The New Guy

The New Guy is the first chapter of Stranger in a Strange School. It introduces Basil Hagen to the readers.

Chapter
Lee Ping sat in homeroom. Between Holger talking about "Oldin Man Times" like a madman and trying to clear his name, Lee did not know what to do. His mind was taken away from all that when he noticed a new guy come in the room. With a squared jaw, fingers and muscles, this guy looked like someone out of a comic book, plus the top of his head made him look like Frankenstein's monster. He had brown hair that was medium in length and eyes that were unbelievably grey. His skin was tanned almost looking sunburnt Lee could only imagine the pain. This guys clothes showed how relaxed he was: a golf shirt, blue jeans and one of those newsboy hats from the thirties that was red… weird but there was weird things going on.

"Okay, you can sit to next to Lee Ping." The teacher pointed to an unoccupied seat next to Lee. The new guy looked at the seat, then looked at Lee and shrugged. The new guy walked over to his desk and sat down. Lee looked at the guy and smiled, just to make him feel like anything but a stranger.

"Hey, as the teacher said, I'm Lee Ping." The new guy looked at Lee with eyes that showed no interest in any people.

"Basil Hagen." Lee thought the name over. Basil Hagen? That sounded like- "Sounds like an old man name? I know, I hate it too, so until I can change my first name to something better just call me Hagen." Lee thought that over. He was not thinking about how his name sounded like an old man's name, more like a supervillain's! And his voice! There was no emotion, no accent, nothing. His voice was like a computer's.

"Hello, Hagen, me is Holger, the football team's boy of water!" Hagen looked at Holger with eyes that showed the same amount of interest as they had in Lee. His eyes, they looked like he was in a trance or a coma or something! Or was he faking the whole thing?

"Holger, that's nice, now leave me alone." Hagen turned his head and looked down at his desk. Lee looked at Hagen, almost analyzing what he had seen. What was wrong with Hagen? Had he been brainwashed or something? Was he asleep? Seriously, what was wrong with him? Lee's thoughts about this were forgotten when the T.V. in the room came on. There was Chaz and Tina as usual. As Lee watched the screen, he could see Hagen's head rise to look at the screen out of the corner of his eye. What was with this guy? The blank look on his face had completely vanished, watching the screen with interest that was going on. Lee had no idea what was going on, this new guy seemed like he was in a trance one minute and now it seemed that he was actually interested in what was going on around him. There was something going on with him, connected to that prank song maybe, but sooner or later Lee would find out.