Arcadia Bay (Life Is Strange)

You never really know how easy it is to be normal until you're not anymore.

I thought about that for about the hundredth time as I lay sprawled out on the front yard of my new high school. At least it was a beautiful day, sun was shining, birds singing, a light ocean breeze. On the surface at least, Arcadia Bay certainly seemed like a charming town. I would've really loved to see more of it, if I had the capacity to get back up on my own.

In Junior High I was the quintessential jock, Captain of the football team, partied with the seniors, smoked darts and took my liquor straight from red solo cups. We made it to the State Championships in my Grade 10 year, fought and clawed our way to the top, I'm still proud of the team for what we pulled off. Then the finals, Raiders vs. the Bumblebees, out of town game, everything we'd worked for. And I blew it. More specifically, I blew my knee out. Overextended it or tripped or pulled a muscle, doesn't matter, because next thing I knew I had run into the metal bleachers at full speed. With the muscle damage, the shattered kneecap, the broken femur, and the fibula jutting out of my calf, the doctors made the call not to try and salvage the leg.

Spent the rest of the year in physio while my friend's lives moved on without me. They visited at first, sure, but even with how earnest their well-wishes were, there was some simmering resentment that they probably wouldn't even acknowledge. It was my fault we lost. I had a lot of time to think in the year I spent recovering, even with homeschooling, it turns out there's not much to do when you're out of the social loop. At first I thought things like, "Why me?" or "Why isn't the team visiting anymore?"

Then I started to think about what I was going to do without the football scholarship to rely on. My parents were well-off, sure, but my rehabilitation had bitten deep into our savings. I spent a long time pretty much hopeless, which, let me tell you, is a pretty easy emotion to feel when you spend all day between the same four walls and can't even walk for yourself. One day though, a nurse came in and told me that an older fellow that I'd become fairly close with had finally passed. He used to play football back in the day too, but after college abandoned it to pursue another interest of his, photography. In an addendum to his will made only days before he died, he left his entire camera collection to me. I really didn't think the family would go along with it, but to my surprise they rather insisted that I keep them, he was known for his eccentrics but they truly believed that his final wish was that I keep them, so I did.

And that might have saved my life, I found a new calling in photography. Even as I started to be able to walk well-enough to re-acclimate into society on my own, I spent more time with the cameras, learning as much as I could about each of them. When I went outside, especially in my hometown, I was only a subject of piteous looks and demeaning conversation. With my cameras, I was subject only to what was around me.

"It's not the photographer that frames the shot," my friend from the hospital once told me, "it's the shot that frames the photographer." I talked to my parents about my newfound calling, and after a sad (and not in the emotional sense) farewell/birthday party, I was shipped off the Oregon to attend the prestigious Blackwell Academy for my final year of high school.

Well, at least the grass is nicely maintained. I managed to shrug off my backpack and get myself flipped over, hoping to see someone from the better vantage point. Alas, no dice, but now something was digging into my back. Reaching behind me, I grabbed what I assumed had to be a stone or something and pulled out -

A... watch? Not like any I'd ever seen. It definitely had an hour and a minute hand, but that's where the true similarities ended. The main body seemed to be made of some kind of onyx or other black stone, but was light and slightly warm as if it was just brushed aluminum that had been sitting in the sun. The protective screen had kind of a blue-ish tint to it and felt more like glass than plastic. Inside, the black material had been carved into little N's with small pictograms next to them at 12 o'clock, 3 o'clock, 6 o'clock, and 9 o'clock. The topmost had what looked like a smirking, almost smug face to the right of the N, and what could be either a small child or a lemur to the left. At the 3 o'clock position the N had a face with a blank stare on the right, and what I assumed was a fully grown adult on the left. The bottommost N had two faces on the right, this time laughing as if sharing some private joke, while the left had what seemed like a crude carving on Earth. The final N on the left only had one pictogram, this time simply a sighing face to the right of the N.

I had absolutely no God damn clue what this could possibly be. The hands weren't moving on their own, though there were little wheels on either side of the watch face that, upon wiggling, I discovered definitely control them. Clearly, someone had lost the watch here, I could probably turn it in at the office or something, but at a new school? Anything to start up a conversation. I decided I'd wear the watch around for a few days and hope the previous owner would see it and talk to me. Pretty pathetic, but I'd lost a lot of muscle in the past year, I couldn't rely on my good lucks to get me somewhere socially anymore.

I unclasped the bottom of the watch and started to put it on. As I did, a bespectacled man in a blue janitor's jumpsuit with an incredibly sad hairline turned the corner from the dorm area of the school. He paused as he saw me sitting on the grass, and his eyes narrowed as he saw what I was doing.

"Hold on, don't-" _Click. _He stopped mid-sentence as I clicked the clasp into place, tilting his head much as a squirrel would when considering if a new creature is a threat or not. I waved to get his attention.
"Hey! Could I get a little help please mate?" He seemed to snap out of his reverie and made his way towards me.

"Greetings stranger. You are a stranger, yes? Samuel does not ever forget a face, and Samuel has seen many faces, but not yours." I sorta stared at him past his outstretched hand. What the fuck? Who talks like this? Is he okay? All these questions and more raced through my head as I reached up to grab his hand. It was a little wet for the record, I surreptitiously wiped mine on my pants after I regained my footing.

"Uh, yeah. I'm new here, I've obviously got a little..." I gestured towards my prosthetic leg, glinting slightly in the sunlight, "problem with mobility, couldn't get up on my own." He didn't reply, just looked at me for a moment. I started thinking that maybe this dude doesn't even work here, only comes to harass students or something, when he said, "Samuel will take you to the Principals Office, you are not just a stranger, but a strange one."

Not really willing to humour the dude any further, I just let him lead me where he would hopefully not me, forgetting completely about the device now attached to my wrist that was now growing ever so slightly warmer.