Chapter Two
I can’t even pretend to say that being late was an uncommon thing for me, but I will admit that arriving to school significantly later than usual did make me feel pretty uneasy. By the time I got to school I had already missed all of first period and half of second. Luckily I had biology second period with my all time favorite teacher, so I figured it couldn’t be that bad. In fact, I figured that it was rather nice being able to skip history for a day.
When I got to my classroom, I slowly cracked open the door and peaked my head in first. It didn’t take very long for Mr. Mason to notice me.
“About time you showed up.” He smiled at me, “Come in, Austin.” As I came through the door, I couldn’t help but notice the thirty sets of eyes that were staring directly at me as I made my way to my seat through the silent classroom. I tried my hardest to ignore their stares, and I had almost made it all the way to my seat before some douche decided that it would be funny to step on my shoelace, causing me to fall flat on my face. I’ve never understood why people felt it was necessary to go out of their way to make me miserable.
“Okay, okay. That’s enough, Phillip.” I could hear Mr. Mason trying to raise his voice over the sound of all the laughter in the class. “Just continue working on your packets in your groups.” Eventually the laugher died down and the classroom returned to normal.
“Austin, can you come over here a minute?” Mr. Mason quietly called me over. I quietly walked over to his desk. “Where have you been all morning?”
“I overslept and my sister left without me, so I had to walk.” I was almost tempted to add that I’d had a pretty rough morning, but I didn’t want him to worry about me. I’d already had to talk him out of calling Child Protection Services a couple of times just over little details I had told him, and I felt like stressing myself out from talking about what had just happened wasn’t necessary. He lightly shook his head at me.
“What am I going to do with you?” He laughed to himself a little. “I’ll write you a pass this time, but don’t go making this a habit.”
“Thank you so much, Mr. Mason! I’m working on it!” As I walked back to myh desk, I couldn’t help but cringe at the words that had just come out of my mouth, “I’m working on it”. They reminded me all too much of my father. My mom had always made it very clear that no one ever cares about the effort or lack of effort you put into anything, all that anyone ever cared about was the results. My father always claimed that he was working towards recovery, he claimed that it would only be a matter of time before he was back on his feet at another job, and that we would be able to afford the life we had been dreaming of and that things would get better. Of course, these had become nothing more than empty words to me, hearing him say such things felt like he was reading fairytales to me. Nothing was going to change without a great deal of effort towards reform, and my dad definitely did not have that kind of drive left in him, even if he liked to believe that he did.
“Hey, um, what’s the homework?” I hesitantly asked the girl next to me.
“Is that a trick question?” she seemed a little disgusted that I was talking to her, and I was honestly pretty confused.
“I just got here; can I please just have the assignment?” I repeated.
“Why don’t you go ask Mr. Mason, you teacher’s pet!” she turned away from me in disgust.
“Yeah, we all know that Austin has a fetish for the teacher.” The girl behind me chimed in.
“He’s not denying it!” the girl next to me added.
“We all know that he got AIDs from Mr. Mason last night.” Of course Jordan Tanner just couldn’t pass up an opportunity to harass me. His comment had the two girls bursting into laughter. I could not stand that kid. Out of the four years that I’d gone to school with him, Jordan had never failed to make my life harder than it already was. I never quite understood why he’d always been out to get me, but he managed to make school a living hell for me, which was definitely the last thing that I needed. It didn’t help that his social status allowed him to have many followers who would mindlessly mimic anything that he did. Needless to say, I wasn’t thought too highly of around school, and as far as I could tell I had never even done anything.
