Last Christmas (Book 1 in the Christmas Series)

Chapter Eighteen

Bonfire night was a night I would never forget.

Seeing the brightly coloured explosions illuminate the night sky was definitely a once in a lifetime opportunity and I was glad that I had the opportunity to witness such a thing. It's strange, the things you miss when you spend so long on your own, isolated from the real world. I had seen films, plenty of them which showed the extravagance of the day, perhaps some more extreme than others, but they were nothing compared to experiencing it. It was a little bit like Halloween, you can see it in films time and time again, but it is nothing in comparison to seeing the real thing. Home might have been nice, but real life was so much.

If only everything could have been like that night. Chilling with your friends in a field watching the night sky, drinking cold drinks and just having a laugh. Unfortunately, it wasn't always that simple and my Maths lessons were enough to prove that. Mrs Reynolds had been like a hawk hunting for its dinner whenever I entered the room. She watched me with her beady little eyes, following my every movement as though I was doing something wrong. It was so annoying, but there was nothing I could do about it, I just had to ignore her and hope she found something else to become fixated by, though that didn't seem likely.

Not only did I have to put up with the Devil watching my every move, our entire Drama class had to put up with Jason and his annoying, over the top, and dare I say dramatic, pep-talks. Not that they were pep-talks. They were rants with the idea of getting us excited for another lesson of rehearsals for the show. We were all getting sick of them, but there was nothing we could do to get him to shut his mouth, though Ant tried. He was the only one gutsy enough to make a comment that had any sort of impact. We were all too scared about getting screamed at by Jason to say anything. Although he was the most laid back teacher we ever had, he was scary when he got angry and no one wanted to see that.

"Remember, you have way over a month to finish and polish your pieces before the big showcase at the end of the year! I want to see you working hard over these next few weeks and prove to me that you deserve to be in this GCSE group! Now, the other teachers look down on Drama, they don't think it's a real subject, some even go as far as to call it the easy option, for those who aren't academically gifted. I know for a fact that some of you are academically gifted so I want you to prove those teachers wrong! Plus, I have a bet going with one of the other teachers and I don't want to be out twenty quid," Jason said, trying to get us hyped up for the lesson.

A collective, silent groan appeared to ripple around the room when we found out we were being used as nothing more than pawns in a bet between Jason and several other teachers. He was using us to gain some extra cash, and we weren't happy. I mean, would you? We'd spent weeks on these performances and still had a little while to go, yet he was using it to get some money, it was infuriating. Luckily, we had Ant to vent our frustrations, he seemed to know what everyone was thinking without us even saying it.

"Is there any point in us doing these performances if you're just doing it to earn some money?"Ant said, leaning back on his hands and raising an eyebrow at a now shifty look Jason. Where would we have been without Ant to help us stand our ground?

"I'm not using this as a way of getting some extra money, though that's an added bonus. I want you guys to give a good impression on the rest of the school and prove that the Drama department isn't an easy option. Aren't you sick of the other teachers looking down on you because you're more of an Arts kid, Ant?"

"S'pose so," Ant said.

"There we go! We're doing this to prove a point. Let Drama rule the school for once rather than sport or Maths. I know we're a predominately Maths and tech school, and no offence to the Maths nerds." Jason looked at Joel. "But we need to do this to prove a point. Are you with me on that, at least?"