Upperclassman

My junior year started with a cataclysmic air. I could feel it in the halls of the school that autumn; I could hear it in the voices; could see it lurking in the faces to which they belonged. Everything seemed darker: the formerly fluorescent hallways brooded with barlight dimness. . .Royce McGannigan and his cohorts had taken to wearing grey. . .the noontime air hung with smoke, as if a long-dormant volcano had clouded the schoolyard in ash.