Monday, December 8, 2008

And now for something completely different

Yes kids I know...Andrew has left you for too long. I've been busy! And I got distracted from my gay boys and have instead gone back to my other reliable source of writing inspiration...psychic schoolkids. So enjoy something which has absolutely no relation to what you have been reading but it hopefully equally enjoyable...

Psychic Schookids!
High school isn’t a very relaxing place. In fact, I very rarely get a chance to relax while at school, and when I go home, there’s homework and parents and trying to have a social life. But somehow, in the middle of English, with Ms Anderson rambling about Jane Austen, I managed to find a moment of peace.
Granted, to the casual observer, I would look asleep. My arms were crossed on the table in front of me, and my head was using them as a comfortable pillow (that’s what three layers of clothing will do for you), but I was definitely awake and listening to what the teacher was saying, even if I wasn’t necessarily paying attention.
The entire class seemed to be fairly relaxed too, which is an even rarer occurrence on a Monday morning. But I wasn’t complaining; instead I just chose to take the moment I could to relax, listen to a discussion on Jane Austen that I had absolutely no desire or need to remember, and think of happy things like clouds and puppies.
Until I felt the anger rising up like a snake ready to strike.
“Jacob Miller would you please wake up and pay attention!” Ms Anderson’s voice cut into my head sharply, ruining my moment completely.
“I’m not asleep.” I said, jerking my head up and looking to everyone as though I was well and truly asleep.
I looked around the classroom for support. Dane, my best friend, sat next to me with an even sleepier look on his face. If I were a betting man I would think he had been sleeping too, just in a better position so that he didn’t get caught.
“Well if you were paying attention what was the last thing I said?”
This is a terrible situation for a student to ever be in. If they repeat what the teacher said, they make the teacher look like an idiot and end up in trouble for showing up their teacher. If I were to pretend I didn’t know what the teacher said, then I would get yelled at for not paying attention. Either way, I’m going to have to face the wrath of Ms Anderson. Good start to the week I think.
Unfortunately, I had spent so long trying to decide which was the lesser of two evils that Ms Anderson had made the decision for me.

“That’ll be detention afterschool tonight Mr Miller. Hopefully it’ll be a lesson that you need to pay more attention to class in future.”

“But Miss I –“ I started to rebut...but was cut off.

“That’ll be all Jacob, if you want you can go back to sleep now so that people in this class who are actually interested in learning and doing something with their lives can be spared you interruptions.”

I slouched back in my seat against the weight of Ms Anderson’s frustration. Next to me I could feel the sympathy look from Dane burning a hole in my shoulder. There was nothing I could do about it though, and in acceptance of that I did exactly what my teacher had told me to do – tuned out from the rest of the class and let my thoughts wander.

* * * * * * * * * *

So getting detention probably isn’t the best way to start a week off. What possibly makes things worse is that Maths directly follows English lessons on a Monday. Maths is taught by Mr Harding. Although it may appear that Ms Anderson is a total bitch...she is normally quite pleasant, and is the patron saint of kindness in comparison to Mr Harding and his teaching methods.

Even the atmosphere of the classroom is different to any other room in the school. Most classrooms feel devoid of most emotion, and just full of knowledge from lessons being repeated over and over. They’re not happy places, but they’re definitely not depressing places.

In contrast to Mr Harding’s classroom, they’re amusement parks. As soon as I walk into the room, whether the teacher or other students are there or not, I want to give up. Not entirely surprisingly, I’m also failing maths this year.

“Okay class...today is chapter 8a. Quadratic Equations. I expect it to be done by the end of the class. Any questions read the book, and I want silence while you work through this!” Mr Harding announced to the class as the last few people sat down. Figured out the problem with him yet?

I opened the book in front of me. I then opened my exercise book, which funnily enough was already filled out with the correct answers to the entire of chapter 8a. Thank you Chloe I thought to myself as I then set about pretending to be doing some work when really I was just copying out the correct answers and working that Chloe and myself had worked out the night before.

It might seem like a waste of time, spending a maths lesson copying out the answers. But in my defence, I did actually do most of the working out on my own, and without having to rely on Mr Harding’s non-existent teaching in order to get by. More importantly because I had the answers already done, I was guaranteed to avoid Mr Harding’s practice of keeping students who did their work slower back through recess; a fate which was often suffered by Dane, who struggled to get his work done in the best of classroom environments.

As I copied my work out I could feel Dane getting frustrated next to me. So I looked over at his work and casually wrote down a couple of steps of correct working out on his page while Mr Harding was busy berating a student who had made the mistake of asking him how to work out a question.

Dane reached across and wrote THANKS at the top of my page, but failed to notice Mr Harding watching him as he did so.

“Dane, what do you think you’re doing?” Mr Harding began to march across the classroom towards us. I hurriedly hid one copy of my answers as Harding looked at my page. “Writing notes in class? I think you’ll be spending some time with Ms Ellis tonight in detention. Your work should also be your own...so I’ll be taking the work both of you have done so far, and you can get it done individually...”

Mr Harding held out his hand and watched as Dane and I ripped out a page from our book and gave it to him.

“By the way you shouldn’t have ripped exercise books boys. You should get new ones.” He said to us over his shoulder as he crept back over to his desk.

By this point I was angry. Dane was certainly angry. I think about a third of the class wanted to throw their pens at Mr Harding in the hopes that one would break his skin and give him ink poisoning. OF course they were all too smart to try such an option.

I was however satisfied when at the end of the lesson, I was able to show Mr Harding my completed exercise with full working out, and feel a little flame of annoyance in him. It’s not total revenge, but a boy’s gotta take what he can get sometimes.

* * * * * * * * * *

After a mediocre day of classes, Dane and I made our way to our detention. The tiny room they used for detention had only two other occupants upon our arrival. A girl from our year level whose name I couldn’t remember sat at the back of the room, a bobble of brown wavy hair with her back towards us.

Ms Ellis was the other occupant. She was the head of senior school, and although she was incredibly strict, she was also a lovely person when you dealt with her when she wasn’t in her disciplinarian mood.

“Dane, Jacob. Please sit down at opposite ends of the room. There will be no talking. Do any work you need to and I’ll let you know when you’re allowed to leave.” She said to us as we walked in.

It’s always a little bit funny when Ms Ellis gets serious and teacher-like. She is one of those rare teachers who is fun to talk to outside of a classroom, and who admits that her job stresses her out just as much as our homework and exams stress us out. But at the same time she takes her job seriously, and when she needs to be a teacher she isn’t afraid to pull out the big guns, even if you can tell she’s still a big softie inside still.

I took up a seat at the back of the room next to the other girl, and Dane moved up to the front of the classroom, sitting directly in front of Ms Ellis. I couldn’t see his face, but I could almost swear that he was winking at me from where he sat. I suppressed a grin. Dane had a plan. Normally this would be a worrying concept, since Dane doesn’t tend to think as quickly as some people, but Dane and Ms Ellis got along rather well, so with luck we would be able to escape detention early.

While the girl next to me was scribbling things down in her book, I plopped my bag on the ground next to me and stared out the window of the classroom. We were up on the second floor, just above the Atrium. Whoever had designed my school had planned for there to be very few places to hide – the upper floor of the school was one big circle, with windows facing the inside and outside of the circle. Because of this you could look across the entire floor of the building from one side and see who was at the other side. The only walls were the ones that separated the classrooms.

From the second floor you could look down on the Atrium, filled with tables and chairs where everyone would relax during lunch breaks, and where there were currently hundreds of students milling around waiting for buses and parents on their way home. No such luck for me.

I looked around the room I was in to see Dane beginning to strike up a quiet conversation with Ms Ellis, and to see the other girl smiling at me. I gave a smile back but said nothing, not wanting to break the silence of the room. I then felt a blip coming from the other end of the classroom, as Dane started talking to Ms Ellis and mentioned something that upset the teacher. I trusted Dane to know what he was doing, but also realised that by looking away so quickly I’d snobbed off the poor girl sitting next to me.

I make a point of knowing a lot of the people in my year level, even if it’s just their name and who they hang out with, but this girl I recognised, but could think of nothing else about her. Except she seemed so...nervous about being in detention, and as I realised I had ignored her I felt a kind of sadness emanating from her. I shivered a little bit, and then looked over at her.

She looked exactly the same as she had a minute earlier, her head pointed straight down at the table, he hair falling down that little bit, and her pen frantically scribbling across the page as it wrote something down. Except her pen was what drew me attention.

It was a clear ballpoint pen. Or at least it was a minute ago. Now, it was covered in white.

I was curious, and unafraid of being a little bit rude I reached out and touched the pen. The white was frost, the pen was cold to touch. I looked up at the girl and her eyes met mine. She was shaking with fear, and with good reason I felt. I pulled my hand away, trying not to do it too quickly, and as I did, my hand brushed up against hers. I instantly wished it hadn’t, or at the very least that I had whilst wearing gloves.

I stuck my finger in my mouth in an attempt to warm it up, and stared the girl straight in the eyes. I don’t often look people directly in the eyes for long. Often, it’s because they can’t look at me in the eyes for long, but it always ends up being a decidedly creepy process. This time was no exception. The girl was a wreck inside; she was afraid, and because of that her thoughts began to get colder, which only made her more afraid and took her brain and body even more sub zero. I shook my head to try and snap out of it, I could feel my own body getting colder the longer I looked at the poor frightened girl. But there was nothing I could do about it.

Thankfully, at that moment Ms Ellis stood up, on the verge of tears, mumbled something about letting us go home early, and bolted out of the room.

I looked at Dane, who just smiled at me as I gave him a ‘what did you do?’ look

“It was nothing she couldn’t deal with.” He said, and then looked at the girl next to me. “Is she okay?”

The girl looked up at him, by now I could see little webs of frost forming on the end of her fingertips. Within seconds Dane was on the floor next to her. He’s always been a sucker for a pretty girl who needs him.

“Look at me.” He said, staring up at her. “I’m going to help make it go away...”

* * * * * * * * * *

By the time Dane had gotten the girl back to normal temperature, the school was basically deserted. Confident that she was okay and in the capable hands of Dane, I left our mystery girl, who was yet to utter a word to either of us, and headed home.

As I approached the bridge between our school and the road to my house, I spotted a familiar face leaning against the rails tossing a ball into the air and catching it.

“Let me guess Chloe, you knew I’d been getting out of detention early?” I said to her as I approached.
“Well it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Dane’s going to make Ms Ellis unravel a little bit to get out of class early.” Chloe said, pushing herself off the rails and moving towards me with an air of cockiness about her.

“Predicting the future doesn’t help at all either?” I asked.

“It certainly doesn’t hurt. I’ve never known you to complain about knowing the math questions for the next day?” Chloe tossed the ball in her hands to me.

“And you never complained when I warned you that Nathan liked you beforehand.” I rebutted, and passed the ball back as we walked down the path towards our houses.

“You could have warned me when he was going to cheat on me to.”

“Hey I can just tell you emotions. Thinking about cheating is a different kettle of fish. You’re the one who can predict the future; you should have seen it coming.”

“Okay okay, sore spot. Where is Dane? I thought he’d have been coming home with you?”

I explained to Chloe about the girl who had been with us in detention, and how she almost froze my brain out.

“Wow I didn’t see that one coming.” Chloe loved to make that joke. It was still kinda funny after the millionth time too. “So our tiny high school now possesses both of us, a girl who can see the future, and a guy who can read people’s emotions, as well as a guy who can get inside people’s heads, a girl who can heal, and now it seems a chick who can freeze things. What’s next? A guy who can move things with his mind?”

“You never know. Well, normally one of us knows, but that’s beside the point. This was weird though. I mean, you and I have barely ever had trouble with what we can do. This girl didn’t seem to be have any control over it, and she didn’t even seem to know what she was doing.” I reached out at a bush as we walked past and grabbed a leaf out of boredom, and began pulling it apart as we walked.

“Yeah but Dane kinda just...started doing his thing, maybe this girl is the same? One day she wakes up and wham! Freezing pens for a party trick.” Chloe had put her ball away by now, and was instead jumping up to tap her hands on every overhanging tree branch as we walked under them.

“At least Dane didn’t hurt anyone though.” I tossed the discarded remains of the leaf to the ground and grabbed another one from the next tree we passed. “This girl seemed like she could do some damage if she put her mind to it.”

“Dane didn’t hurt anyone? Don’t forget Chris?”

“Okay so there was that incident, but it wasn’t too bad. Dane could at least put it right again. If this girl freezes someone solid how do we defrost them without them dying?”

“Sigh, I’m going to be making myself dream tonight aren’t I?” Chloe said, knowing exactly where our conversation was headed.

“Yes because it’s a terrible chore knowing what’s going to happen in advance. At least we don’t have maths tomorrow, so you don’t have to tell me that.”

By this point, we had reached Chloe’s house. She walked up the steps and unlocked the door.

“Well It’s 8d for Wednesday. He’s trying to keep everyone on their toes again.”

“Good to know. Seeya in the morning I guess?”

“Not if I see you first.” Chloe said, bouncing inside and closing the door. That girl has far too much confidence sometimes.

3 comments:

Luke! said...

Andrew!

I like this! I like this a lot!
I want more, and I want more now!

LUke :P

Welcome to Creepy Lamingtons: home to a mix of strange stories and articles that hopefully won't leave an unpleasant taste in your mouth. said...

Yay for a new story! It's funny, the beginning is similar to how I rewote the start of Ashton X (still working on a second draft). Had him getting detention in one boring class, then moving to another boring class. Hmmm, are you psychic? Is that story also loosely based on your life??? :p

But yes - more please! (We may have to cripple your other foot so you're forced to write more.)

ps. You spelt the title wrong - see you do need to hire me to write your titles. :p

Dale said...

Promising stuff.
Hope your foot gets better (only just learned about it from Luke - he's such a bully hey? :P).