Bubblegum (Brustoff)

//three

"You got called in too?" I heard from behind me. It was Ben, I recognised his voice.

I'd been called into detention during religious studies. One year 8 kid walked into the lesson half way through, handing the teacher a slip of paper and I was told to get my bag and go to Heads of House. Here I was, sat in the reception on one of the uncomfortable wooden chairs. I was sat facing the desk with two of the student reception ladies who were helping a student find his lesson. Apparently, he was in a maths room for his English lesson. This school was honestly a mess.

To the left of me, was an open door to the Heads of House office. Mrs Clark was going to kill me for wasting her time. She hated everyone. At least I wasn't called to see Mrs Swan. She'd probably give me isolation. With Mrs Clark, it might just be detention for a week, or a whole school detention. Both were equally as bad.

I turned to look at Ben, a small smirk playing at the corners of his mouth. I smiled lightly up at him, "Of course. You dragging me out of detention would probably cause this."

He sat down next to me, laughing slightly as he slumped in the chair. "At least you had fun."

Mrs Clark came into student reception and looked at me. That was my cue to leave.

"Good luck," Ben said as I stood up. I turned to briefly look at him over my shoulder, smiling again and walking towards her desk.

"Denis," she began, sighing and looking at me. I stared back, not really knowing if she wanted me to say anything to defend myself. I didn't have a defence, Ben was just very convincing. "You've never done anything like this before. Why now?"

I shrugged in my chair. At least these have some sort of cushioning.

She sighed again, "Denis. Why did you and Ben leave? You know that's against the rules."

I shrugged once again. I had nothing to say, there was nothing to say at all.

Mrs Clark looked like she was about to jump over the desk and strangle me. "This is the first time you've done something like this. I don't want you doing anything like that again, so you'll only have one whole school detention of Thursday."

Tomorrow. I sighed, I'd probably rather have detention all week with Mr Slater than that. At least I could do something.

Whole school detentions were awful. An hour and a half of sitting in silence with 50 other kids at different places in the school hall. Not being able to talk or even make eye contact. It was supervised by Heads of House and senior staff. They were strict. You didn't argue with them.

It was absolutely awful, and I really did not want to attend.

"Now, you need to go to your next lesson. Science, I believe."

The breath caught in my throat. Science was my worst lesson. I'd rather have English for a whole month with Mr Slater constantly trying to find flaws in everything I did because he didn't agree with what I wore.

Science was bad because of the teacher, Mr Smith. Luckily, he was off for a while and we had a cover teacher. That's been going on for two weeks, and I wasn't sure how it would last. The cover teacher was nice, and when she was there, science was good, and I did enjoy it. It was just the anxiety before the lesson. The worry that Mr Smith would be back again.

Mr Smith was scary. Not in the sense that he was something you'd find from Supernatural. Rather, he was scary because he didn't seem like he had a moral conscious. A difference between what's right and wrong. To him, it was like he was colourblind and all of it was grey. That there was no difference between right and wrong. What he shouldn't do and what he should. He didn't get that certain things just shouldn't happen. That he shouldn't do these things.