Cacophonous

The day before classes started Maddox and Dante walked ahead of my brother and me, having a conversation only in ASL. The closer we got to the school grounds the more I could feel the wards. When we crossed the property line of the school it felt like it snapped away from us like a balloon being popped. My skin itched where it had rubbed against me. I noticed Caden subtly itching at his arm and then the side of his neck apparently in agreement about the itchiness that the wards induced in our species. Maddox and Dante never seemed to have any issues with them, but they always made us itch. It could have been because we were mostly unwanted at the school and the wards could sense our naturally sinful existence. The wards would stop anyone with harmful intentions from passing but as demons, our intentions were never completely good. I mean we weren't evil like they want everyone to believe but we weren't virtuous either.

"I hate wards," Caden grumbled under his breath.

I bumped my shoulder against his as a sign of solidarity. My brother and I were allowed to break some rules. For example, the single occupancy rule for dorms. We still received two rooms but only shared one. The other one my brother kept his horde of stolen items in. Everyone else seemed to judge our need to constantly be together besides Dante and Maddox. We had some separate classes but any other time we were always together.

On the top floor of the dorms were the more luxurious rooms. Since we had the money for it our rooms were up there. Our parent's never treated Dante differently from us even though he wasn't their biological kid. Our rooms were all in a row like it had been planned. Knowing the school board, it might have been. We seemed to get in less trouble the closer we were to each other. Dante and Maddox always kept Caden and me in line. Passing by the first door of the hall I felt a strange pull as I noticed all of the guys glancing at the door on their way by. I wondered whose it was and why we were all suddenly interested in a door to a room that had always been unoccupied. The plaque had been marked as 'reserved' for the last three years. It was blank now, so they hadn't had time to put the occupant's name down yet. Somehow, I just knew there was someone behind that door. I had never been able to really sense another person like that before besides my brother. I pushed the thought away and followed the rest of the guys to our rooms. Four doors down. Not that I had counted or anything that would have been ridiculous.

We had no plans but to unpack and get our stuff ready for tomorrow. Our door was the first one, so we waved goodbye to the others before heading in. Instead of the normal setup with lots of room our room was split down the middle our full-sized beds pushed into adjacent corners with our desks against the walls next to them. Our dressers were on the wall at the foot of each bed. The only thing they couldn't give us two of is closets and bathrooms. We just hung our uniforms and shirts in the closets to save room and put the rest into the dresser. It didn't take that long before we had everything unpacked and as I was putting the rest of my underwear into my top drawer there was a knock at the door.

Caden opened to let Maddox and Dante in before we set up the portable projector and lounged in Caden's bed to watch a movie before dinner time.