Clara

20- The Dance

The day of the dance has finally arrived and the first thing I get to do is go to detention. Yay.

I trudged to the principal's office, where the detention slip said to meet, with only breakfast in mind. At this rate, I might as well think of escape routes. Some waffles with syrup would be pretty tasty right now. Or powdered sugar. Fruits are an obvious choice.

A girl taps my shoulder to get my attention. I look away from the floor to Mrs. River who has an unimpressed expression. "Well may I see your detention slip or will you be spending your entire day looking at the floor?" I see the slightest crack of an amused smile.

"Yeah, right." I hurriedly pulled out the slip from my pants pocket and showed it to her. "Sorry Mrs. River." I apologize, after.

"I have met worse students that do more than stare at the floor in my career and even this year so far, so don't think too badly of yourself." She takes my slip and reads over it. She seems to read it over and over again so much that I bet she could recite in her sleep. 

"What were you doing there?" She asks, looking bewildered as if I was incapable of ever being there.

"My friend and I we're walking and we saw our friends arguing with other people. It escalated too fast and I was trapped."

Her face softened at me. "I'm disappointed that I'm not in charge of detentions. If I was then you'd be asleep right now." She hands me a new slip with a room number bolded red and directions on it.

"Well that's wonderful to hear right now." I smile, and leave the room.

The room is on the bottom floor and is mostly dark with only one window open. I look at the paper for more clarity on what to do when the only word there is "Clean". I sigh and shove the paper into my pocket to go and get started.

On the desk are various cleaning supplies and even a whole mop and bucket.

"It would be nice to have some help with this." I say aloud to the empty room.

"Oh you do."

I turn around to look at the mysterious voice to be greeted with that guy Octavio. He's in the back of the class sitting on one of the desks with his feet propped up.

"Thank Divina I'm not alone in this dingy, sad excuse for a learning environment." He laughs at my comment.

He skips over to me and puts out his hand. He's around my you height. "I'm Octavio and you're Clara. I-i mean let's introduce each other- I mean ourselves."

I take it to shake. "Well as you already know I'm Clara and I already knew you were Octavio. So, wanna help me clean up?"

"Sure I guess I don't have anything better to do than rot away in this room."

We go up to get supplies and I get the wipes and paper towels while he gets window wipers and rags.

"Brace your eyes." He opens the first window and it isn't as bright as I expected. After all it's only the faint blue that comes with it being five in the morning.

I continue on wiping desks and he gradually cleans each window and soon the room is almost done. I finally got to the back of the class and to the seat where Octavio sat. His phone is somehow still on an open on a messaging app that's not Snapshot. It's multiple people in the chat with all of them speaking in a language that I can't understand.

But I do see Octavio's name being mentioned and also Lea's, Maya's, and Andrew's. They're friends? Well they might be from the fact that this is such a tightly knit school. Octavio comes and takes his phone from my view.