Scales [ON HOLD]

Chapter Seventeen: How Could I Forget That?!

   After packing away the beautiful chess set whilst ignoring Robin's occasional victorious smirks, I began to talk to Vinnie. 

   "You're so lucky that he wanted you here, it's very rare, you know. He is not very social." She told me.

   "Why won't he tell me why I am here? Surely it's not that important." I wondered out loud. I sighed and slung my black Tokyo Ghoul rucksack onto my back. I opened the front pocket and took out my phone, Samsung of course, checking the time. "We only have three minutes until registration, bye then!" I waved to them all as I walked through the wall and left.

   When I arrived at my form, I opened the door as the bell rang. My form teacher was in there measuring a plank of wood and muttering to herself, just as she had been for the past three hours. One by one, the room began to fill up with various members of my form, none of which I knew.

   Ten minutes passed and so she finally put the plank down and took the register. Again, when she reached my name everyone looked at me. But whatever.

   Before the bell for fourth lesson went, I lazily leant against the door frame away from everyone. Scrolling through my contacts I called my mother. 

   "Wassup Octavia?"

   "Oh, my first day has been great. I made some friends faster than I wanted."

   "Ha ha ha, my daughter- the loner." She joked. 

   "Oh! Rob- uh." I face palmed in stupidity. "Rebecca, this really nice girl is here."

   My mother stayed silent.

   "Hellooooo? Earth to Cleo."

   "Did you say Robin?"

   "No," I said as convincingly as I could. "I was saying Rebecca but I said it wrong. She's really nice. Have you heard of her family? Her surname is Lamb." My mother stayed quiet for a moment as if she was trying to figure out if I was telling the truth.

   "Lamb? No, I don't think I've heard of them. Anyway, Antonio called, he said that when you went to his shop, he kicked you both out and sent you home. Is that true?" She questioned. It had been two weeks and she only just found out now? Wow.

   "'Tis true, mother. How did you only find out now? I thought I told you?" I asked. She sighed.

   "You have the worst memory ever. On that day, did he hurt you?" She asked. Whilst I was thinking of a response, she gasped. "Did he push you down that hole?"

   "Wha- no!" Memories of the day poured into my mind, some of them I had completely forgotten about. It was true, my memory was appalling. I suddenly remembered about the fact that the hole just appeared behind me, Robin was holding a knife when I first met him... and when he made me swallow a pill. I nearly dropped the phone.

   "Anyway, get back to school. Bye then, see you in..." Cliodhna paused. I could tell that she was reading the time off her watch. "One hour, fifty-nine minutes and thirty-eight seconds!" She hung up.

   How had I forgotten that? He had forced a pill into my mouth. What happened next?

   The bell rang and people pushed past me, forcing me out of my thinking moment.

   I was still frozen. I absentmindedly wrapped my arms around my stomach and cautiously made my way to French.

   "Bonjour, classe." A professional looking teacher beckoned us into the class. It was only a small class and therefore it was hot and stuffy. "Aujourd'hui, nous serons en train de traduire un texte."

   Like most lessons, I understood everything. I was fluent in French... because of my tutor, of course. She handed out the papers and took the register. After calling out most of the names, and hearing a reply, she reached me.

   "How do I pronounce this? Octa...v...eye... ah?"

   God, how stupid is she? I sighed.

   "Oc-" Sam cut me off.

   "It's pronounced Octavia. Please don't ask her to introduce herself." He laughed. The teacher nodded slightly and, after she pushed her thin glasses up, carried on. Only a select few knew what he meant, all of the ones that knew what he was on about told the ones who didn't. Sam picked up his pencil case and threw it into the spare seat next to me, nearly hitting my head. Pulling back the chair, he heavily sat down and put an arm around me.

   "Please don't." I said, poking his arm. I pushed it off and looked at him. He was smiling weakly. He ran his fingers through his 'natural' hair and grinned.

   "I can't help it, you're beautiful," He took the translation paper out of my hands and read over it. Thank God he did that, otherwise he would have seen the light pink blush consume my face. After carefully scrutinising the text, he flicked the paper away and leant back lazily."Can you understand this? The only words I got out of it were merci and j'adore, thank you and I love."

   "I-I, uh... yeah. I know it all," I told him. "Why exactly did you come over here?" He lightly placed a hand where his heart was and gasped, as if he was offended. He does that a lot.

   "Well, I thought we were friends! I can leave if you want, but I'm just saying that if you do, you will be abandoning a friend in need," He rested his hands on the table and clasped them together. He pushed back his chair and knelt on the ground, looking up at me with big puppy eyes. Half of the class turned around."I don't know what I'm doing, please let me stay!"

   I laughed at his actions and straightened up, acting like royalty. 

   "You may stay, peasant." I flicked his forehead.

   "Your Highness." Sam stood up and bowed.

   The lesson passed pretty quickly, only because of Sam's humour. He always made sarcastic comments when the teacher said something. I'm pretty sure she hates us both now, even if I wasn't the one making the comments. Every now and then, we would actually do the work, and, despite the frequent distractions, we had done the most work out of the whole class. I stood up and handed in the work to the surprised teacher.

   "Good work, now on to task two." She said, handing me another sheet with a smirk. Bitch.

   I shuffled back to my desk, where Sam was relaxing with his feet on the table. When he saw me returning, he put his feet down. He glared at the new sheet in my hand.

   "I'm not doing it." He declared, kicking his legs back up and crossing his arms.

   "How," I began, sitting down next to the stubborn teen. "are you so smart if you don't do any work?"

   He turned his head to me and smiled.

   "It's because of my gaming. The titles of games, what the characters say and what characters say about other characters, I learn what the words mean so I can understand the story line," He put his legs down once again and picked up a curl off my shoulder, flinging it at my face. I didn't retaliate, because after fourty minutes of it I had kind of gotten used to it. "My brother doesn't understand it either. He studies very hard at times. And I don't revise at all, and yet we get the exact same scores. Weird huh?"

   I nodded. Ten minutes passed. Sam, however, didn't get bored and had carried on flinging my hair.

   "Your hair is prodigious!" Sam exclaimed. I sighed, laughing slightly.

   "You learn that word from a game, didn't you?" I questioned.

   "But of course, your Highness." He stood up and bowed, smiling.