By the time the new freshmen made it up the steps into the central courtyard, all one thousand of the other students had already dispersed throughout the school. They traveled in small groups, checking in with old friends and excitedly sharing summer stories. Many were queued in front of the administrative offices to dispute their class schedules, and a few freshmen tried muscling their way through the crowd to skip the line before being sent to the back. All the veteran students walked quickly, forcing those who were not yet in tune with the currents of flesh to duck and weave or be forced to sidle along the walls. The sun had not yet broken through the clouds above, and the metal benches were still too cold to sit on.

Frank was a fast walker, but he was nearly swept away in the students' inexorable torrent before he ducked to the side and entered a hallway. Fluorescent lights illuminated the entire hallway, their light reflecting off the tiles to create the initial impression of sterility. Although typically there would be crumbs along the edges, pushed there by natural foot traffic, the school had made a particular impression to greet its new students with serenity in the hope that they would be encouraged to maintain this status quo. Every step from every student and teacher echoed, which typically would not be noticeable, but as most students were reveling in the crisp air outside, he could listen and count how many others were in the area. The posters were eclectic, ranging from a few reminders about food safety to exhortations to maintain Heller values. He saw one poster celebrating the then-junior class, which was covered in a mess of green scribbles that were presumably signatures. Nobody quietly sitting and eating their hasty breakfast acknowledged him.

His first class, Chinese, was outside, and Frank turned left at a junction and almost bumped into another kid, who was staring at his class schedule and neatly drawn map, seemingly perplexed at the instructions directing him to exit the building.

"Are you looking for Mrs. Huang's class? It's outside and to the left," Frank offered hesitantly. This was the first communication he had had with an unfamiliar student—did they bite? He probably wouldn't.

"Yeah, I am. Thanks," Ernest responded, his eyes firmly intent on his schedule and then the glass door in front of them, which led to an unfamiliar region of the school and was thus daunting. "Do you have her next period?"

"I do. I figured I may as well double-check that I'm in the right place, you know."

"Chinese III?" Frank nodded sharply in response.

"Interesting. What did you think of the assembly? The kids sitting next to me were so annoying, they kept whispering to each other the entire time. So disrespectful."

Frank nodded again, less sharply. "I was sitting in the back next to one of my friends, Jason if you know him, so it was quiet. He even took a nap." Ernest chuckled, then sighed again, before sharing more of his gripes with the morning's assembly.

On the other side of the school, John was completing his own ambling walk around the school. He followed the crowd's movements, and after a few minutes ended up right where he started. Seeing no particular reward for his efforts besides a few more familiar faces in the crowd, he pulled a granola bar from his pocket and started munching on it. He gingerly tested one of the benches, found it too cold, and chose instead to sit on the concrete rim of a planter, overlooking the still dewy central lawn. His next class was math, and he reviewed basic algebra formulae he knew he remembered from last year for fear of slipping up. He was enrolled in the accelerated geometry program, which was populated equally by freshmen whose parents were envious of the children closer to calculus and sophomores who, also envious of their peers, vowed to be left behind no longer.

Eventually, when it became clear to John that he would be unable to discern any hidden insight in the weaving crowds, he threw his granola bar wrapper in the nearest trash can and entered the nearest hallway to find his math class. Heller High School was roughly symmetric in its main floor plan: on the two sides of the central courtyard that were not occupied by the administrative offices and the gymnasiums, either two or three looming doors labeled with white-painted letters led to a regular grid of classrooms, numbered according to which hallway they were located in. Students and faculty alike considered it an elegant system, with the exception of the new arrivals, many of whom struggled to process the system when already suffering from sensory overload. Many classrooms were numbered incongruously, forming a healthy list of exceptions that everyone experienced knew by heart.

These hallways were decorated more gaudily than the ones Frank had explored, with the occasional painting bolted to the walls; most depicted tigers, tigers baring their fangs in the jungle or tigers jumping through rings of fire at the circus. A few emulated famous paintings, some done better than others. The poor student who had been commissioned to paint these clearly was instructed to ensure some connection to Heller as a whole, and tiger motifs were present in every painting; Edvard Munch's The Scream took on new meaning when the subject's face had stripes and was standing with the school theater in the background, looming over a landscape resembling an oil slick. John stood before these quietly, as if he were at a museum, noticing that the signatures listed years far before his time. What was the school like then, he thought, in the era represented by the dusty trophy cases and plaques? Clearly more creative.

Alan had not been trampled, in fact, and had made it out of the theater alive. He tailed the crowd, picking a person at random who was taller than the rest and traced his path through unfamiliar corridors and to the science wing, where he looked over the now emptier parking lot and realized he was exactly where he started, and still not quite sure where he was. He looked at his schedule again. His first classroom's number started with a 1; the doors around him had 2s and 3s. Alan rotated his schedule 90 degrees, and then again, in the vain hopes that the digits on the paper would miraculously move, twist, and contort into numbers that made more sense. He knew large maps of the campus were posted in a few places, but to find one of those, he needed to know where he was. He did not know if taking the wrong door would transport him into a parallel universe, or unveil yet another section of the school that he would be expected to know by heart.

"Do you need help?" A voice asked behind him, and Alan clenched his hands in fright. He turned around, expecting to see a teacher, but only saw a student with his own schedule and map in hand. "I'm new here too," the student continued with a smile, sensing that Alan was petrified.

Alan took a deep breath and asked timorously if he could explain how the numbering system worked. Behrooz pulled out his map and leaned toward Alan, and explained how each quadrant roughly corresponded an interval of 50, and how the science wing went into the 300s, and the maze of hallways next to them would be in the 200s, and that where Alan wanted to go would be all the way on the other side of the school. Alan smiled again with a "Thank you" that sounded forced, and Behrooz, worried that Alan would find another point of confusion as soon as he crossed the campus, urged him to walk with him. Alan found it easier to travel in Behrooz's wake, and no longer thought he needed to say "Sorry" and "Excuse me" constantly; in a few minutes, Behrooz delivered Alan to where he would need to be in a few minutes, and walked off himself to his own class.

Behrooz considered himself a greatly adaptable person, and had come to the conclusion even before classes began that nothing was all that bad. He greeted those he knew with handshakes, some personalized and the others firm and standard, and told himself to take it easy. The counselors had told them at the assembly that morning that while the first few weeks would be challenging, they would walk away from their initial trials reborn, wholly comfortable with their new status. Even if all the motivational phrases written on the walls had not branded themselves on Behrooz's brain yet, he perceived everything with a sagely comprehension. He was a quick study; in a few days, it would be as if he had been at the school his entire life.

Just as some of the new arrivals were growing suddenly disenchanted with their new surroundings, feeling like they had regressed to elementary school recess yet again, the school bell rang. For some, it was their first, and in the blink of an eye, the school around them became unfamiliar and hostile. While everyone else seemed to know where to go, they stood like deer in headlights until urged on by social pressure, finally scrambling to run to where they thought their first class was. Frank and Ernest stood outside Mrs. Huang's door, looking inside for any signs of activity. Everything seemed in order—desks in groups of four, tri-folds in the back on various cultural topics, vocabulary posters that they understood completely—but there was no teacher. More students began to gather, many of whom knew each other from elementary or middle school, and the half of the class that consisted of sophomores and juniors groaned when they realized there were too many freshmen in their class. They thought at this point in their high school years, they were beyond having to deal with shrimpy kids.

Right when the second bell rang to herald class officially beginning, Mrs. Huang rounded the corner with some hurry, speaking loudly "Sorry, I'm late" to nobody in particular. She opened the door quickly and stood behind the students who were letting themselves in. Frank pushed the door behind him open with his foot, giving Mrs. Huang the one extra second needed to enter without appearing clumsy or inelegant. She turned to him with some surprise, not expecting to see a freshman who did not look Asian.

"This is the Chinese III class. Chinese I is next period," she said sternly, and Frank looked nonplussed and responded in Chinese: "Chinese III. First period, correct?" Mrs. Huang's expression suddenly warmed into a smile: "Sorry, my mistake. Are you Chinese? How are you in this class?"

Frank thought for a moment, not sure how he needed to justify being in her class; after all, Mrs. Huang had administered the placement test over the summer, when she had greeted him just as warmly after being impressed by his perfectly adequate linguistic skills. Not wishing to offend or to doubt Mrs. Huang's memory, he shook his head, and she continued:

"You aren't Chinese? You speak so well, you must be very smart! What other classes are you taking?" The other students rolled their eyes. If there were a world record for the fastest time to become the teacher's pet, he certainly had won. Nevertheless, Frank promised to chat later, as he thought himself too modest to take up all of her attention. He sat next to Ernest, and Mrs. Huang launched flawlessly into her lecture, delivered in a mix of Chinese and English that took many of the freshmen by surprise, but by the end of the period they mimicked their peers' mannerisms effortlessly.

John was excited to see that geometry was as intuitive as he had hoped. One could not hold polynomials and rotate them, or use a compass and straightedge to create them from a blank sheet of paper. John did not let the calculus posters on the wall faze him, after he determined through a period of close and distracting inspection that they were so beyond his comprehension as to definitely not be geometry. One wall of the classroom was hard plastic reinforced with the occasional broad girder, serving as something of a window. Ms. Bracknell gestured outside to the student parking lot and the driveway which arced up behind it and went into the trees, joking that if there were ever an emergency, instead of following standard protocols they should all run into the hills. Few laughed. John sat with vague acquaintances, who all fortunately seemed to be of a similar level of understanding to him. He noticed that Juliet and the cute girl (maybe "the other cute girl" would be a better moniker, as John did not want to put her on some pedestal over any other cute girls, who were probably myriad) were sitting at a table closer to the window, where they and the mottled carpet were bathed in light. Ms. Bracknell moved occasionally, but tended to stand on the other side of the classroom, and so John focused on her, sometimes stealing furtive glances elsewhere.

When their first period ended, John left at a leisurely pace, noticing behind him that Beth (Elizabeth sounded weird—John could remember one name) was taking the same route. He kept walking straight ahead, hoping he'd be able to find Mrs. Huang's classroom by following others. Frank passed by him, excited for calculus. Hopefully he would be able to blend in a bit more. Jason had a different period, and he knew from the counselor that they were the only two enrolled in BC, but with any luck he wouldn't betray his true identity. Unfortunately, the first activity of the class period required logging into the school computers, something that as a new student, he had not had to do before; Frank's tablemates were amused enough at having a young and innocent freshman that they helped him determine his email address and password, and after a few wisecracks everything was kosher. The boy sitting next to him was a sophomore and happy to see another underclassman; Frank and Pranav rapidly bonded over shared interests in video games and became fast friends.

John shivered when he stepped outside and was greeted by a blast of cold air. There were only a few classrooms with doors facing the outside, and after checking each of them he found Mrs. Huang's room, where she sat and handed out numbers to each student as they entered, corresponding to a seemingly random arrangement of labels on the desks. He sat facing forward and took out his notebook and a pen. A minute or so later, Beth walked in, and through some marvel of happenstance was assigned to sit across from him; due to Mrs. Huang's perplexing seat arrangements, she had to twist to see the board, and John had to lean to the side to see past her head. They waved meekly at each other, both doing so out of a passing recognition, and remained silent. Beth thought John (she did in fact remember his name) was unusually quiet; occasionally, his face twisted, as if he could not decide if he wanted to speak or not. At the sound of the second bell, Mrs. Huang started her lecture, speaking vigorously of the opportunities learning Chinese offered. She called for a quick show of hands to see who had previous exposure to Chinese (John learned that while they were learning Mandarin, or literally "ordinary speech" in translation, many other varieties of varying similarity existed), and John was disappointed but emboldened that half the class, including Beth, had some prior exposure. This would be a chance to prove his merit, he thought. His spirit flagged slightly when at the end of class, Mrs. Huang called him James with such confidence that for a moment he doubted his own identity.

Frank and John converged at Mr. T's classroom at roughly the same time, shortly after their passing period began, and discovered the door was open. Mr. T sat at his desk in the back of the room and smiled warmly to greet them. Mr. T's classroom was decorated with a patchwork of designs; a skeleton, its jaw hanging limp, was tucked away in a corner, next to a movie poster for Casablanca and one explaining the trigonometric functions. Cabinets lined the back of the large classroom behind Mr. T's small desk. He looked at the two prompt arrivals and decided to reward their punctuality; he turned behind him, opened one of the cabinets, and pulled out a banana for each of them. John politely declined, but Frank took his, looked it over, shrugged, and started eating.

Mr. T moved quickly through his self-introduction, joking that they were lucky to have him and not the other teacher because he tried to make class interesting—a hard task given that he taught health education, but if the skeleton was any indication, his class had some character. There were about fifteen minutes remaining at the end of his lecture, and he encouraged everyone to get started on their homework from other classes. Scattered conversations broke out, which Mr. T allowed as long as they were vaguely academic. Frank took out his calculus worksheet and started to work, hoping nobody else would notice that he was doing something unusual. Mr. T did, however.

"Don't forget the negative sign there; the integral of sine is negative cosine," Mr. T quietly commented, tracing a circle with his pen where Frank made the error. He nodded in thanks, and after Mr. T left, his tablemates turned to him curious to know what he was working on.

"I'm doing my math homework. What are you working on?" Frank asked one of them who seemed particularly interested.

"I am too. Is that geometry?" he responded, his curiosity not yet dissipated.

"No, this is calculus." Frank thankfully received no reaction but a drawn-out "Damn...", and promptly went back to work. Mr. T, surprisingly, knew everyone's names by the end of class, and said bye to them appropriately. After they left, he quickly straightened the desks and waited for his senior English students to arrive.

Jason was thankful that the first few days of PE involved no physical exertion, and instead would be spent in the gym and the locker rooms getting acquainted with their surroundings. The PE teacher's whistle startled Jason, and he stepped to the right just in time to avoid walking directly into Louis, who sneered at him. Ms. Stevens spoke loudly and with wide, sweeping gestures, sorting students by gender as they filed in, even after the bell rang. She was surprised so many struggled to find the gymnasium they were in, but was understanding.

"We live in the digital age. I will be posting your assignments online as well as explaining them in class. If you do not complete a week's credits during class, you will be able to make them up over the weekend by doing extra exercise. This means you will need to journal rigorously what you complete. I want to see a map of your route if you go running..."

"Does she really think anyone will do this?" Tom asked Ted, who was surprisingly paying attention. His mind was already racing with ideas on how to cheat the system and get free credits. He lifted weights on the weekends, and Ms. Stevens would undoubtedly be impressed when she saw him going above and beyond. Ted was so caught up in the idea of getting something for free that he did not realize Ms. Stevens did not care exactly when her students exercised as long as they were staying healthy. Ted mouthed an affirmative response, not wishing to get in trouble on the first day.

"You two! Quiet!" Ms. Stevens shouted, pointing in their direction; all of their classmates' heads swiveled in unison, following her finger.

"Sorry, Ms. Stevens," Ted responded, while Tom remained silent.

Lunch came quickly, and the students streamed out of their classrooms with a new understanding of the new life that awaited them. Many lingered with old friends they knew from previous grades, finding the familiarity soothing, even if over the coming weeks they would drift apart. Students' individual schedules dictated their social lives and where they ate their meals. The less courageous ones walked in the proximity of the popular kids and hoped to be noticed, but all social circles were in flux. Upperclassmen avoided the freshmen like the plague, and if a group of new students happened to take a popular dining spot before old territorial claims could be reasserted, then so be it: it was theirs. Other students filled in the void left by last year's graduates, whether they realized it or not. Beth, Juliet, and Regina found a sunny spot by the lawn and proceeded to compare notes. They were ecstatic to discover they had the same English class the next period, and immediately their discussion shifted to what experiences they did not share.

"You won't believe this, guys. There's someone in my health class taking calculus," Juliet shared after everyone had finished their meals and felt like gossiping.

"Jason? He's kind of creepy. I don't like him," Regina responded dismissively before taking out her phone.

"No, someone else. I forget his name though, but it's not Jason."

"Is that unusual?" Regina responded, unsure if this was exciting information. She didn't know who this person was, but if Jason was creepy, the odds were good that this kid would be similarly repulsive.

"I think it is. We're both in the accelerated geometry class, you're in the regular one, and we're ahead of schedule. They must both be geniuses," Beth concluded, and they returned to idle chatter until the bell rang, upon which they joined their peers lingering outside Ms. Baldwin's doorway.

It was love at first sight. The first time Regina saw John, she fell madly in love with him. Something about his wandering eye, sharp haircut, and even sharper chin promised, at least to her, a fast track to success through his presumed charisma; his sweater, a carpet of blue and gray diamonds on a brown background, revealed not only pragmatism but a keen sense for color and fashion. His outfit not being the typical high school student's first choice was irrelevant, as surely there was some muscle underneath those sleeves. A simple hypothesis to verify.

"Are you cold?" Regina asked, turning sharply and letting her hair dance. She was about John's height, and stared directly into his eyes and hoped for an answer.

"Uh, I don't think so," John replied shyly, and turned away slightly. "Who are you?"

"I'm looking out for my fellow classmates, you know. I'm Regina," she said, offering her hand for a handshake. His hands were cold. Firm grip, she thought, very respectable. Beth and Juliet exchanged confused looks, but John did not seem to be dismissing Regina's inquiries. He found it strange that Beth and Juliet were watching him as they talked—it reminded him of one of those fraternity hazing rituals, although at least this did not involve a beer keg. Not long after, Ms. Baldwin arrived and let them inside.

Ms. Baldwin was a firm believer in the power of seating charts to mold impressionable freshmen's minds. She thus always made the first seating chart completely random, and only afterward did she assess how much she regretted that initial decision. Already she could tell that some old friends were despondent at being separated by a few desks, while others fondly embraced as if they hadn't just talked a few minutes prior. John was fortunate enough to be seated with three familiar faces: Regina, who was convinced she was his new best friend; Juliet, who thought Regina's uncharacteristically boisterous behavior was a sign that she had lost her marbles at last; and Ted, who listened warily and snapped silent when Ms. Baldwin began, not wishing to get chewed out a second time.

English was John's favorite subject, and even though he had not read the poem previously, he did believe there was no frigate like a book to take him lands away. John often read stories multiple times, especially when unfamiliar. They unlocked emotions within him, following a simple formula: a happy story would predictably impart a glow of fuzziness that would last for a day or two at most, and a sad story would do the opposite. Beyond this binary, there existed many shades of nuance and feeling, which John felt but could not always put names to, and for this reason John enjoyed new stories, always reading carefully to see what fruits of moral virtue they offered. He assumed by their first book being Frankenstein that he'd have dreadful nightmares.

John saw Alan, whom he was relieved to discover survived the day without any visible emotional scarring, and his new friend Behrooz, for biology, his last class of the day. The sunlight breaking through the windows did little to alleviate his drowsiness, but at least John was used to it. Alan positioned a pencil under his chin to avoid falling asleep, a clever maneuver he hoped nobody else would notice.

Behrooz was most excited about doing labs. Despite not being a die-hard science fanatic, he respected the quiet discipline that it required to mix and pour in the exact right proportions to change the world. His mother worked in pharmaceuticals as an executive, and had tried when Behrooz was younger to start his interest on a similar path. Even now, although he had paid it little attention in years, a periodic table still hung in a corner of his room where he did not see it frequently. He was tempted to zone out too, like most of his peers, until the lab safety quiz was passed out, an interactive activity expertly designed to make students comfortable about potentially needing to clean up acid and broken glass. Mr. Reinhardt invited one brave student to try using the safety shower, an ugly mess of pipes that maybe could pass for plumbing in Sparta, so they could tell all the other students how important it was to avoid its use. Behrooz volunteered, and gasped when he was sprayed in the face with a high-intensity blast of cold water.

"Not so pleasant, is it?" Mr. Reinhardt dryly commented in a faint German accent. In their new lab groups, which they were to be loyal to with unflagging determination, the students wandered through the classroom looking for all the other important details. Some of them had never seen Erlenmeyer flasks or microscopes before, which all remained in cabinets with a stern warning to not fiddle with them unless absolutely necessary; this last point was underscored repeatedly whenever a student asked if they could touch some piece of fancy lab equipment. John spotted a deflated balloon curled up in the rafters, wrapped around another steel beam that served a double purpose as architecture and aesthetic; he asked Mr. Reinhardt about it after class, who remarked that he had been waiting for the janitors to take care of it for years and that he'd be forever grateful to whomever found a way to dispose of it safely.

"Safely? Are old balloons dangerous?"

"No, John, I don't want some fool falling off a ladder and cracking their skull," Mr. Reinhardt responded kindly, as if John didn't just ask an obvious question. Seeing him startle, he clarified: "That was a bit morbid. I apologize. One could try taping a few yardsticks together." He took John's inquiry as a sign he was volunteering to fix the problem, an attitude he looked upon favorably. Before he could hint more strongly that the yardsticks were in the cabinet under lab table 4 and that if John didn't fix the problem, he would have to do it himself, the final bell rang. John was tempted to ask why that terribly scary talk about ladders was needed if the solution was so elementary, but he did not want to take Mr. Reinhardt's time from those with more serious inquiries.

A crescendo of energy that had built up in the last few minutes released itself along with the students, who moved with great urgency toward the parking lot and the bus stop. John was excited to take public transportation for the first time in a while, and looked for familiar faces who were doing the same; he saw Beth checking her phone by a tree—she seemed to be everywhere. Frank passed by him at a quicker pace, and John was surprised to see him keep following the street and disappear. Alan left his last class still unsure of where to go; his parents had told him earlier to meet at the parking lot, but which one? The safest bet, which fortunately was the one closest to him, was the same parking lot from which he began his journey. He checked his schedule again to make sure that he had completed that day without a flaw. Even as Alan left school, he clutched his schedule, now wrinkled and dotted with sweat. His parents, who thought the first day of high school was notable enough to pick him up in tandem, were ecstatic to hear he enjoyed himself. Jason stood alone across the street from the school, looking intently for his mother's car, which among a sea of hundreds of others was unlikely to stand out. He paced back and forth a while until the honk of a horn alerted him; he rushed inside and closed the door.

Discussion Questions:

Can John be considered a protagonist?

Heller High School is set in Silicon Valley, and many aspects of the school are described as academically competitive. Can you identify any other traces of this competitiveness and their effects?

How are different teachers characterized, and how does this characterization reinforce the setting?