Violet Sunshine

Chapter 4: If You Can't Do the Time, Don't Say You Did the Crime

Mr. Thornton's classroom was all the way on the other side of the building from the principal's office, probably so Ms. Dunham could be the furthest possible distance from any and all troublemakers and delinquents Oak Point High had to offer. It was a small classroom seating two dozen, and when I arrived, there were only about five others sitting scattered around the room. I handed my detention slip over silently to Mr. Thornton, a bald man well on his way to retirement, enduring his quirked eyebrows and judging look as his eyes scanned the slip.

One guy sitting near the front I recognized from English class who just that morning had told Ms. Hopkin, our English teacher, that Shakespeare could suck it. There are three other guys that I vaguely recognized from other classes, and one girl in the back with frizzy red hair, Jenny, who had been busted in calculus for texting, though even from here, I can tell she has her phone hidden away somewhere in her desk, because she barely looked up at me when I entered the room, her gaze fixed on the gap in her desk. Not that any of them were here for as long as I was, seeing I apparently committed the highest crime of all by trying to burn down the school or whatever it was that Ms. Dunham wrote on my detention slip.

I took a seat on the left side of the room, by the windows — I'd probably never sit in the center of the room again, even if there were no more seats left — and set my backpack down by my feet, glancing up at the clock. It was 3:15 pm. I was to stay here until 5:00, no doubt being the last one to leave.

I unzipped my backpack and quietly got out a notebook, pen, and a few textbooks under the beady, watchful gaze of bald Mr. Thornton. If I was going to have to stay here for almost a full two hours, there was no way I wasn't going to take advantage of it to get homework out of the way. Working every other day, then coming home to help Willow with her homework, often made it difficult to get mine done on time.

I kept my head down and got to work, rifling through my calculus, chem, and history textbooks, scribbling down notes as I went. As predicted, the other kids in the class with me left one by one as the time ticked by, the classroom emptying until Jenny finally got up and was let out by Mr. Thornton, and it was only me left.

I was in the middle of reading The Grapes of Wrath for an essay due next week, annotating my copy of it liberally while Tom Joad went on for about ten pages about dust when from the front of the room, Mr. Thornton cleared his throat loudly. I immediately glanced back up at the clock. 4:56 pm. Mr. Thornton was glaring at me as if I was keeping him on purpose, and I scooped The Grapes of Wrath, shoving my pen in to keep my place, along with my other textbooks and notebook back into my backpack, zipping it up and exiting the room as fast as possible. I definitely wasn't going to argue with a green light to go a few minutes early.

I veered to the right, shouldering my backpack and heading back to the bike racks at the front of the school. The only sound in the hallway was the door to Mr. Thornton's classroom shutting behind me and the squeaking of my boots on the linoleum floor. It was strange, being here at this time, with no one else around. I always had somewhere to bolt to when school let out at 3:00 pm — work, band practice, sister obligations. The sunlight streamed in through the windows on the right side of the hallway as I walk, hitting the brown doors of the classrooms and almost making them look warm and inviting. I turned the corner to take the north hallway toward the front of the school when I suddenly stopped dead in my tracks. Because even though I thought I was the only other student in the entire school still on the premises at that time of day, it seemed that I was mistaken.