||Series Removed|| OTB

13 - Feels Like A Friday

13

Slowly thumping my head against the classroom's tiny desk, Miss Flynn eventually reached my seat as she lay her test paper over my skull with a dark chuckle.

"Better shape up, Daniel. You don't want Beth to score higher than you, now..." She teased, as the little blonde girl three seats in front of me cast her cheeky tongue out, further taunting my discomfort.

As it turned out, there weren't many children or teenagers in Patch - the fifteen or so of us that were roped into the education system all had to share the same class. Obviously, this meant that the teaching material was stretched out to cater for every age group, and it fell on the older student's shoulders to assist and teach the younger ones.

Harry had escaped this unfortunate fate by pretending to be twenty-one, so that he could serve out his sentence in the garage... A white lie that Tomás and I weren't clever enough to tell, thus resulting in our forced re-education.

A few friendly faces popped out to me in the classroom; Stacie was whispering and giggling with Beth near the front, while Tanner was seated beside me, although he was too invested in ogling one of the older girls in the class to notice my presence.

It was probably a good thing. I still hadn't entirely forgiven him for peeping in the showers and getting me slapped in the face with community service.

With all of the empty chairs in the class, it was abundantly clear that Alisha's students from the bus were not present. It must have been bothering her from the moment she stepped inside, but she hid her disappointment well...

Those kids had to be somewhere in Patch, after all. As soon as we could get our hands on Blessing's near-mute brother, we would force their whereabouts out of him if we had to.

"All right. class." Our teacher smirked as she returned to her wooden desk at the front of the half-demolished hut we called a classroom. "Get your pencils out. We're going to have a pop quiz today, so every other row of seats can turn to their right and pair up for this exercise."

She was loving this... It must've been obvious that if I paired up with Tomás on my left, our combined sarcasm would blow this test out of the water. Turning to face Tanner, his smile dropped when he noticed my presence... and contorted itself within seconds into a cruel laugh.

"What are you doing here, Grandpa? The bingo hall is across the street!"

"Oh, just shut up. You think I want to be here? This damn town is screwing with me..."

"Whatever, greenhorn... Just put the date down before that new teacher starts the first question. She looks like she could get real scary when she yells."

I wanted to say that he didn't know the half of it... but my mind was still trying to process what he'd muttered before that. I looked to Tomás' seat in confirmation, and he appeared to be equally confused with his partner.

"Wait, umm... I... I don't..."

It was embarrassing, debilitating to be brutally honest. We'd just rolled in from the Route, and before that, we were out in the wild.

We had to try our best to survive each day, the small details had never even crossed our minds. Now that we were being integrated into some form of society, we had to retrace our roots of normality; keep track of the daily rituals that used to restrain us.

A blubbering sound came from the front of the class... I couldn't blame her, it made me feel emotional as well. Alisha bent down to comfort Beth as she held back her panicked sobs from the distressing fact. "Honey? What's wrong?"