the hbs but it's a school

breakfast time

Breakfasts were a time. Lunches and dinners weren’t so bad, because people ran in between classes so kids were spread out, but breakfasts...well. She had fun with it.
“Get up, get up, get up!” She hit the doors as she ambled down the hall, listening to the kids inside bitch and moan about how annoying she was. Unfortunately for them, she had a coffee machine in her room that Koty either didn’t know about or was pretending not to know about, so she was wide awake. It wasn’t Redbull, but it was better than nothing. “Rise and shine!”
“You suck!” Liv yelled. “Go away and let us sleep!”
“If you were dumb enough to stay up watching some show, that’s on you. Not me,” she called, grinning widely. She caught a glimpse of Koty making his own rounds, and waved. He gave her a look, then kept walking.
So he definitely was pretending not to know about the coffee machine, then. Good to know.
Nothing like the sound of teenagers hating you with everything in them to really get a person ready to go, she decided, watching all her charges stumble into the hall with the attitude only teens could give.
“Go, let’s go, it’s time for breakfast!”
“I hate you,” Liv muttered, half asleep on her feet. Fina patted her shoulder. “It’s okay, so does everyone else.”
“I don’t hate you,” Angie said, because Angie was a suck up. Fina respected that.
Liv pushed Angie, hissing at her about, well, not being a suck up. Fina chose to ignore the push and the hissing, because if they weren’t murdering each other it wasn’t really her problem. Instead of being a responsible leader and role model, she finished rounding up the kids and ushered them down to the dining hall. She waved at Dan, who looked just as awake as she did -- she was going to find his Redbull stash if it killed her -- and then at Noah, who already looked annoyed. And on his second cup of tea, damn. She wondered if he’d slept. Probably hadn’t.
She got halfway to sitting with Dan and the mini-Dans, then changed her mind and dropped down at an empty table so kids could sit with her if they wanted. After a couple minutes, Alice sat down across from her, going on about rollie pollies and eggs and googly eyes. With the ease of long practice, Fina tuned them out, waving at Mal when she sat down too. A few more kids sat down, and Fina continued to tune them all out, because she really wasn’t in this for the stellar conversation.
When she put her tray up, Koty was there too, and he leaned over. “If I don’t see it, I don’t care,” he muttered, and she nodded. “Don’t see what?” He grinned at her. “Exactly. Exactly.”
“Mutually assured destruction,” she replied cheerfully. “That’s what teamwork is built on.”
Koty nodded and wandered off, and she watched the kids head back to their rooms with far more energy than they’d come down. Her morning duties thus completed, Fina went to class with, well, not a song in her heart, but at least not a headache.