Kraal

Chapter 6: Rose

The next day in Politics, I found myself seated next to a member of the blonde squad. Interestingly, Mr Bell had assigned us all seats in what I assumed was a ploy to keep the chatter to a minimum.

"So, Mr Bell began. "If you open your textbooks on page 12, you'll see Bird's article on the relationship between politics and crime. In your pairs, I want you to discuss the article and apply it to what's currently happening today."

The blonde girl beside me heaved a sigh and lazily flicked her textbook open.

I looked around at the other pairs, some were in deep discussion while others were looking around the class like they were hoping for inspiration.

"So it says that under the new Criminal Violence Act 2016, anyone caught committing an act of violence can be sentenced to at least twenty years in prison."

The blonde girl batted her long eyelashes at me. "Have you read this?"

I nod. "Yeah, I read it last night."

The girl rolled her eyes. "Well whatever, that's not true."

I frowned at her. "Yes, it is."

"No, it only applies to people over the age of eighteen. The punishment for anyone younger is much more...lenient." She fixed me with a hard stare, unblinking.

"OK," I said. "Well should we write that down?" I already knew it of course; I was just trying to find a way to make our conversation bearable.

The girl just shrugged her shoulders.

I scribbled down what she had said before turning back to the textbook. "It says the punishment for people under the age of eighteen ranges from three months' house arrest to five years in a young offender's institute."

The girl's eyes flickered to me and then back down to her page. "Your accent is annoying."

"Excuse me?"

"Your accent, it's annoying."

I shook my head. "Whatever."

She moved so fast that I didn't even have time to react. Before I knew it, she had a clump of my hair clenched in her fist. "Stay away from Josh."

"Get off me."

"Alisha!" Mr Bell yelled.

She released me and straightened up.

"Out of my classroom, now."

Alisha picked up her bag and shoved her textbook inside before stalking out of the room. My face burned under the stares of the rest of the class and my scalp ached.

As soon as Mr Bell closed the door behind him, Daisy rushed over to my desk. "Are you OK?" She started smoothing the hair around my face and I swatted her away a little more irritably than I intended.

"I'm fine." I grasped my hands together under the table to stop them from shaking. The rest of the room had broken off into their own conversations, but they kept glancing back as though they were waiting for someone else to attack me.

"I can't believe she did that," Daisy said. "Alisha had a reputation for being a bully at school, but I thought she'd grown out of that."

"She was a bully?"

"Yeah and she was always getting into fights. She hit one girl so hard she needed stitches."

"How did she get away with that?"

"Her father's a Police Officer," Daisy said, pulling a face, "Believe me, she could get away with murder."

I didn't see Alisha again until lunch, when she and the blonde squad passed our table and burst into a fit of giggles. I wasn't afraid of her, of any of them, but I didn't want to be dragged into another fight. It was beyond embarrassing.