“Do we look stupid?”
“No,” Ryder answered instantly. “You look like regular school kids.”
He sounded damn happy about that fact.
I nudged Damien. “We have to be there ten minutes early to get our schedules, so we should get going.”
He nodded, and after saying goodbye to our brothers, we grabbed our backpacks and left the house. We decided on walking since every other kid would be walking too. No student parking was just one of the many things that was different about Ireland. We had been here exactly six weeks, and I couldn’t help but notice just how different everything was. The people, the accents, the food, the alcohol, the scenery, the currency, the driver’s side of a car. Anything you could think of, the Irish did it their own way, and I liked it. I had been to so many countries in a few short years fighting opponent after opponent, and Ireland was the first country where my brothers and I felt very much at home. It was a collective decision to stay here, and I couldn’t have been happier about it.
I was from New York but living there never felt like home. The compound where I grew up felt like a prison, but being here in Ireland with my brothers felt very much like home.
“Is it normal that I’m stoked to go to school?”
I laughed at Damien’s question.
“Nah, bro. I’m excited too. It’ll get boring fast but fuck it. At least we’ll be around regular people, and that’s all I care about.”
The walk to the school was quick, and by the time we entered the school grounds, I was sweating. It was too hot to be wearing the thick fleece sweater I had on, and when I caught sight of other students just wearing their school shirts and ties, Damien and I quickly rid ourselves of our sweaters and put them in our bags.
“Are you worried about your fight on Friday?”
“When am I ever worried about my fights?”
“Cut the bullshit,” Damien said as we searched for the main office. “It’s just me. You don’t have to lie.”
I glanced at my brother and sighed. “I haven’t fought since we were in Scotland. That was two months ago, and my training has been off since we moved here. It took us a while to find our house and get settled. I need to win because these next couple of bouts are it, and then we can finally be rid of Marco. I can’t lose. I can’t give him any reason to think he can ... keep us.”
I couldn’t let Marco retain his hold over us. I couldn’t.
“You’ll be great, Dominic. You always are.”
“Aw, thanks, brother.”
Damien punched my arm, making me laugh. I stopped laughed when I noticed more than a few pairs of eyes focused on us. Many of those eyes belonging to girls.
“Has your ego just inflated massively too?”
“It’s not the only thing to inflate massively.” I grinned. “Some of those chicks are hot.”
Damien laughed. We found the main office, knocked on the door, and introduced ourselves to the receptionist when she opened the door. The woman’s name was Ann, and she took all of sixty seconds to give us a crash course on the tiny school. We got our class schedules with a key, so we understood the abbreviations, and a school map. The school was tinier than I imagined. The school’s soccer pitch was bigger than its cluster of buildings.
“Ann explained that homeroom is what they call a tutor class here,” Damien said as we left the office, reading our schedules. “Our tutor is the teacher we go to if we need anything. We have registration class for ten minutes with her every morning to get marked in on the attendance role, and other mornings, like today, we have a whole period with her.”
“So she’s not someone who tutors students?”
“No,” he answered. “Each class has a tutor, we just go to ours if we need a bathroom pass or something like that. It’s just a title.”
That’s stupid.
I furrowed my brows. “I thought Ann said we were to go to our year head if we need something, but I don’t know what the fuck that is.”
“It’s the head teacher of our entire grade. We go to her if we get kicked out of class or do something wrong. Her name is Ms. Wall. Our tutor is Miss McKesson.”
“Let’s not get kicked out of class because I’ll probably just walk home out of confusion of not being able to understand who I’m supposed to report to.”
Damien laughed, shaking his head. “We’ll be fine. Let’s just find our registration class so we aren’t late.”
We found it easy enough, but when we got there, the door was locked.
“Now what?”
“Now we wait,” Damien answered. “School starts in—”
“Can I help ye’s?”
Damien and I turned to the voice, and when I realised the owner of the voice was a hot twentysomething, I stood straighter.
“We’re new here,” Damien answered the woman. “I’m Damien Slater, this is my brother Dominic—”
“But I prefer Nico,” I cut my brother off.
Damien glanced at me, then back at the woman, and said, “This is our registration class.”
“Ah, you’re me American lads.”
Hers?
“I guess we are.” I smiled, and she smiled in return.
“I’m Miss McKesson, your tutor. Follow me and we’ll get you settled in.”
She unlocked the door to the room, and we followed her inside. She gave us another crash course of the whole tutor and year head thing, then proceeded to go through the school rules with us one by one until we repeated them and understood them. Miss McKesson was hot, and I knew Damien thought she was hot too, but unlike me, he wouldn’t try his hand at seeing if something sexual could happen. This pleased me ... until I remembered that I promised Ryder that I wouldn’t do anything out of place while I attended school here.
That sucked.
Once our tutor had finished, she sat at her desk and began taking textbooks and notepads out of her bag. Damien and I looked at one another, shrugged, then sat at a table right next to one of the windows. I glanced at the green fields that led up to the forest covered mountains and relaxed. I loved it here. It was so peaceful.
“She’s so hot, the girl with the black hair.”
I looked up at my twin brother when he spoke, and I raised brow at him in question. I must have zoned out because it wasn’t only just me, Damien, and our tutor anymore. The entire classroom was filled with students; a lot of those students were girls, and they kept staring at Damien and me. I straightened up instantly.
“Settle down,” Miss McKesson announced. “We have two new students all the way from America. This is Damien and Dominic Slater. Dominic prefers to be called Nico so remember that when addressin’ ‘im. Please, be nice to them and show them around to help them get settled. Ye’ can use this period to catch up on homework due for other classes but do it silently.”
No one listened to our tutor, and the questions flew left, right, and centre at me and my brother. I didn’t mind answering them because none of them were personal. They were mostly dumb questions like where were we from, how tall we were, how old we were, were our eyes really grey, did we have girlfriends, and if Damien’s hair colour was natural or from a bottle.
I looked back out of the window just as Damien said, “Dibs.”
“What?”
“The girl who just walked into class ... I call dibs.”
I was too tired to pretend I could concentrate on what he was saying.
“What girl?”
Damien grinned at me. “Bro, to your ten o’clock is a fat ass girl with a banging body. I. Call. Dibs.”
With my interest thoroughly piqued, I turned my attention to where my brother’s eyes were focused, and the second I locked my eyes on the ass attached to the girl who turned and nodded her head in greeting to the homeroom teacher, my mouth watered.
“Nuh-uh,” I said to Damien without looking away from the girl’s ass. “You don’t get automatic dibs on as ass like that. Christ, man, look at it. It’s perfect for me.”