BAD OMENS ✬ luke hemmings

3.6 | old school

Things are back to normal.

Michael is sitting in the library, waiting for Aria to finish up with her mandatory after school detention, whereas she and Luke are sitting in a conference room in the office – as they have picked up on their skipping habits – and see it fit to take away their 'creative privileges' because they've been 'abusing the mutual trust and respect'.

It was a long rant from the principal, neither of them were listening. All they know is that for today, and Friday, they're going to have to sit in this glass room with shitty blinds under supervision of the receptionist... who is outside.

No phones, no laptops, no music.

It's literally hell.

It's like the Breakfast Club without the eventual bonding of five kids from obvious social cliques. Instead, it's two people who have sworn to hate each other sitting in silence due to the awkward tension in the air.

Aria is spinning side to side in the chair, bored out of her mind without her phone, or the ability to read digital time. There isn't even a clock in the room, and she never found purpose to have a watch since she always had her phone, meaning that she could have been sitting there for an hour and wouldn't know.

In reality it's only been ten-minutes.

Luke, on the other hand, is staring off into space. A loop of a song playing on repeat in his head while he stares at a plant as if it's the most fascinating object in the entire universe.

To have students sit in a conference room for an hour, fine. But to have them sit in there without their phones, or any form of entertainment other than each other, that is criminal. It's the 21st century, how can the administration expect the two to live without their phones.

This old school form of detention is absolutely horrendous.

Not even in-school suspensions are this inhumane.

"This is so boring." Luke mutters, breaking the silence between them. He leans back on the chair, head sagging back to stare at the ceiling. If he thought that reorganizing books in the library was boring, this is a lot worse.

At least then he had his phone, and a comfortable couch to lay down on.

"Tell me about it," Aria sighs. "I'd rather be stuck in traffic at four o'clock on a Friday."

Luke raises an eyebrow, "That was oddly specific."

"You know what I mean," she rolls her eyes.

"Yeah, it's probably better than this." He shrugs, unsure of what to say to the girl. In the past it came naturally, like when she picked up that bass, or when he poked the bear and said the brushes were dirty.

Now that they're forced to talk to each other, with no buffer or mutual ground it's incredibly hard. What is he meant to do? Start up a friendly conversation about the weather? No. He's trying to cure his boredom, not aid it and create an even more awkward situation.

He's got to be there for an hour, he doesn't want to spend the better half of it making small talk. Small talk is for strangers, not people who have hated each other for the past four years, and have known each other for longer.

They fall into a silence, each lost in their own thoughts. The minutes ticking by slowly. Aria continues to spin around in her chair, deciding that a quick vertigo is a lot more interesting than staring at the mahogany desk.

A song from an old Disney channel movie plays in her mind, if only this detention was as interesting as the one depicted in that movie. Then again, she's not in detention for skipping class in the janitor's closet for wanting to finish a book, or calling a teacher stupid, she's there because she punched Luke in the face in September.