1 A Prank & A Weird Janitor

 The term 'school' always managed to make Jazmin's stomach shift and her rosy lips twitch faintly. She didn't dislike school or anything. Her grades were often more than satisfactory and there was never a reason to not anticipate Biology classes spent exploring the world around her.

However, it was the scene she never failed to encounter at the school doorway that displeased her. In the wide corridor, flanked with towering grey-streaked marble walls, standing on the white linoleum floor were human teenagers messing around.

'Messing around' meant that the adolescents were enthusiastically engaging in physical intimacy with the motive of stimulating their bits.

A few meters from Jazmin's frozen figure, she sited an unfamiliar gorgeous brunette with layers of makeup cornered against a white wall by a boy with frizzy dark hair and enough tattoos to have mistaken him for a vandalized sculpture. A nasty vandalized sculpture, that is. The brunette's lips were painted red, almost a vampiric dye, and the lipstick left lucid imprints on the young man's cheeks and collarbone as she licked his body clean with her tongue. Several paces from them was a similar, stomach-churning scene.

Her first day in a new school, and quite an...intimate first day it was.

Jazmin quickly turned her eyes away with a flicker of derision subsiding in her brown eyes. Focusing her thinning attention on the floor that presently seemed much more alluring, she began shuffling her way to her black locker which was sandwiched in a corner. At least the position of her new locker was favorable. 

There were two types of seventeen-year-olds, Jazmin had observed. Firstly, there was the bodacious lot which was disagreeable with the system planted by their parents, the country, and every nosey adult in existence. These bold kids were adventurous but insecure, as all teenagers were. Adventure in the form of lust and desire was their heedless attempt at sliding into a place that they felt 'needed'. Sexually, physically, and emotionally. Not that Jazmin was cognizant of these needs.

Jaz found this lot to be like lost sheep. The kind of sheep that sought to be slaughtered and eaten by the repercussions of their decisions. 

Jazmin, however, comprised of the other lot. The 'goody-two-shoes', they were called. These were the kids who were believed to grow into stringent, unsympathetic, workaholic adults clad in black and white outfits and tight, black ties. The kind of adults who would take coffee for breakfast, lunch, and supper, sleep for an hour each day, and work 24/7 as though the oxygen in their lungs was produced by their job.

The type of adult, they said, who would not worry about their spouse having sex with a college student. After all, their marriage had been merely a bond meant to maintain the normal cycle of life. The bond had been a ploy to hide the fact that they were, in fact, bipolar, asexual insomniacs.

Not that there was anything wrong with being a bipolar, asexual insomniac. Jazmin was contentedly becoming such an entity.

Jazmin made her way to that shady, comfy, little corner and opened her locker, her palms damp with sweat because she had a queasy feeling in her gut. "Please don't be like last time...please don't be like last time..." She recited softly under her caffeine-scented breath as she opened the locker at the pace of a snail. The cold, metallic door creaked open, her fingers trembling imperceptibly.

She was in a new school, but all schools had them... A miscellany of queries accrued into a labyrinth. Maybe they would forget to do it today? Or maybe they decided to skip school today? Or perhaps they had no clue that there would be a new, bespectacled nerd gracing their elite school?

Soon, she had opened her locker entirely. She flinched, in shock, as nothing — nothing at all! — happened. It felt like a miracle. 

No, it was a miracle. Jazmin sighed and reached for her book for the first session, English.

Suddenly, a spray of rainbow-ish color filled her view no sooner had she stretched her arm out. Confetti, sprinkles, and cream were splattered onto her small, freckled face. Jazmin quickly stepped back from her locker which had abruptly welcomed her with a less than delightful surprise.

Mopping the blanket of sugar from her face, she heard peals of rustic laughter break out a little distance behind her. Jazmin tilted her head slightly, her brown eyes shining coldly. Her irate gaze fell on two taller, unfamiliar boys who were laughing with their hands pressed on their stomachs. The girl frowned slightly and produced a mirror from her bag. Indeed, Jaz(who was not a girly girl or anything similar) kept a mirror in her bag. Nonetheless, the mirror was not for scrutinizing her pimpled cheeks but it was for emergency purposes when her light microscope wasn't acting itself.

Her delicate, porcelain-smooth skin was now imperceptible. It was like glimpsing into Squidward's worst nightmare.

Concealed by a thick veil of sugary monstrosities. The cream even reached her hair. Looking at her reflection, Jazmin's eyes only glittered darkly before she returned the mirror to her backpack. Tightening her grasp on the straps of the tacky grey backpack, she trudged, ominously quiet, to the girls' bathroom.

"Loser! Can't even put up a fight, huh?" A bulky, square-faced boy hollered mockingly, his partner-in-crime contributing with a chuckle.

What did she do for them to act so immaturely?

Anyways, she would act dumb and walk away. Yes...walk away, Jaz. Don't throw your encyclopedia at them, like you did to the ones in middle school. You know that will affect your transcript, Jaz.

Jazmin's reddish fingertips dug deeper into the straps of her bag, all color draining from her small, heart-shaped face. She stepped into the bathrooms just as the bell rang, signifying the start of lessons. A tiny muscle beneath her skin motioned slightly with grief.

"What a way to start your year, kid," the janitor who was mopping the floor outside the bathroom muttered to her. The floor wasn't dirty. It was spotless as always, noting the academy was an elite school(though the student body acted like nymphomaniacs in a country with a low mortality rate, minus Jazmin).

The janitor's face was turned the other way, but Jazmin could make out the back of their greasy turquoise uniform and their grey-streaked, chestnut hair which stopped at his shoulders in their individual, pointy ends.

She tilted her face away from the janitor and began splashing her face with water. The sink filled with sugar as wet cream and confetti slid off her face. The substances marred the sink. After a long while, Jazmin released a tired sigh, eyeing her still-sugary hair in the mirror above the sink. Peeling off a yellowish lock of hair, her gaze smoldered even more with distaste.

She couldn't get that off her hair, even with water. And she was late for class. It was a bad start to her first year in a new school. The bullies in every school were the same, pranking on the new kid. Unremorseful brutes. And the scene in every high school's entrance, elite or not, had not changed a bit.

The girl chanted a mantra in her heart. Yeah, they were unremorseful brutes. Brutes who were actually cowardly and insecure. She knew this as she, too, had been one. A bully, that is. However, that was then. This is now. She was no longer the same, nor would she ever fish old memories to resurface. This was a new Jazmin Oprah Everlyne. A new her.

Jazmin's brow wriggled slightly as she straightened her back. Producing a raven-black bandana from her backpack, she tied it over her straight, cream-coated hair before staring nervously at the mirror.

She looked like a short, round-faced buckaroo.

Tasteless yet adequate.

With a flat sigh, her feet began veering to the classroom. The janitor sent her an odd, probing look.

"That...she kind of looks familiar...like someone I know...hmmm..." The janitor couldn't help but linger their gaze on Jazmin's slim figure—miniaturized by her baggy uniform—that was vanishing down the archway with each stride. Golden light from the rising sun filtered through the glass beyond the archway. Light drenched the silvery floors as the sound of her small steps disappeared. The janitor narrowed their eyes suspiciously before a flicker of alarm emerged in their eyes.

"It couldn't be..." They said to themselves, their eyes widening with shock. They took a step forward, wanting to chase after Jazmin but stopped themselves. They pursed their lips and, ridding their hands of water, produced their phone from their pocket.

"Uh...yes, hello," the janitor began nervously, addressing the person on the other end. Their face was shrouded in the darkness at the end of the doorway, but even in the darkness, the janitor's uncanny smile shone distinctively. Their back was inclined casually against a wall with their right hand pressed into their pocket.

They chuckled at something the person on the other end said before articulating, in a lowered tone,

"About that...boss, you won't believe me, but tell the others... I've finally found her." The smile on the janitor widened, revealing several gaps where their teeth should have been.