Flashback – 2 ½ years ago
'Are there any teachers around?' Jinae says, pulling me towards the hole in the school fence that some boy in the year above managed to kick a football through. She too wanted to escape from the teachers, the douchebags and general stress that school was putting on. Only temporarily, but we both needed a breath of sweet air from everything.
Especially after Mr. Lee has spent the whole of maths criticising me for not understanding the content, making me retake every test this year and pestering me with questions just to compare me to other people in the class. This was all despite the fact that I had very much studied for each of those tests, handed in every piece of homework in on time and actually tried to make an effort to get on his good side.
He says it's nothing personal.
So here we were, me with a ginormous bag of crisps in my backpack, leaving school at break through and splinter-full gap in the school security with nothing to hide us other than a few wintery bushes.
I take one final look behind me and with no one over the age of eighteen in sight I turn towards my best friend since the beginning of middle school. With her arm outreached to grab mine, I shake my head and take her hand and she bends down through the hole and I follow through quickly, having to crouch and hold the strap of my backpack tightly to prevent the precious cargo from being damaged.
That, and I don't want my uniform to get ripped.
As soon as we're both out I feel suddenly exposed, like I'm supposed to be somewhere I'm not. Instead of making my way to another tiring and painful lesson that will serve no usefulness to the rest of my life, I'm faced with more greenery and a bustling road down the bank to our left.
'TO FREEDOM!' Jinae exclaims, punching her fist into the air and following it, charging forwards and dragging me along with her. I laugh out loud while nearly tripping over my own leather school shoes. We run together like this for a few seconds before going into a slow walk, still hand in hand, swinging our arms back and forth like little girls. We stay on the top of the bank, hearing the whir of traffic go by as we weave our way between trees.
The fully exposed feeling doesn't kick in until I get the notification on my phone that English has just started. I imagined all our classmates making their ways to their seats, dragging chairs out from desks and pulling neglected books out of their bags. But there's two gaps – one desk pressed against the wall and the other at the bag in the middle. Chairs neatly tucked in. No one there. No books in sight at those two desks.
Instead, the two people supposed to be in those desks are free, roaming the woods like two wolves breaking away from their pack.
Once we'd reached a point where we felt safely far away enough from school, we sat down on the bank, overlooking the traffic. The amount of cars driving by at this time of day always baffles me. How many old and pregnant people are there?
The air felt fresher here. Rather than the stuffy smell of teenage sweat and dodgy school dinners I could feel a cleaner atmosphere circling us both.
We both let out strong sighs of relief, both knowing that we were free. If only for a short amount of time, no one could tell us what to do now. Once we'd done this once, we could do it as much as we liked, whenever we liked. That's what it felt like. Like we were invincible.
I reach into my bag and pull out the bag of crisps, pulling them open with a loud crinkle and placing them between me and Jinae.
'This is so much better than English,' she sighs, reaching in for another snack. My mouth is already full of crunched up potatoes so all I do in response is nod.
'Vent to me, Y/N,' she then says, placing an arm around my shoulders. I quickly finish my mouthful.
'About what?' I groan, knowing that she knows how much shit I've been in lately.
'Like, your teachers, your parents, your never-ending sea of homework? You've got a lot going on. And that's why you need to place it all out in front of you and process it.'
YOU ARE READING
Mystical Blue
Fanfic'His hair was the first thing I noticed about him. It made him look almost unreal, like a mystical creature bathing in the most perfect sunlight. Even when he let my hands writhe through it and beads of sweat caused little clumps of his hair to sti...
