Billie's POV
"Are you listening to me young man? You have to start applying yourself otherwise there is no way you are going to be able to graduate. Mr Armstrong, are you listening?"
I wasn't. To be completely honest, I was staring at a little spider that was spinning its web in the corner of Principal Reynold's office. I thought about whether it cared if it was up so high. What would happen if it fell? How much simpler would it be if I was a little black spider, spinning my web and not worrying about failing school and people killing each other and all the pretty fucking pathetic problems that all teenagers have, like a broken string on a guitar or the school dance or doing drugs or having no future. So when he asked what I was planning to do with my life, I didn't answer because I wasn't listening. I was too damn concerned about that spider.
"God, I'm never going to get through to you. I just hope you know that one day you're going to regret not working hard enough. You can go, and I don't want to hear any more of these marijuana-selling rumours. Start the year off right son."
I didn't want to look at him as I left.
I was expecting to be greeted by the only two people in the world who would care if I died, but my best friends seemed to be preoccupied by having a rather loud argument in their seats outside of the principal's office.
"What the fuck? When did YOU meet her?"
"Last night at Chuck's!"
"Well so did I!"
"What are you shitheads having a cat-fight over? Don't stop, it's kinda hot." I had to smile, slumping down in between the feuding pair. Mike sighed and rolled his eyes, taking a breath to begin to explain but then he and Tré were summoned inside the office for their own disappointed lecture, so the conversation was dropped.
We were behind the grandstands, spending math getting high off our asses, when it rose again.
"So what did the warden have to say?" I asked, taking a drag of our shared joint, since the rest of our substance had been confiscated earlier that morning.
"All that about self-image and drugs are bad and reputation. The usual horse shit." Mike shrugged, kicking the air from his slouched spot on the grass.
"And so what the hell were you two fighting about?"
Tre snapped into attention from his position of lying flat on his back and smiling vacantly at the sky.
"We both met the same girl last night and we don't know who has dibs."
"This is about some girl?" I laughed in disbelief, watching the two of them blush.
"She wasn't just some girl..." Mike began, eyes downcast but my scoff cut him off.
"Oh god save me the bullshit. You both are talking from your damn dicks."
Tre shrugged in somewhat agreement, taking the joint I handed him.
"Yeah but Bill, she was really something. If you would have met her you would have got where we're coming from."
I raised my eyebrows, surprised and deeply disturbed by the fact that I'd never heard him say anything more serious in the entire time I had known him.
"I don't know. I don't really get this whole falling in love thing. I mean, it just seems like a great way to get screwed over."
"Correction, it's the best way to get screwed my sexually frustrated friend."
And the wind-up monkey on crack was back to his usual self.
I decided that I should probably go to English, as it was one of the few subjects (that and music, occasionally gym) that I didn't feel like faking a seizure to get out of. I went by the back-school dumpsters for quick smoke, which is when I realised that my usual box of cigarettes and lighter were absent from my jean pocket. And then The Girl on The Roof lit up the back of my eyes.
