Off the Path part 3

"If they think they are going to scare me they are crazy."

Tiffany rounded the turn in the path and found herself in a small clearing surrounded by trees. On all sides.

"Well isn't this just a fan-freakin'-tastic little journey. Whatever they have planned better be darn good." Her voice echoed

She leaned against a tree and slid down until she was sitting on the ground with her back to the tree. As she settled in to wait the sun slipped completely behind the mountain dousing the woods into a shadowed dusk. Her mind drifted to where this little escapade had started. Every teenager with a brain's vision of a torture chamber.

The smell was always the same.

No matter what school she was in , no matter what town, a high school always smelled the same. Fear, sweat, and hormones. To a nervous new girl it was the smell of eternal torment come to earth. For the "in crowd" it was the smell of glory.

Oh how she hated it.

Tiffany leaned on the wall outside the office as Sarah finished up the paperwork to make her an inmate of this particular prison.

Wood floors and generous windows made it more appealing than most. Cottington had turned it's old courthouse into it's school years ago. K-12 walked through the double doors everyday from September through July and filled seats in rooms that had once housed the wheels and cogs of Justice. The irony almost made her chuckle.

Flipping her hair out of the way she made a face at a passing group of girls as they stared and whispered. After the girls passed she looked sullenly around the hallway. Didn't look cursed. The book of local legends and folktales that Sarah had given her to read had had a story about some sort of spirit who was said to haunt the old courthouse. A Chief of the local tribe had been hanged at the gallows that had stood in the courtyard, but before they had slipped the noose around his neck he had cursed the townsfolk, the town, and the mountain itself for his death. If it wasn't a high school now, and ghost stories were fake, Tiffany might almost think that was cool.

"Well that's that. Here is your class schedule, and they'll have one of your classmates come and show you around." Sarah's voice pulled her from her musings as she handed her a slip of paper, patted her shoulder, and headed out to her car waiting in the parking lot.

Tiffany sighed and looked down at the schedule. Her locker number and combination were written in the corner. Might as well find it and stash her stuff.

It took her a minute to find it down a side hallway. It was actually in a pretty good location. Off the main hallway, not near the bathroom but a few down from the teacher's lounge. This should keep her away from all the crud regularly dumped on inmates of state institutions like this.

"You must be Tiffany." The skinny brunette pushed her glasses up her freckled nose and held out her hand. "I'm Amanda. They sent me to show you the ropes."

After a quick once over she sized Amanda up as the captive nerd. The one that always gets roped into doing the dirty work because they're just too polite to tell an adult to stuff it. Poor idiot.

"Yeah I'm Tiffany. Sorry you're stuck with me."

"Oh it's okay. Got me out of gym. Let me give you the tour."

As they walked around the hundred and fifty year old building Tiffany got comfortable with the chatty little geek. Amanda was easy to listen to. She had facts stuffed in her head that just seemed to leak out at any given moment and send her off on a tangent. She had never been much of a talker, so Tiffany found it pretty nice to be around someone who so obviously didn't expect her to. She was enjoying the companionable chatter so much she didn't even tell the girl she'd already read about the ghost story when Amanda launched into a mildly over dramatic rendition. The bell rang just as they got back to her locker and kids came pouring out of the classrooms.

"Do they all dress like that where you come from?"

"Huh?" Tiffany was distracted as kids filled the halls, eying her as she eyed them. A lot of whispering and pointing was going on. God how she hated that. Standing alone while everyone whispered and pointed.

"Does everyone dress like that where you came from?"

Startled from her morose thoughts by Amanda's voice, she looked beyond the whispers and stares around her to how all the others were dressed. It hadn't clicked before, but everyone was wearing a variation of the same thing. Jeans in shades of blue, and tops in various colors. Tiffany's all black t-shirt, hoodie, and jean combo stood out like a sore thumb. This was not good. She had thought she would at least blend in with the background and stay off the radar.

Just as the dismay was starting to sink in 'They' strolled into the hallway.

The triple P's Tiffany had always called them. Pretty, Perky, Pains in the posterior. Every school had a cluster of them, and obviously Cottington High wasn't going to buck the trend. The curvy blond at the head of this particular set homed in on the new girl with almost heat seeking precision.

"You're that weird chick's niece aren't you? Should have known you'd be strange too." Silence spread through the hallway like a wave as dozens of eyes focused in like lasers on the scene unfolding.

Trying to pidgeon-hole her already. The strange chick. The weird girl with the weird aunt.

Sarah wasn't weird. The nagging voice in the back of her head wouldn't let that go. Sarah wasn't weird. She was just a woman who lived by herself. The angst started to boil up as her chin raised and she glared at the girl.

"Sarah's not weird." Oh Lord. Was that her voice? She knew better. You never engage. You don't give them anything to go on, and eventually they get bored and go away. Curse that voice that had popped out of her mouth.

"Says the weird neice. But then I bet your whole family are experts on weird."

"Back of Millie."

Tiffany turned to boy who had come to her defense and felt her stomach drop and she could hear her heartbeat pounding in her head as her palms got a little sweaty. The whooshing in her ears would belie the fact that she would swear heart rolled right out and land at his feet.

(That's it for tonight)