I just kinda sit back as I watch more than half the class get up to leave for their first period classes. Even the teacher leaves the classroom to go somewhere else. This is why I never understood the point of homeroom. I mean, what’s the point of hauling everyone into a classroom for like 15 minutes if half of them leave to go somewhere else? Sure, it makes sure everyone is somewhere they can hear the announcements, but that could easily be done in first period, right? Whatever, that’s not important right now anyway. I look around the classroom to see if I can find any hint as to what we’re doing in Calc. At my old school, we just finished up limits, which was stupidly tedious and I’d hate to have to go through that mess again, even if it means more practice.
As I look around, I catch a glimpse of Sunset Shimmer, coming right into the classroom! Man, did I luck out. I can’t believe I have my first period with her! Even better, she notices me in the back and gives me this smile and waves at me. I wave back as she walks towards where I am. Awesome! “Hey Lightning!” she says, sitting in the desk next to me.
“Hey Sunset,” I reply.
“Looks like we have the same math class, huh?”
“It would appear so,” I start. “Hey Sunset, would you happen to know what section we’re on?” She pauses for a moment to think about it.
“Well, we just finished up limits, so I’d assume we’re going to start differentials and integrals today.” I let out a sigh of relief. Thank goodness it’s just some relatively simple stuff. Sunset finishes taking her stuff out of the bag as the teacher, Ms. Sugarsweet, I think, comes into the classroom. A few minutes later, the bell rings and class starts. A surprise to no one, the first thing Ms. Sugarsweet does once class starts is announce to everyone that I’m the new guy. “Class, we have a new student today.” She says. “Lightning Blitz could you please stand up?” I stand up and wave awkwardly at the dozens of pairs of eyes staring in my direction. At least I won’t have to do this again after today.
I take my seat and class goes on like normal. Ms. Sugarsweet goes up to the board and starts scribbling stuff all over the place for us to take notes on. Like Sunset said, we’re learning about differentials and integrals, meaning we just take the derivatives and antiderivatives of functions. Sounds complicated I know, but it’s actually pretty simple in concept. Besides, she does a really good job of explaining everything so that it actually makes sense which is a neat bonus. After the frenzy of notes, she hands out some worksheets, one for class and one for homework, I assume. “Okay everyone, you have the remainder of class to finish these sheets. You can do them in whatever order you like, but you need to turn at least one in before you head out the door. Whatever you don’t finish is due tomorrow at the beginning of class. You may work quietly with the person next to, if you’d like.”
After hearing that last part, I turn to Sunset and give her this goofy grin, to which she giggles at. She moves her desk closer to me, so that it’s easier for us to work together. We look at the two worksheets, decide which seems more difficult, and then get to work. Pretty quickly, we start cranking out answers like nobody’s business. We finish the whole thing in about ten minutes. I offer to take Sunset’s paper up to the front and Ms. Sugarsweet gives me a little smile as I drop our papers in the basket. As I sit back down, I see that we only have a few minutes left of class, so Sunset and I decide not to start the next sheet. We kind of just sit in silence for a little bit and I start to feel awkward. I feel like I should say something to her, anything, but my mind is just drawing a complete blank. I wonder if she’s feeling the same way? Probably not. I open my mouth to say something, but instead of words the only sound audible is the bell signaling that class is over.
Instead of saying whatever improv nonsense that was about to come out of my mouth, I just say “See you around, Sunset.”
“See you, Lightning,” she says with a smile. We walk out of the classroom and go our separate ways. Man, what a girl. She’s beautiful, she’s smart… She’s like the whole package! Granted I did just meet her today so you never know. But still. Sometimes you just get certain feelings about someone or something, ya know? Anyway, I take a quick peep at my schedule to see where I’m headed. Right. Physics with Mr. Tarran. I make my way over to where the classroom is at and enter. In the classroom, I’m greeted with a bunch of black tables that fit two people each and tons of equipment that’s just out in the open. Guess things get pretty hands on in this class. Which is a good thing. I like that.
Once again, I head to the back of the class and grab a seat at a table. I put my backpack on the floor and dig through for my Physics stuff. But when I look back up at the table, I’m met with this pink girl with crazy poofy hair staring at me with these big baby blue eyes and a massive grin. “GYAHH!” I quickly cover my mouth, slightly surprised by the sound I just made.
“Hi there!” The girl says to me.
“Um, h-hi?”
“You wanna be my lab partner?”
“I uh, um… Your what?” I am so lost at this point.
“Well you see, we have this BIG project that we’re starting today and I was wondering if you’d like to be my lab partner!”
“Oh, well… Sure. I guess.” I mean, I guess I don’t really have any other choice. Or maybe I do. But really, how likely is it that some random person would want to partner up with the new guy who they know nothing about? Other than this girl, apparently.
“Yay!” She immediately zips into the chair to my left and gives me another massive grin. How on Earth did she do that? What did my eyes just witness? “My name is Pinkie Pie, by the way.”
“Lightning Blitz,” I reply.
“Oooooohh! I like your name!”
“Thanks, I like yours too. So uh, why did you want to be my lab partner specifically? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“Weeeellll, I saw you come into the classroom and I realized that I didn’t recognize you, which must mean that you’re new because I know everybody, and I mean everybody at CHS and because you’re new, you might not know anyone yet and might not have any friends which made me sad so I decided that I’d come and ask to be lab partners so that you’d also have at least one friend!” She explains, suddenly pulling me into a really tight hug. I can feel my face warming up.
“Wow that’s… really sweet of you, Pinkie.” Right after I say that, she hugs me even tighter, and I start to feel a little crushed. She finally releases me when the bell rings and Mr. Tarran walks into the classroom. Like in math, he starts off with attendance and announcing my existence to the class. But after that, he goes over to his desks and grabs a stack of thick packets and starts to hand them out to the class. “This, ladies and gentlemen,” he announces, “is going to be your upcoming project.” A few students groan in response to hearing this. “This is intended to be a fun, more lenient project. We are going to use your knowledge of air resistance, momentum, and acceleration due to gravity for an egg drop test. You and a partner will be tasked to construct a device to cradle the egg to prevent it from cracking or bursting. We will do a total of three drop tests from varying heights.
“You will not be graded solely on whether your egg survives or not, but by the creativity and design of your device. Obviously, the survival of your egg will gain you more points towards your grade, but the main goal is to be creative and to have fun with this project. Feel free to go wild. You will have all of this week to brainstorm ideas and come up with your design and then the following two weeks to build and test your designs. Also, all of what I am telling you now will be on the first page of your packet. Any questions?” He looks around and sees that nobody raises their hand. “Well, with that being all, you may use the rest of this time to find a partner, if you don’t have one already, and begin to brainstorm your designs.”
And with that, the students in the class start scrambling about looking for someone to work with. Seeing that I have the first part already taken care of thanks to Pinkie here, I look over the packet. Like Mr. Tarran said, everything he went over was on the first page, so I move on to the next which just prompts some questions about what we want to do. I grab my pencil and notebook and start to brainstorm some ideas, and can see that Pinkie is doing the same. At least, her face seems to have some form of concentration written on it. Let’s see…
“Okay, here’s an idea,” I say after a few minutes of brainstorming. I start drawing as I tell Pinkie my idea. “So I was thinking that we could have a box with a pouch suspended in the middle by four rubberbands, right? And then-”
“We could make a parachute for the box!” It’s almost as if she read my mind.
“Yes, exactly,” I roughly sketch out the parachute. “Actually, we might want to use more than one parachute. The added air resistance from them should in theory accommodate from the weight of the box and egg. We could use newspapers or something for that?” I ask, looking over to Pinkie, who just smiles and nods rapidly in response. I erase the single parachute and then draw out multiple. “And I was thinking for the little pouch, we could line it with-”
“Marshmallows!” Wait what? Is she for real?
“Uh, I was actually thinking cotton balls,” I pause to think about her proposal though. “Although I suppose the density of smaller marshmallows would produce a more effective cushion. My only concern with large marshmallows is that they would be too dense to act as a cushion and end up exerting an undesirable amount of force on the egg. Although I guess we could stretch them out to lessen some of that density… What do you think?” I ask, turning to her. She just gives me this blank stare. All of a sudden, she pulls a bag of marshmallows… out of her hair? Was that seriously there this whole time? She then proceeds to shove a handful into her mouth.
“I think they taste super yummy!” She exclaims. “Want one?” She puts the bag in front of me, the sweet aroma filling my nose. Sure, why not. I reach into the bag and grab one, and pop it into my mouth. It… tastes just like you’d expect a marshmallow to taste.
“Thanks, Pinkie.” She replies by throwing her arms around me and squeezing me yet again. We go on making some edits to our design. We decide to go with smaller marshmallows for the pouch cushion. We finalized our design a few minutes before the end of class and when I go to high five Pinkie, she gives me another hug instead. “Heh, that works too I guess.” We kinda just sit back and eat a few marshmallows here and there for the rest of class. The bell rings and we get up to leave. “Well,” I say, turning to look at Pinkie. “I’ll see you around, Pinkie. This was pretty fun, to be hone-” Pinkie gives me one last hug, but this time I actually hug her back.
“I can already tell we’re gonna be besties!” Honestly, that doesn’t seem too bad. We walk out of the classroom, and I head off to my third period class, English with Ms. Hack. I go into the classroom and honestly, nothing much happens. No new people speaking out to me, sure Ms. Hack has me stand up for the class like usual but besides that, English is just English. She hands out the book we’re reading, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and tells us how many annotations we need. She gives us the class to get started and says we’ll discuss on Wednesday, and that’s English.
But up next is a big one, a real make or break class depending on who’s in it and what we’re doing in it. I pack up my stuff and head on over to the locker room to prepare for whatever is about to happen in gym class.