Bad Reputation

Bad Reputation (22)

Chapter 22

The pencil was tapping against the desk in a slow motion. My head had a hard time focusing on the homework lying in front of me. As the second hand on the clock kept ticking by in what felt like slow motion. As the minute hand moved another inch, my foot began tapping against the ground in the same rhythm as my pencil.

I was impatient to get out of this room. It had gotten so familiar to me in the last few days. I knew every gap and missing paint fleck, every crack in the blackboard and every drawing on the beat down desk.

This room was nowhere near as nice as the rest of our classrooms, but I had gotten used to it. Actually, this may be the room I liked the most in this entire school.

It was Friday afternoon, two weeks since I had last spoken to my parents. I had gotten sick of them reprimanding me for every single thing I did, and now I had just stopped caring. I had realized they never would accept me for me, and that was also the reason I had ignored them for the past two weeks. Not that they had tried to contact me anyway.

The pace of my tapping pencil increased as my thoughts wandered that direction.

For two days after my outburst, mother had tried to make us eat dinner together as a family, but when I refused to come out of my room and father didn’t even come home until nine at night, she gave up.

Our house was very quiet and unusually peaceful, to say the least.

Suddenly a hand came down and wrapped around my wrist.

“Stop it,” a slightly husky voice demanded.

I glanced over at Jayden, who was using his other hand to rub his eyes.

It had almost become a tradition this week. The two of us both managed to land ourselves in detention, which was just where we were right now.

I wasn’t even sure how it happened. Somehow, I always managed to get in trouble. Either it was coming late to class or talking – often to Riley – and I might have gotten into a verbal fight or two.

And somehow, Jayden almost always managed to get a detention after he heard I had one.

I thought it was kind of sweet, that brooding, angry Jayden Carter got detention to keep me company, but he insisted it was not on purpose. Sofia agreed with me, though.

“Did I wake you?” I asked, because despite him being here because of me, Jayden often fell asleep.

“What does it look like?” Jayden grumbled, letting my hand go. Immediately afterwards I began tapping my pencil again, waiting for the last fifteen minutes to pass.

Mrs. Birmingham had apparently gotten full responsibility of detention, and with the exception of the first five minute, she abandoned the room.

Basically we could come and go as we pleased.

But Jayden and I always stayed.

Some of the days, Riley, Trinity and Landon would join us, but not today. It was just us two in the silence of the room. We didn’t really talk, just sit in silence and enjoyed each other company. Or at least I did. I wasn’t sure about Jayden but it seemed he had really put whatever was going on with him behind us,

I really did consider him a good friend of mine. Sofia, too, had gotten really close to me.

“Are you going to the party tonight?” Jayden asked me as he stretched his arms above his head and yawned.

I bit my lip and shrugged.

All week, Trinity had been going on and on about a party she would be hosting tonight. I wanted to go, but at the same time, not really. The last party she had had wasn’t what I would call fun. But still, it would be nice to get out of the house. Despite not speaking to my parents I had abided by the grounding and not left the house outside of school and detention.