The Maverick

Part 2

AN: Hope you enjoy!

All 20 people in the classroom turned and starred at me as I entered, the room falling completely silent. The teacher noticed me, only because of the sudden change of volume in the room and gestured me towards his overcrowded desk before the silence swallowed me up whole, not that I'd let any of these strangers sense my fear of the silence, no. I kept my head up as I walked up to the desk at the front of the class.

"Hello, I'm Evan, I was told to come here for something called homeroom." I said to the teacher, who stared at me, clearly taken aback by my accent, I understood, my accent was deemed as 'posh' back home in Hampshire too, it must have been accentuated when all he heard all day was that god-awful southern twang.

"Hi Evan, I'm Mr Thomas, I have a seat for y'all here and a slip of paper you need to give to every teacher you have a class with today and for the rest of the week and give to me at the end of every day." I nodded, before walking towards a seat on the left and middle of the classroom. I slid into to awkward chair-desk duo thing, fighting with my bag and fought to ignore the sniggers my new classmates made but before I could pull out my book, which I had been itching to continue since the few chapters I read before I left this morning, or put my earphones in once again, a girl with straight, short, brown hair came over to my desk.

"Hey, how are you? I'm Christine and I'm down to show y'all around if that's okay with you?" Her smile was infectious and I couldn't help but smile with her and agree. We make small talk, mostly about books, she loves The Mortal Instruments and, like every other girl, she may or may not be in love with Jace. The bell goes off about 5 minutes later, interrupting our conversation and making me jump once again, much to Louise's amusement.

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My first lesson was History, which was...interesting. As I somewhat cynically expected of the South of America, history was taught very patriotically and with little regard towards the other side of the various wars, particularly Britain, much to my amusement. I coped with this method of teaching from the tall, pot-bellied teacher for the first 15 minutes and then gave up on even trying to concentrate on the literal s*** that was getting thrown at us. The teacher was in the middle of explaining some battle or something and only explained the American's side of it, not even acknowledging that the opposition were human, this didn't bother me too much, if that's how the headteacher wants children taught, fine by me, but I was bored. I raised my hand, knowing I shouldn't.

"Sir, you have been going on about the Americans for a while now, were they actually fighting anyone human who also had problems such as disease and loss of resources or do they not matter?" I asked innocently. Don't argue with me, (I was on the debating team at home and won every-time alongside my best friend) but simultaneously wishing he did, so I could have something to do. I knew he would respond, as all bad teachers do.

"Well yeah, sure they had issues but they were such idio-"

"Idiots? I thought History was about looking at both sides and not making judgments?" I interrupted him, crossing my arms, as I leaned back in my chair as far as I could comfortably. By this point, the class, who were half asleep, had perked up and were looking back and forth between myself and the teacher, who was now looking rather angry, as if they were spectators at a tennis match.

"And what would you know? You have been in my class for 20 minutes, I have been teaching history for 20 years now, I know what I am saying." was his smart-alec reply.

"Yes, I acknowledge that, but I know for a fact that whoever the Americans were fighting, they were most definitely human and were not idiots, given the fact that they fought the Americans 3 years earlier and annihilated them. Also, you may have been teaching for 20 years, but I have just finished my History GCSE, which I got an 8 in by the way, so I guess we are evenly matched." I smiled at him sweetly, god this felt good. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a couple of the students mouthing 'GCSE' to each-other in confusion, I forgot, they didn't happen here, lucky bas*****. He glowered at me from the blackboard he had written a couple of dates on and I received several looks from the other students, a mixture of awe and slight fear, as he continued his mind-numbing lesson, finally ignoring me. I caught the eye of a boy at the back who had tanned skin and glasses on his slender face, he winked at me and I blushed before looking away.

As I approached the teacher's desk after lesson to hand him my slip of paper, I spoke to him. 

"I'm sorry for arguing sir, I'm just used to learning a very different way and my achievements can sometimes make me very arrogant and I apologise for my behaviour." No, I'm not sorry, I enjoyed the hell out of it and would do it again in a heartbeat the voice in my head screamed as my other half of my brain did the right thing. He just stared at me, Jesus the students must be seriously badly behaved if he was acting this shocked towards my apology.

 "Should I go or...?" I asked, feeling as the tension increased tenfold when he didn't reply. He nodded eventually, so I left, one lesson down, 5 to go.

Christine was waiting for me outside the classroom, a massive grin on her face.

"That was so awesome! I bet you did that back at home too." she squealed as she hugged me. She wasn't even in my lesson, how did she know already?

"Sure, whatever- hey, do you know a kid was who sits at the back of the class, tan with the glasses?"

"Yeah that's Raphael, but everyone calls him Raph, why?"

"Nothing, just wondering who he was." I replied absently.

As we continued walking to the next lesson, Christine described all the cliques to me 'so you don't get into trouble or something' she claimed. It was worse than Mean Girls. The nerds could not sit or be next to anyone popular, no matter what. The jocks were the kings of the school and three girls, one blonde and disturbingly like Regina George, a brunette and a redhead were the queens. If you played an instrument, great, but you had basically committed 'social suicide' as the only other people you could hang with besides the other musicians were the drama students who, according to Louise, were complete freaks. Gay was accepted but not by all and you were screwed if you were not 'pretty' which I definitely was not, well not the usual pretty.

I had blue/grey eyes with a strange rim of gold or amber around the pupils. My hair was just past my shoulders and was wavy and basically a mane when I got out of bed in the mornings. I was tall and a bit curvy, but still petite, the opposite of Christine. She had brown hair also, but it was nice and tamed. Her skin was clear or anything, no freckles or anything, and though she was not tall, she had a strange, ethereal grace that clashed completely with her accent. Her clothes were also different, she was the denim jacket to my leather, the pumps to my Doc's and even though I had known her for less than a day, I felt we belonged in each-other's company.