The naga high school was nothing like the human one Jon remembered. It was just a collection of large, one-story, wooden pole buildings with very few windows and dirt floors throughout. As on Jon's street, there were no roads, curbs, sidewalks, parking lots, or streetlamps.
The more Jon lived as a naga, the more sense this was making. How, for example, would the race of nagas, who had no arms, hands, legs, or feet, build a car? Or drive one? Or, being thirty feet long, even fit in one? And despite his tough coating of scales, Jon was pretty sure he wouldn't want to propel himself along concrete or asphalt. Sliding through vegetation, especially wet vegetation, or even bare dirt would be much more comfortable.
But how, then, had the nagas built the school building, or Jon's house? Although the type of construction was much simpler than that of human buildings, Jon doubted that nagas could have built it using only their mouths. Somehow, for example, they'd obviously sawed lumber, manufactured nails, and made glass. Were there other creatures, so far unseen, who did these things?
Jon's schedule, in any event, was simple. There were only twenty-five nagas in the whole senior class, and they all took the same subjects in the same order. To find their first class, or any class, Jon and Karyn could simply follow Joseph.
Sure enough, by following Joseph they found their first class: Parseltongue.
"Was there any written homework?" Jon hissed at Joseph.
"Any what?" Joseph hissed.
"Ah, no, I guess there wouldn't be," hissed Jon, feeling foolish.
The classroom was large but quite bare. There was no furniture, and certainly no desks for the teacher or students. The floor was dirt. Everyone just filed in, coiled their snake bottoms beneath them, and poised their torsos vertically, facing the front. The teacher spoke, of course, without benefit of a podium, blackboard, chalk, slides, movies, or other visual aids.
The class itself didn't seem very difficult; it was just about talking. After a while, though, Jon got the impression that talking wasn't a natural thing for nagas, not the way it was for humans. It was something the nagas had learned from other creatures they'd encountered over the history of their culture. Only in the last few hundred years had Parseltongue developed to the point of everyday usefulness.
Jon learned several other things as well. All the students, for example, were about the same size. Their colors and markings, however, were all over the spectrum. There were eighteen girls and seven boys, and Jon eventually recognized them all. They were, Jon realized, the classmates he and Karyn knew best. As to the other students in Jon's human school, there was no clue.
There was, Jon realized suddenly, no electricity, and no source of artificial light at all. In addition, very little light could be entering through the one small window. The room must actually be been quite dim, Jon realized, even though he could see perfectly well. His naga eyes obviously had superior vision in darkness.
After about an hour the Parseltongue instructor finished her lesson and dismissed the class. There was no bell or buzzer to signal the change of periods; apparently the lecture simply ended when the teacher ran out of things to say.
Jon was still unwinding his coils when Karyn slid to his side and hissed softly, "Uh, Jon, are you having any kind of, uh, stopped up, uh, feelings?"
"Like where?" Jon hissed.
"Almost all the way back, on the bottom," hissed Karyn.
"Uh yeah. I think it might be time to poop," hissed Jon.
"How and where do we do that?" Karyn hissed somewhat more urgently.
"I wish I knew," Jon hissed.
