Captive

Chapter One

~Chapter One~

Anastasia bit down on her lip as she glanced at the student she had been partnered with for their assignment in their English class. She had never really worked well with other students when it came to shared assignments. As to what had possessed her English teacher to pair her up with one of the laziest students in her entire year level she had no idea. His name was Joshua and the only reason he was getting any credit for the actual work that was being done was because he was simply sticking down the information she had gathered as well as the pictured and everything else down onto the two large A3 pieces of paper that she had stuck together herself with some clear sticky tape so that it didn’t look like to pieces of paper. She watched him carefully, practically chewing on her lip now as she watched him stick down one of the boxes of writing she had typed up just the night before.

“You screw this up Joshua and I am never doing any of the work again. You hear me?” she said to him as she looked up at him and he rolled his eyes.

“Relax would you, Ana? I’m just sticking things down. It’s not like I’m doing anything major,” he said to her as he grabbed the glue stick and began to lather on the glue to the back of several pictures.

Anastasia went to open her mouth to retort to what he had said but she closed her mouth quickly, knowing it would be pointless to argue with him right now. She sighed and shook her head, leaning back in her chair as she raised her hand to her face and rubbed her eyes. She stiffened as she heard tearing and her eyes flew open, her head whipping around to find that Joshua had just torn the entire assignment cleanly into several pieces. She looked over at him, her face going pale as her eyes grew a rather dark colour as she felt herself getting rather angry.

“What…did you just do, Joshua?” she asked, trying to keep her voice from shaking with anger as she looked up from their torn assignment to Joshua’s now pale face as well.

“I…I was just trying to…stick on the information and some pictures! I didn’t know it was going to tear!” he exclaimed quickly just as the teacher wandered over to their desk and looked at them.

“You two do realise that it’s due at the end of the lesson right?” the teacher asked them and Anastasia swallowed heavily.

“Yes we do, Miss Stevens…” she said through clenched teeth as she closed her eyes and swallowed heavily, doing her best to keep calm.

Miss Stevens nodded her head before she spoke up to her them.

“You can have until the end of the day to fix it. Otherwise I’m going to have to fail you on this assignment,” she said before she walked away.

Joshua turned and looked towards Anastasia, an apologetic look on his face and he opened his mouth to speak. He fell silent, however, as Anastasia raised a hand to stop him from saying anything. She chewed on her lip once more, doing her best to remember what her father had told her about her emotions and about how it would affect others if she were to let her emotions get the better of her. She took in a deep breath before she shook her head.

“It’s fine. I’ll do it, Joshua,” she said to him as she began to pack up her things, silently thanking whoever was listening that she had thought ahead to save the information and the pictures onto her USB before school that morning.

“I’m really sorry, Ana,” Joshua said and she shot him a scowl.

“I know. Now leave me alone,” she snapped at him as she stood up, just as the bell went and she made her way out of the classroom, heading towards the library so that she could get started on printing out the assignment again as well as putting it all together.