BAD OMENS ✬ luke hemmings

0.5 | first day of hell

Monday, the first day of a five month detention scheme.

Aria had told Michael that she won't be able to drive him home after school on Monday's, Wednesday's, and Friday's. He, obviously, protested, complained, and played every card to show his protest.

The girl has told him that he could either wait an hour, or take the bus home. He chose the former, claiming that waiting at school for an hour is a lot better than getting the bus back and having to risk sitting next to someone.

Now, as Aria walks out of class, no one other than Becky (Principal Rebecca) is standing outside waiting for her. Most likely done to ensure that she doesn't think of bailing last minute. Luke's got someone waiting for him too, the vice principal, Smith. Administration, clearly doesn't trust them.

"Aria, please come with me." Rebecca says, ready to escort the girl towards the theater. The woman notices Michael standing behind Aria, "Michael, you can go home."

"Oh, no, I can't actually." He remarks, "Aria's my ride home, and I don't like taking the bus." He shrugs. Rebecca has already forced Aria to stay after school, three times a week, for the next five months. She can deal with Michael waiting around.

"He's going to hang out in the library, no big deal." Aria says.

"Okay, well, then Michael you can walk to the library then." Rebecca instructs, "Aria has important things to attend to."

Michael rolls his eyes as he turns the other way, shooting Aria one last look, a sort of, can you believe her, glance. Then, the girl is being directed towards the auditorium. The crowd, practically, parting as she walks behind the principal.

By now, even the freshmen have heard about what she did. The school drama account, run by some random person, has gained a lot of publicity and went private to avoid deletion from the school. Clearly, people don't know how to keep their mouth shut.

Still, Aria walks down the halls with a blank stare. The next hour, she's supposedly meant to be alone with Luke – which is never a good idea – and the people who came up with this... glamourised detention scheme are complete idiots.

Five months? For what? The school found an opportunity to place blame and come up with a bullshit excuse that the experience will help out for universities and CAS, when in reality they're too lazy to find people themselves. It's not that difficult, Aria's sure there's a try hard fourteen-year-old that would love to build up their resume.

Standing in front of the auditorium doors, "Ms Michelle is on stage expecting you two. She will talk to you about what you're expected to do." Rebecca says, waiting for Aria to blindly walk in before leaving, the sound of her heels and keys hitting each other echoing down the hallway.

Aria walks towards the stage, seeing Luke already there. Michelle, the coordinator of the small theater department spots the girl and walks off stage with her laptop in hand. She's a short lady, has a chirpy voice too, and her husband is the history teacher.

"Oh good, you're both here!" Michelle says, leaning back on the stage as she scrolls though her laptop looking for the reminders and schedules she's set up. "I'm so glad you two are here to help out, my theater production classes have been designing the sets the last couple of weeks, and I've been so swamped recently."

The woman is directing the entire play, and considering the budget she has, of course she's struggling. That and the fact that only forty students, in the entire high school signed up, and only twenty-five of those people are acting – the rest are part of tech, choreography, or costumes.

Theatre has really lost its popularity over the years at the school.

"As of now, we've got Francine choreographing the dances, our design team trying to put together additional costumes, and the set crew learning the ropes." Michelle says, "I don't imagine the two of you actually painting sets anytime soon, my theater production kids haven't yet gotten things figured out."