Hours

21- Thursday, May 17th

12:58 PM

I grin at Micheal when I see him waiting at our lockers after second period. Sure, his locker is there too, but I half expected that I had scared him off with my 'See you at lunch' comment earlier. He looks a bit uneasy but not like a caged animal who wants to run.

"You waited." I state, still smiling. I likely took like an idiot.

"Yeah, I..." Micheal trails off, suddenly sheepish. "Well, I thought- You said..."

"I was actually worried I scared you off after yesterday," I joke, trying unsuccessfully to lighten the mood.

"Crap, you're totally right." Micheal shakes his head like he thinks he's an idiot. "I'm so sorry, I-"

"Why are you apologizing?" I turn on him, brows furrowed in confusion.

"Well, if it weren't for me... you wouldn't have fought with Ashley and Lindsay, and-"

"You seriously think I'm mad at you for that?" I ask in disbelief, scoffing when he doesn't answer. "You saw me yesterday! That fight was inevitable. Besides which, you think I'm going to be mad at you, when they're the ones who are being prejudiced 'queen bees'?" I shake my head at him, somber, "They care more about their image than they do their grades. Getting a nose job is more important than getting into college." Okay, so maybe that's not true, but they sure as hell care more about who I hang around with more than they care about me. I say as much to Micheal.

He's silent for a minute, then he starts chuckling quietly to himself.

"What?" I ask, close to laughter myself. That's just how Micheal was; I didn't think anything was funny, but hearing Micheal laugh just made me want to laugh with him. I think that's something he doesn't realize about himself. He has a great laugh. It was one you only heard when you deserved it.

"It's just..." He chuckles some more, "I've never been so torn into for apologizing for something."

And I start to laugh, not because it's really funny or anything, but because he's laughing and with Micheal I feel like I can laugh, I can be myself, because he's not going to judge me for that anymore than I'm going to judge him. And then we're both laughing, the halls empty, and we stop for a moment and we look at each other and we're just happy, just smiling without a single care because there's nothing to care about.

"So," I say eventually, still laughing and grinning stupidly. "Lunch?"

"Uh... Where?" Micheal replies, and that strikes me more than anything that's happened in the past 24 hours, the strange fact that now I don't have anywhere to eat lunch.

"Aw, crap, you're totally right," I say, unintentionally echoing his earlier words. "Crap."

"Hey, it's okay. I know somewhere." Micheal interjects quickly, and I have to stop myself from smiling at the concern on his face. It's honestly really sweet.

"Where?" I ask, once again parroting his words.

"Well..." He sighs, his head bobbing back and forth as he has a silent debate in his mind, before finally just saying, "It's nice outside."

~

"Wow," I say quietly once Micheal leads me inside the small clearing. "I didn't even know this was a thing."

Micheal had led me outside to a small outdoor classroom on the side of the school opposite the parking lot. It was sort of away from the school, a small grassy area hidden by young oak trees. There was a student garden to one side, and rocks scattered around a clearing as if to replace chairs and desks. The entire clearing was covered in wood chips.

"Yeah..." Micheal says quietly, sitting down, to my surprise, on the ground, his back learning against one of the rocks. "One of the weird mysteries of the school. Outdoor classroom, never used, basically unknown to the majority of the student body." He smiles, like this small clearing is a mischievous secret.

"One of them?" I asked, suddenly curious. I sit down beside him, leaning against a different rock so our legs meet, creating a triangle.

"Oh there's plenty." Micheal laughed, and I had to laugh too at the expression on his face. "For example..." Micheal scrambles to his feet, standing in front of me. "You know Mr Mercer, right?"

"Yeah," I say, picturing the brusque teacher with a huge beard but a bald head. "Tech teacher. Short fuse. Why?"

"Well, he's been teaching here for years. Not particularly adored by the majority of his students, right?" I nod, remembering hearing older students complain about him when I was a freshman. "So, as rumours go, a few years back, he started a feud with the business department. At least, they say he started it. Could've been the senior prank, could've been a 'clumsy' janitor, but everyone knew that he was throwing a ton of shade at the business department." I'm watching him now with the attention of a child during story time; I'm completely enraptured. He continues, "One day, the business head at the time came in to see her mug of coffee completely shattered. Not only that," He pauses for dramatic effect. "It was her favourite mug. With her favourite brand of coffee. Smashed over her laptop." I gasp unintentionally, then laugh joyfully at how seriously I'm taking this story. "Exactly," Micheal responds, the mischievous look glinting in his eyes again. "The laptop? Destroyed. And with it, all of the business departments grades. Every single student in that course lost their mark."

"What?!" I interrupt for the first time, completely shocked. "They kept all the marks on a single computer? With no backup?"

"I know, right? That's ridiculous!" He laughs, then comes and sits down beside me again. "Long story short, over half of the business students failed that semester,"

"How?"

"The way the department handled the situation was completely ridiculous. They didn't tell the students until afterwards, when they all received their grades, and it was so late in the semester that most people were just hoping to coast on their better earlier marks. The department also apparently messed up when calculating the grades, setting everyone's grades automatically to a zero as opposed to one hundred. And..." he pauses again, and I laugh at the look on his face. "They could never confirm it was Mercer. He stayed on staff, the business head left the next year."

"Wait, you said it started a feud!" I say, confused.

"Rumour has it that on the night before the second semester started, a whole bunch of business students egged Mercers house. While they were, the business teacher caught them, and asked what they were doing. When she found out it was Mercers house, she let them carry on. She never said a word to the faculty. Only the students know she was there."

"Seriously?" I scoff, amazed. "Who was this teacher?"

"That's the crazy thing." Micheal responds, "No one knows. Everybody forgot her name. She wasn't in the yearbook, and all of her students forgot her name."

"I don't believe that."

"It's true." Our heads whip up at the same time to see the owner of the snarky reply. "I assume, at least. I wasn't listening."