Gotham Girls #2: Nights For Nightwing (Batman) [Watty Awards 2014]

Chapter Five - Bird Crap is the Latest Fashion

“Miss Cooper, I haven’t received your assignment yet,” Mr. Humphrey stated, sitting behind his timber desk, his eyes barely just over the rim of his glasses.

“No, sir. I have it here, though.” Standing up, I made my way past numerous desks, feeling something slap across my rear. I made a strange, high-pitched sound before turning around to see Joshua Henson looking around the room as ‘innocently’ as he could, a dirty smile on his face.

Narrowing my eyes at him, I continued to walk to the desk to give the teacher my assignment on children’s fiction and how it affects that growth of a child’s brain. For English, it was a pretty intense topic, though hardly anyone in the class actually paid attention to what Mr. Humphrey said. They mainly tried interrupting the class or stupid things like that. Josh was one of those.

As I turned back around to walk back to my seat, I saw a guy about my age, hair falling down over his face, a jacket covering his shirt and long jeans covering his legs, complemented by a pair of Converse shoes. I only just noticed him, not paying more attention that I usually would have, but something about him caught my eye. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I knew there was something.

I watched as he continued walking, a few steps behind Joshua, who was smirking at me disturbingly. Suddenly, the guy flashed me a smile before walking on the other side of Joshua to what I was on and smacking him over the back of the head, continuing to walk as though nothing happened.

Finding myself laughing at his antics, I lowered my head so that no one could see the stupid smile that was on my face, and walked back to my desk. One word – classic.

“Sir, that guy just hit me!” Joshua screamed out, standing straight up and pointing to the guy with the jacket, who was looking around as if Joshua was on crazy pills.

“Joshua, we use people’s names in this class. Don’t just call him ‘that guy’. It gets annoying, you do realise.” With a sigh, Joshua rolled his eyes and pointed again.

“Fine. RICHARD JUST HIT ME!”

“Richard, did you hit Joshua?” Mr Humphrey barely seemed to care that Joshua was going spastic, accusing Richard of assault.

“He sexually harassed Miss Cooper. I thought something was in order.” Richard flashed me another smile, followed by a wink, and I started to blush ever so slightly, thinking how sweet it was that he stood up for me... More or less.

“Yes, yes. Don’t do it again, yada yada yada. Take a seat.” With a successful smile, Richard walked over to the seat next to mine and sat down, still smiling at me. I smiled back momentarily, before simply staring at him, trying to get him to stop smiling at me. It was a confusing logic but it made sense in my mind.

“You have beautiful eyes...” he complimented me, resting his head on his hand. Really? Was he just trying to crack onto me?

“Yeah, I do have beautiful eyes, thanks for noticing,” I replied sarcastically, adjusting myself in my seat. It was obvious he had a bit of a confidence loss, but I had no interest in it. I didn’t want anyone thinking that could get away with just flirting with me to get their way. No, sir.

It was then that I noticed how truly blue his eyes were and how really black his hair was. His eyes stared at me with determination, before moving down toward my chest and stomach.

“I like your shirt.” I had to look down to see what I was wearing, and then I remembered that it was just a black and white striped shirt, a bit like a convict uniform. My pants were just three-quarter jeans and I was wearing high-tops. Purple high-tops. Yes, be jealous.

“Thanks. I like your... uh...” Being mean, I spent a bit of time looking him up and down, but the truth was I was simply checking him out. Up close, it was easy to tell he was well-toned, but I didn’t want him to think I was superficial and only interested in abs. But abs certainly helped with the eye-candy situation! “Eyes? Yeah, they’re so black and you’re hair is such a great blue colour!” The sarcasm in my voice soon became obvious.