Dev leaned back against the splotchy window of the number 43 bus, willing it to just break down or get in a minor traffic accident or do anything that would prevent him from having to start another uncomfortable first day in another new school sporting same old black Jansport backpack as last year.  

Dev sighed as the bus pulled into yet another stop, struggling not to look out the rain-soaked window.  He wasn't used to these suburban streets.  Streets, yeah right.  They didn't much look like the streets of Chicago where he grew up, and he didn't really feel that labeling them as such was appropriate.  No these were roads, or avenues, with perfectly straight cut green lawns and bright pink roses or chrysanthemums lining their un-cracked driveways.  It made Dev sick to just look at their plastic perfection.  No, this was definitely not Chicago.  This was something far worse than the drug and smog infested streets of his home-city; this was alien, this was sanitary.  This was disgusting.

"Faggot!"  Dev's head jerked up at the speaker, some guy in a football jersey and jeans, relaxing when he realized that the curse hadn't been directed at him.  And why would it have been?  It wasn't as if he was gay or anything, he just hadn't found the right girl yet.  Right?

Dev frowned when he caught sight of the kid who was the unfortunate target of the popular looking boys ridicule.  Great, another little goth/emo hybrid thinking he's all badass by conforming to non-conformity.  Personally, Dev wasn’t one to want to be classified under a label, though he was probably being a bit hypocritical by looking down his nose at said 'faggot' since he himself just so happened to be wearing all black and had various peircings distorting his chiseled face.  

'Beautiful', his grandmother used to say, 'just like your mother was'.  Was.  His mother was beautiful, that is until the crash that had literally torn her face from her skull, leaving nothing but scraps of crimson tissue too stubborn to part from the bone.  They'd had a closed casket funeral, three mahogany coffins standing side-by-side, the outside two protecting the much smaller third coffin as it cowered between them.  His little sister, Lindsey, as fragile in death as she was in life.  That's what her monologue read, her tiny headstone, as cold as her delicate hands, skeletal and trembling with disease.  

Ironic that they'd died on their way to taking Linds to the hospital for what was destined to be her last time, the chemo had stopped working, Lindsey was going to die.  What the doctors didn't know, what no one knew, was that she wasn't going to die of the leukemia that had ended her short life before it had even had a chance to begin.  She was dead before that semi had ever even left the yard, possibly before it had even been built.  The insurance broker had mentioned that it had been a fairly new model, apparently the newer the truck the higher the cost.  Dev's family was dead and they were telling him the life of the truck that had killed them.  Funny how they knew that when they couldn't even remember what his sister's name had been.

"Hey, is this seat taken?"

Dev looked up to discover who exactly had startled him out of his reminiscing.  A pair of large amber eyes looked curiously back from behind a face caked heavily with tan foundation.  

What did she do, glob it on?

Dev surveyed the bus, nearly empty besides some jocks and that emo kid who was sitting in the very back corner.  How cliché.  

"Yes, I believe it is," Dev said, motioning to his backpack which rested on the seat beside him.

The girl made that stupid 'Uh!' noise preps have a tendency to make and rolled her eyes, walking back over to the jocks and swinging her hips widely.  Dev heard a laugh from behind him and swiveled around to see the said 'faggot' laughing his ass of in the back seat.  

"What are you laughing at, Cameron?" the prep chimed in before Dev had even had a chance to cuss the little fucker out.

"Someone finally having the brains to deny your slutty ass," the emo kid, Cameron, replied, a small smirk playing at the corners of his pierced lip.  Dev's mouth twitched, so the kid might not be so bad after all.

"What did you just fucking say to her!" one of the jocks said from where he was checking out the preps ass.  Dev rolled his eyes at his sad attempt at heroism to get into the chick's pants.  What was it that girls saw in these guys?

Cameron was saved a response by the bus pulling into the stop just in front of the school, at which point the jocks all clambered out chattering on about the previous nights game and how badass that last touchdown was.  

How exciting.

Dev stepped out of the bus, his boots making a satisfying 'thud' as they hit the clean sidewalk in front of the school's horseshoe drop off.  Dev looked up at the ancient building, arching a lean, pierced eyebrow at how much it's crumbling bricks clashed with the more modern housing that made up the town.  

"Great," Dev muttered under his breath, his voice dripping with its usual sarcasm.

"Um, excuse me," a voice he recognized as Cameron's chimed in from behind him, reminding him that he was blocking the door.  Dev sighed and made his slow way up to the school, his black boots clomping up each of the ten steps leading to the building's heavy doors.

Dev sighed again as he reached the puke-orange door and wrapped his hand around the handle.  Would it have killed them to paint it a different color?  He gave the handle a yank and nearly fell over when it swung easily open for him, he'd expected them to be heavy.

Dev turned around quickly to see if anyone had noticed his display of clumsiness and frowned when he nearly spun into Cameron.

"What?" Dev asked loudly.  Cameron just arched a brow and waited politely for him to move out of his way, not even bothering to comment on his rude behavior.  

Dev felt his face flush, which normally didn't happen in these situations.  Then again he was from the city, he was used to getting into fights over stupid shit like this, what he wasn't used to was someone just staring at him like he was a test subject.  It was unnerving, to say the least.  Especially with Cameron's crystal blue eyes that seemed to see right through to his soul…oh god did he really just think that?  That was so gay, and he wasn't gay.  He wasn't.

Dev sighed and worked his way to the office, figuring that it must be somewhere near the entrance.  Sure enough, the first door to the right had a window on it with peeling black letters that spell out 'Office'.  Dev paused in the doorway, sighing one last time before entering and putting on his best 'I don't fucking want to be here' face.

It worked, the fat lady in the button up pink shirt barely even spoke to him as she sifted through her computer for his schedule, her plastic pink nails clicking on plastic grey keys.  

"Ah, here it is, Devon Mackenzie…A junior correct?" Dev nodded, taking the schedule into his hands and listening with deaf ears as she gave her 'new student' speech.  He looked down at the schedule and frowned.  The only class that it looked like he might have any hope at passing was art, which is exactly how it had always been with Dev.

It was strange, nothing in his life had changed since the accident had happened a year ago.  He hadn't grown more juvenile than he already was and his grades, already failing, had neither slipped nor risen.  

The only difference was that he now had no one left to lecture him about it.  His previous foster parents hadn't given a rat's ass either way, not that he was complaining.  They were nice enough people and everything and he loved not having anyone riding on his ass all the time, but still, it was odd just having that disappear.  It felt like something was missing, like when you have an annoying canker sore on the inside of your cheek that you keep cursing, but when it finally heals your tongue misses it's company.

He frowned.  AP English?  How did he get placed into that?  Oh well, he'd fail either way, at least this would give him an excuse for the bad grade.  He could play the 'it was just too hard!' bullshit and get a lighter lecture, that is to say if his faster mom now even bothered to check his grades.

"Son?  Are you listening?"  Son?  Where the hell did she get off on calling him that, the fat bitch.

"Yeah, sorry," Dev said, biting back the retorts that were running around his head.  

"This is Sera, she'll be taking you to your homeroom," she said, gesturing to a rather plain looking girl with straight brown hair and braces.

Sera smiled briefly before averting her eyes and walking to the door, pausing just long enough to make sure he was following.

"My name's Dev," Dev said as they walked through the deserted halls, trying to fill up the silence with something other than the echoing of his heavy boots on the standard white tiles.  

"Yeah," was all Sera said.  Well wasn't she a chipper one?

"This is it, Chemistry with Mr. Davis," Sera said, gesturing to a door with a pastel green plate reading 214.  Dev sighed inwardly, how many floors did this place have anyways?  It looked pretty tall from the outside but judging from the window in the stairwell this floor took the pretty high off the ground as it was.

"Bye," Sera said, turning on her heel and walking away.  

Dev watched her until she walked into a class at the other end of the hall, then he took a deep breath and opened the door to his new homeroom, begging already for the day to end.