Last Price ✓ (Book 1 in the Last Price Series)

one:: bellyache

"They'll  be here pretty soon,

 lookin' through my room...

 for the money. 

I'm biting my nails,

 I'm too young to go to jail, 

it's kind of funny."

Josephine Ito, despite her soft sounding name, was a troublemaker.

She threw pranks on teachers, hid people's report cards, graffitied staffrooms....

She was not someone you should get on the bad side of.

All this time she had been committing offences, she had gotten two suspensions, and after the third one, who knew what would happen.

Her parents weren't happy with the kind of behaviour their daughter possessed and were waiting for her to finally cross the line, so they could ship her off to Nigeria.

Josephine's mother was originally from Nigeria. She had been born and brought up there, staying there for her whole life until she defied her mother's wishes and went to study abroad. There she had met Yamato, at college, a Japanese guy with hair as soft as the sun.

They had hit it off, and after she had turned twenty-six, and he twenty-nine, they had gotten married, in the catholic church at the end of his street.

Josephine had never been to Nigeria. She didn't know of the hardship that people there faced. She thought of it as some poor country where everyone tied wrappers and couldn't speak proper English. She thought everyone there was dumb. 

She could never have been more wrong.

The beginning of her living nightmare was on Friday, the day the students were leaving for summer vacation. She had pranked the principal, a farewell gift she called it, and had been sashaying across the school halls triumphantly, since no one suspected it to be her.

Especially not after that walk.

The bell had rung for the end of school, and just as she reached the school door, the intercom sounded.

"Josephine Ito is needed at the principal's office." It said twice, before it shut up.

Jo contemplated just going home, I mean she was already at the parking lot. But as she felt someone tap her shoulder, she turned around.

And it was the principal.

"Yeah, you're not going anywhere." He said with a straight face, and lead her to his office.

He sat down in his chair. It wasn't a very big office. It was like the size of a bedroom. There were pictures lined all along his table, and posters saying "He who opens a door to a school, closes the door to a prison" and such.

"Take a seat, Miss Ito."

Josephine sat down. She knew why she was here. It was because he thought she was the one who TPed his house. She had seen it this morning, and had almost run someone over because of it. Yes, she was the one who TPed his house, but he didn't need to know that.