van.
"Oi, Van." Benji calls from down the hall.
I spun around to see him jogging up behind me.
"We have to go to maths now." He says, a bit of of breath.
"Christ, Benji, you ran five feet. Lay off them smokes." I joke and turn around so were walking towards Mr Bates' classroom.
We sit down and Larry is already there, the Year 10 is chatting the ear off of him.
"Mate. I think I'm dropping out of school." The Year 10 scoffs, pretty sure he'd be better off. Pretty sure we all would be.
We sit around in a semi circle a the table and wait for Melanie to arrive.
Melanie. That name. Sounded proper posh. Funnily enough she wasn't though. I've heard her name before, I didn't know it belonged to her though.
She came into the room in a bit of a flurry and sat down without looking up.
"You okay lass?" Larry asks, and she looks up then.
"Holy shit." The Year 10 gasps.
"Who did that to you?" Benji asks worriedly.
"Uh, don't really know. They came from behind and got me, then I elbowed them in the face so it was pretty bloody by the time I got a look I couldn't really tell who it was."
"Shit, Melanie. You have a massive black eye." I say, just because I'm so in shock.
"Thanks, I had no idea." She jokes. At least she hasn't lost her sense of humour.
She looked like she wanted to die. Her hair covered most of her badly bruised eye and cheek. And her other eye was dark and sunken, and she couldn't look any of us in the eye. I felt really bad for her, she didn't deserve to be stuck with the rest of us idiots, she was too smart, too pretty.
I had no idea what she was teaching, she was jumbling up numbers again. Doing stuff that I would never be able to. I just stared at her, it was becoming a bad habit. Luckily, this time she wasn't aware, so she didn't blush and was completely herself.
The class went on, and I tried to pay attention.
"Alright. So if I have a fractional expression I have to combine at the fractions together to make one big fraction and multiply the denominators by each of the numerators."
I had no idea what that meant but I watched her work it out and come up with an answer that was completely different from the question. It was fascinating watching her be smart. What was better is that she knew she was good, and that this was what she was good at and nothing else.
The class finished and she packed up her stuff. I decided to take a chance and do something spontaneous. Seize the day and all that. Something about seeing her and bashed up made me feel obliged to know why. Seemed a bit narcissistic of me, but fuck it.
We were the last two left in the room and she was about to leave.
"Melanie?" I asked, it came out a bit louder than I had expected.
"Yeah?" She turns around, and looks me in the eye properly for a second. She realised what she was doing and quickly averted her gaze.
"I'm still stuck. I don't get it." I say.
"What? Really? Am I that shit of a teacher? Does everyone not get it? Oh shit." She panics.
"No, they do. I'm just still stuck."
"Oh, um, alright." She says nervously.
"Mind coming round and lending me a hand?"
She thinks on it for a minute. "Maybe you could come to mine, no ones usually home after school so it'd be quiet." She kinds of frowns to herself, as if she thinks she's come off the wrong way.
"Sounds like a plan." I say, trying to calm her down.
"Great." She says nervously and then turns to leave the room. Leaving me to watch her leave.
melanie.
I come back out of Mr Bates' room the same way I came in. In a flurry.
The conversation I just had swirled around in my head. What if he thinks I invited him over for a shag. It sounded like that's what I was hinting at. But I just wanted to do maths.
Oh god. Why don't I ever think about things before I say them? What if he tries something and I have to tell him I don't want to put out?
Some part of me was buzzing with excitement underneath all of that dread. It was that weird effect he had over me, I refused to call it a crush. I hope it goes away soon, like every other crush I have had in my life. I hope it goes away before I get brave and decide to make a move.
I looked a bloody state anyway. The left side of my face was swollen, my eye was black and a had scrapes all down my left arm. Not too serious, but it sure looked ugly as fuck. Hopefully that was enough to steer him away. Although most lads around here would shag anything that would agree to it, so you could never be sure.
The halls seemed quieter without Jay. Me Oldfield has suspended him for being in the fight, he pulled the person who got me from behind off of me, and this just happened to be the moment Mr Oldfield saw the fight, so Jay got suspended.
He was alright with it though, it wasn't the first time.
So much had happened and it was only the second day back. My head was sore, both the physical structure and my brain.
"Melanie." Mr Oldfield calls me from down the hall, loads of students turn to look at the two of us, like it's some sort of standoff.
I walk towards him.
"Yes?" I ask.
"A word in my office please." He says, directing me to his office.
A word? I think he meant more like him shouting for the next forty minutes and me getting a massive headache. God, I could have done with bringing a couple of Xanax to school today.
