Chapter 21; I'm Not Singing

The bell rang as I entered the large performing arts center, which was basically the drama stage with rows of seats. Kids my age were all around the room, and I noticed Toby talking some girl very ecstatically on stage. Taking a seat towards the back of the room, a skinny older man with dark skin stood on stage. "Alright everyone, get to your seats please." I looked around while everyone was sitting that there was only fifteen students in the class including me. "Welcome back from the weekend" who I presume was Mr. Thorn said. "Today everyone's going to continue working on their skits, so after attendance we can get to work."

I stared blankly, knowing that my angst of the whole day was probably so much that it might even be contagious to the people around me. Mr. Thorn called out names, in which the only name I could recognize was Toby's. When my name was called everyone looked at me, but I just ignored them because I wasn't going to see them again in about two months.

After everyone's names were called, they sort of got up and went into little groups, most likely working on their skits. The people talking about random topics and different things filled my ears. I felt like I wanted to block it out with doing something. Sinking back even more into my seat, I leaned on my automail arm.

Gladly though to have something to do, Mr. Thorn got down from the stage and started walking towards me. "Alright Edward, welcome to this school. Or do you want to be called Ed?"

"Ed" I said, thinking about getting up but really didn't want to so I just settled with sinking in even more into the chair. "So what we've been recently working on is of these mini skits to learn about placement on stage, how to create characters, and so on. Some are also doing songs, in which it's the same with the skits only singing and a little more dramatic."

Mr. Thorn then was about to say something else when a student appeared next to him. She had a jean jacket on and was wearing high heeled boots, making her taller than me by a few inches. I frowned at her as she spoke to Mr. Thorn.

"Mr. Thorn, Bruno isn't here today and Violet told me that he went with his family on vacation to Hawaii until the end of June. Could you please get me a new partner that can actually sing this time?"

"How about Ed here?" They both looked at me for a moment as I stared back lazily. Then what they had said clicked in my brain, and I sprang up to my feet from the chair. "WHAT?! Hell no! I'm not singing!" I tried to put more words out into what I was saying to get the point across that singing is not something that I do, but I couldn't say anything, which just made me get frustrated even more.

"Ed, please stop yelling, you're disrupting the class" Mr. Thorn spoke sternly. "Look, I think everyone else has their partners, and Jesa here is the only one that doesn't have anyone to perform with. You two are now a team. Get to work."

With that, Mr. Thorn walked away to another group and started chatting with them. Jaw tight and eyebrows furrowed, I stared at Jesa. Her reaction to me was the complete opposite to mine, having a smile as she shrugged. "So I don't want any conflict with us together, but I can't wait to start working with you, if you're good at singing."

"I'm not singing."

She put her hands on her hips. "Dude, we need to work together on this. I'm going to graduate early, and the only way I can do that is passing this class. This project is the second biggest one we've done, and if we screw it up I might not graduate this year!"

"No."

My eyebrows were furrowed; my eyes stared with the same intensity as before. I flicked my head slightly to the right to get one of my bangs out of my vision to see Jesa opening and closing her mouth in frustration. I smirked.

"Guess I win," I muttered, turning and sitting back down into the chair, feeling myself sink in the velvet-like material. I closed my eyes, my grin still on my face as I heard Jesa start to stay something but then closed her mouth once again. A scuffing of shoes made me believe she was pacing.

The scuffing stopped and I opened one eye to find her taking a step closer to me.

"Come on, do it for me? For some sibling you might have? I don't know. You might not even have a sibling but-"

-Alphonse would want me to sing. To get home I guess. Damn it, what the hell am I putting myself into, singing for a stupid thing that won't be important to me in two months! This is totally useless, when will I have to ever sing again?! Scar's not going to walk up to me and say 'sing or die!' or whatever! This is total bull-

"-But I have to know if you can sing at least. What songs do you know?"

"How the hell do you expect me to answer that?! I don't really listen to songs in my free time" I grunted, closing my eyes again.

I heard Jesa face-palm clearly. "I'm never going to graduate" she muttered. "Can we try this? Repeat after me; anything you can be I can be greater, sooner or later I'm greater than you."

I opened my eyes and sat up from the chair, turning my face away from her. "Anything you can be I can be greater," I muttered. I saw out of the corner of my eye Jesa putting her hands on her hips again. "Sing it with effort, like you mean it. Imagine you're singing to one of the most irritating people that you tease all the time or something, I don't care. Just. Sing."

The image of Winry came up into my mind, yelling at her back as to why I broke my automail once again, or that I'm not drinking milk or something. Having the thought of me telling Winry that I'm greater than her sounded silly, but it made me stop frowning at the situation I was in.

I turned my head towards Jesa this time, and was tired of fighting over singing or not, so I took a deep breath and sang 'like' I cared. "Anything you can be I can be greater; sooner or later I'm greater than you."

She then smirked and said "No you're not."

"Yes, I am!" I said without thinking. Jesa looked straight into my eyes with as much conviction as I have seen her have in the last five minutes that I've known her. "No, you're not!"

"Yes, I AM!" I responded, raising my volume and standing up from the chair, my bangs flopping up and then down from the sudden movement. I flicked my hair out of the way with my hand, frowning at it for a moment before turning back to Jess.

"Nope, you're not" was all she gave me, with crossed arms and a glint in her eye that said 'Bring it.' I growled slightly, showing teeth as I clenched my fists. I took a step towards her and almost yelled directly in her face "yes I am, yes I AM, AND YES. I. AM!"

"Okay then." My breath that was to be used for yelling then was let out through clenched teeth from the realization that Jesa was only toying with me. "Geez you're so stubborn. Like an anime character I can't really put my finger on…"

My breath hitched in my throat as my body froze in place, staring at her as my eye widened. "Eh, can't think of him. Oh well."

The breath released from my lungs turning into another sigh, my shoulders dropping from tension and my fists unfurling. "Now, follow after me. I can shoot a partridge with a single cartridge…"

Anything you can do… AGH that song is stuck in my head, damn it.

I walked through the hallways away from Mrs. Romero's class and towards the Gym area for working out with Mr. Koult, which was just down the stairs in front of me and a hallway. When I was walking down the steps, someone then slapped me on the back. My leg was about to step on the next step when the person's hand came into contact with me and because of that my whole body fell forward.

Down the stairs to the floor with a thud, I landed.

"SHIT, ED!" Mark yelled, leaping down the steps towards me. The left side of my head was throbbing from landing on it, and my back hurt a little from my backpack plus things being squished onto my back, but the thing I was worried about was my automail leg. The sound of his footsteps came next to me as he picked me up slowly, in which then all of a sudden I was standing up again with a major headache. "I am so sorry Ed! I really didn't mean that, it just was a friendly pat on the back, and I didn't realize when I was doing that you were about to step down so-"

"MARK! Shut it. Just get me some ice or something. I need to sit down and check my leg." He nodded as to our right there was a door that lead to the gym, and to the left was an exit from the school. The hell, I was hoping to work on sparring, I thought with a frown.

I put my automail arm out as he then put it over his shoulder to help support me with walking. Mark led to the left, in which he opened the door as I stumbled along. "Sorry for my arm not being comfortable" I said. "Don't be, it's my fault" he chided. "I won't do that again to anyone whilst walking down stairs, only until after their on solid ground," he spoke in an aristocratic voice.

"Why are you here anyway? Wouldn't you be going home to do homework?"

We walked down from the sidewalk around the school towards a parking lot. I hopped on one foot, just in case if I broke anything in my automail, which would be the worst scenario of the whole situation. "I usually go after school in the weight room on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays."

"No kidding, I have gym that time too" I stated, Mark and me hobbling towards a blue car that had the word 'Taurus' on the side. Unlocking it, Mark said "sit in the front seat and wait for me, I'm going to go and talk to Mr. Koult about how we can't be there today."

I nodded and closed the door as he put our backpacks in the trunk, heading back towards the building. Putting my palm on the spot that hurt the most, I checked to see if I was bleeding. No blood was on my glove, so I guessed I was okay enough for now.

Pulling down the silly gloves that more hindered me than helped in the humid weather, I bent down and slowly pulled my pant leg up to reveal the automail underneath, fitted with my old black and red boots. As soon as I did that though, a screw fell onto the floor; I swiftly picked that up with a groan and clenched it tight in my hand, shoving it in my pocket so that I wouldn't lose it.

The metal plate on my shin was dented slightly where the screw had fallen out, showing underneath all the wires and metal plates that connected to my nervous system from my leg to make the automail work.

This might be an easy fix if I had a screwdriver or something, I thought. Tucking the lose strand of hair from my braid, I checked to see if my leg worked or not. Slowly, I rotated my ankle in a circular motion. Slowly then getting faster it turned out just fine, operating like a usual foot. Putting it back down, I took my boot off to check to see if my toes would work to find a devastating problem appear.

My pinkie toe was bent left about 50 degrees.

Great.

I sighed as I moved my toes to see what I expected that all of them but the broken toe was able to move perfectly. Carefully pinching it, I pulled at the toe to see the wires connecting it to the foot underneath. To my dismay, two of the three wires were ripped in two, disconnecting it from ever working. Slowly, I pushed it back to its correct position facing forward and sighed.

"At least it's the least useful of all the toes" I admitted, putting the boot back on and covering the automail once more with my pant leg.

The door opened to my left, and Mark entered the car with a bag of ice in his hand. "Sorry that took so long, Koult didn't have any ice at hand so I had to run to the nurse's office to grab some. Put that on your head, we're going to my house to see what we can do about your leg."

"Why not my house?" I asked, grabbing the ice as he put his keys into the ignition and started the car. "Because my house is closer and I don't think your guardian will want to know about this. How's the damage on the automail?"

"Well, a dent in the shin, loose screw fell out but we could put that right back in. The main problem would be that my pinkie toe is about to fall off."

Mark started to back up the car and shook his head while doing so. Then his eyes widened and he grinned.

"I have just the guy that can fix this."

I deeply apologize that I died, but I have a Revival Health Orb that got me back up on my feet to fight and write!

To Scaehime's OC Jesa in this chapter; I hope this is good enough.

Please review, it gives me extra health and gold. My mana levels go up also if you give me (good) criticism. :)

Thanks again, and may your pencils stay sharp!

~Azorria