It all happened so quickly. When my dad got sick, we had to move to the city so he could get treatment in the hospital. None of us had seen this coming. Especially me.
So I traded the wilderness for the city. My home for some crappy apartment. My life alone in the woods with my family for this insanity of city life and going to a big high school. Nothing could have prepared me for it. Nothing. It was like a bad dream. But it wasn’t a dream. It was real. Too real.
On my first day at Citadel High, I felt like I was on another planet. I was a freak, a sixteen-year-old freak who had grown up in the woods. Off the grid, as my father liked to say. The clothes I wore were secondhand, given to me by the Cancer Society, which was taking care of us. My regular clothes would have made me stand out even more than I already did. I hated what I had to wear. My mom said I didn’t have a choice. I had to go to school. My dad wasn’t well enough to continue with my homeschooling, and my mom said she was too upset to help me with my schoolwork.
So I arrived at school on my own, first thing in the morning on our third day in town. The hallways were filled with kids shouting and bumping into each other. They all looked at me and they could tell I was lost and hopeless in this zoo. I’d been lost before in the forest, but it was never like this. I could always find my way home. The wind, the sun, even the birds could guide me. But here I had no guides. This was lost lost.
And I hated to admit it, but I was scared.
I didn’t even know where I was supposed to go or what I was supposed to do. I was about to bail on the whole crappy thing when someone walked up to me. A big guy, maybe a head taller than me and thick around the neck. He stood in front of me and just looked at me, a smirk on his face. “Holy Christ,” he said, staring at me. “Where did you come from?” He sniffed the air. “When was the last time you had a bath?”
Some other students were watching. They began to laugh. I wanted to run. I just didn’t know where to run to.
Then this girl who had pink hair and a piece of metal stuck across her nose walked up and jabbed an elbow in the gut of the tough guy in front of me. “Leave him alone, Austin,” she said. “I know you can’t help being a jerk, but lighten up.”
I couldn’t help but notice she had some words painted on the back of her neck: Wild at Heart. I think maybe she scared me more than big Austin, but at least she was trying to help.
Austin snorted once, just like a bear I had met in the woods one summer. Then shot me a look that said this wasn’t over. But he left.
The girl looked at me. “You must be autistic or something,”
“What?” I asked.
“Oh, so you do speak English. Got a name?”
“Cody,” I said. “Cody Graham.”
Kids were still looking at me, at us.
She didn’t seem to care, but I felt like I had bugs crawling on me.
“I gotta get to class. Where do you need to be?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been here before.”
“I’ll take you to the office.”
“Thanks.”
In the office, I saw a kid with a nose-bleed and a girl who was crying. She kept repeating, “But I lost my iPhone,” over and over.
There was this loud noise and I jumped. The girl shook her head. “It’s just the bell, Moonboy. I gotta go. See that guy in there?” She pointed to a small inner office. “That’s Mr. Costanzo, one of the vice-principals. Talk to him. He’ll know what to do.” She squeezed my arm and then left.
I stood in the doorway to his office. Mr. Costanzo was sitting at a desk, staring at a pile of papers. He finally looked up. “What?” he asked.
“I don’t know. That girl said I should talk to you.”
“So talk. Who are you? I don’t recognize you.”
“Cody Graham,” I said. “I was told I had to come here. To go to school.”
Then something seemed to click. He smiled. “Oh, right. The kid from the woods.”
“Yeah,” I said. “The kid from the woods.”
“Welcome to Citadel High. I looked at the record of work you’ve been doing on your own. Very impressive. I’ll set you up with a schedule and get you into some classes. What do you think of the school so far?”
I just shrugged and tried not to scream.