Joanne through the years.

Reddo

Dianne

Zoe showed me safely to my registration room.  I thanked her before we agreed where we would meet at break and I ran inside, ecstatic that I had already made a new friend.  Zoe was a year older than me so we wouldn't be in any of each others classes but at least I had a friend.  I situated myself right at the back just as the bell rang and the rest of the class filed in. Caspar glared at me as he swaggered past.

Joe

I wondered what Dianne had first.  I had maths and there was a spare seat beside me so hopefully she could sit next to me.  That was probably the last thing she wanted to do.  When the bell signalling the end of registration rang I hurried off upstairs to maths.  Byron was in the top maths class so we weren't in the same class.  I wasn't in the bottom maths class like all the rest of my friends, I was in the middle.  I had just got moved up from the bottom class for no apparent reason and I was pretty sure that my mum had payed the school to do it.  I asked mum and she said that she wanted me in a class without my friends because she thought that they were distracting me.  To be honest, they did distract me.  I also had the "image" to keep up and part of that was to pretend that you don't care about school.  So I had never done my homework before.  But yesterday I decided to give it a shot as I was struggling and I was greatly looking forward to my teachers reaction.  I sat down at the back of the class as usual.  I began to pile my books onto the desk.  The teacher still hadn't arrived.  As people filed inside I spotted a flash of red hair.  Dianne was looking desperately around for a spare seat.  It didn't take her long to realise that the only spare seat was beside me.  She sighed deeply before walking to her seat and lowering herself into it as slowly as possible.  

Hi" I grinned at her. 

"Hi I'm Dianne" she smiled back.  

"I'm Joe.  We met...this morning.  Sorry about that as well" I looked her directly in the eye and she looked straight back.  

"Don't worry about it" she smiled.  "You didn't do anything.  Your friends did." 

"Yeah but I didn't stop them" I whispered as the teacher walked in.  

"It's fine" Dianne reassured me.  

"Right" the teacher said loudly over the hubbub.  "homework first please.  let me guess Joseph.  No homework?" she shot daggers at me.  

"Ummm" I  scrambled around in my bag and found it.  "is this it?" I pulled the homework out of my bag and the teacher looked thoroughly surprised.  Everyone in the class turned to stare at me.  The teacher walked over and looked the homework up and down.  

"When did you do this?" she asked, her eyes boring into mine.  

"Last night" I stared back at her.  

"But you never do your homework" She looked at me curiously.  

"Yeah well, I decided that I should do it." 

"I understand that you are good friends with Byron?" she said.  I nodded.  The teacher smirked.  "next time make it look less obvious that he did it." 

I did a double take.  "Byron didn't do that.  I did it myself." 

"Nobody likes a liar Joseph" She smiled at me. 

"I'm not lying" I protested.  I had worked so hard on this homework and now it was all going to pot.  

"I think you are.  Do you know why I think that?" she leaned forward.  I shook my head.  she smiled.  "Every answer on here's correct Joseph.  You and I both know that you would never get the answers right.  You are a nasty wee liar."