading the summer gossip to them.

Both breakfast lines were long and cluttered, giving Mathieu no initiative to stand in it, even though he had only toast that morning. He glanced at his solar Casio watch: 7:24. That was six minutes before the bell would ring, so he decided to stand by the cafeteria doors and await the inevitable ding.

"Mathieu!" a loud cheerful voice shouted. "What's up buddy?" His head rose to see his friend, Logan, a spiny black dragon coming toward him. The undersides of his scales were tattooed with burning skulls and the spines on his head had a cornucopia of silver rings and dark studs clung to them. The idea was clearly to look Goth, which he didn't mind. The saurian was very eccentric regardless.

"Hopefully a good first day," he replied with the bump of his fist. "By the way, I talked to Annabelle."

"Didn't say anything wrong, did ya?" Logan quickly asked.

He quickly shook his head. "Oh no! I just said I didn't want to break her heart again. She's still seems pretty devastated by it, though."

Logan waved a passive hand. "She'll get over it," he assured him. The bell dinged, beginning a slow stampede toward the door. They proceeded with them.

"I guess you're right," Mathieu exhaled, trying to feel assured. "I just hope she'll find someone who deserves her."

"Hey, why weren't you on last night?" Logan changed the subject abruptly. He always did, but never intentionally.

Mathieu, knowing how futile it would be to find reconciliation in talking to his deviant friend, answered him. "My dad doesn't like it when I'm on the Xbox during a school night."

"Right, I think you told me about that. Least you can call me."

"Yeah..." Mathieu replied quietly with a nod.

The two sophomores proceeded to climb the staircase to the second floor where their classes were. Once they reached the second floor, Logan took off toward his friends, while he simply walked the opposite direction to his locker.

After opening it, he glanced to Jakob and Alexia, who were making out in the corner of the hall. He secretly envied them, their tails swinging with the love they shared and the excitement of their kissing. He genuinely believed they would get married; he always imagined the distant things: fate and destiny, among many others. Mathieu was a lovelorn fox in a lovelorn school, and he didn't want to love the school or the education anymore as much as he did a person. A girl he could sincerely cherish would do him well, regardless of what physical beauty she possessed. He looked away from his embracing friend, realizing he had nothing to put in his locker after all.

Only one of his friends, Nathan, was in his first period class, and the only one in all the rest, he found after taking another glance at both their schedules. Nathan was a brown bear, and a very valuable player on the football team. Surprisingly, he was very timid and composed, but always trying to be one with the crowd. Unfortunately, since their desks were already assigned, they didn't get to sit together. Nathan sat at the end of the front row and Mathieu was placed dead center at the back.

He slid his binder to the right-hand corner of the desk like he usually did, listening to the continuing chatter of his classmates. A fat guinea pig named Richard was sleeping in the desk on his right, with the side of his mouth leaking drool, arms folded under his head. The one on the left was empty.

The language arts teacher was a haughty-looking beaver: Mr. Woodstock, as written in cursive on the whiteboard. He held his head high, wore a suit and tie, and kept a large ballpoint in his breast pocket. The desk at the front of the room was neatly sorted and centered as a five-hundred-word report, absent of the stains and smudges belonging to the draft. It stood sturdy on the tile floor like the crisp paper on the desk.

Annabelle appeared at the doorway as the bell rang for everyone to be in class.

"Oh God," she gasped in shock. Her ears sagged. "Sorry for being late," she desperately apologized to her perturbed teacher. "Please don't mark me down for it. My locker jammed and I dropped my stuff trying to rush in."

Mr. Woodstock gave an impatient grin. "Annabelle is it?" he said, recalling the seating arrangement. "Well, Annabelle, you have no need to worry because there isn't any reason to mark you down for such a trivial thing." He lent an outstretched arm to indicate the empty desk at the back. "You're seat is by Mister Mathieu." Annabelle made her way there, carefully tiptoeing in order not to trip over anyone's bags.

Mr. Woodstock went to his desk and scooped up a clipboard, marking it with a sharp pen stroke. Then, he quickly hid it behind his flat tail. No one else seemed to notice the deceiving gesture except Mathieu. But he wasn't going to say anything about it since he didn't feel like it mattered all that much. He would just embarrass himself arguing about Mr. Woodstock's pointless lie. Although one side of him wanted to defend Annabelle, the other thought doing so would give her the wrong impression. Just let her move on. Mathieu told himself, and then tried to forget anything had happened.

"Good morning," Mr. Woodstock began. "I am your language arts teacher Mister Woodstock. You can call me Mister 'W' if you like. Since it's the first day of the year, it'll be an hour of going over the procedures, assignments, and homework in this class."

As he explained, Mathieu looked but did not listen. His mind poured over the idea of love. How could he ever make it work with anyone? His mind was open, and he accepted everyone's thoughts and preferences unconditionally, so why couldn't he make a relationship work for himself or a girl? The excuse was not his dad.

He unzipped his binder and slid out a sheet of paper from the first divider where he kept it, and then closed it and retrieved a brand new sharp-tipped pencil from his pocket. Then, he began to write, starting at the top margin:

Born Lovelorn

Is there someone out there, With the care of an angel, And the excitement of a bear? Someone whose heart cannot break, But as delicate as a rose petal? Whose body I can take, And be sent the chill of their pain? What magnificent person has love, Which I can gain?

The rest of his day was spent writing more sad poems. His heart hurt, but there was no one to share it with. Other than his thoughts and lunch with Nathan, his day was uneventful.