Full Count

one

Father said that senior year was supposed to be "the best time of your life and it would be full of going to football games and hanging out with friends", but it's the week before Christmas break and the only times I'm ever on school grounds are when I'm forced to be at school. I kind of hate it here. Constantly being in classrooms where everyone's so talkative and there's always someone around you no matter what, it's fucking annoying, but I promised my father I'd graduate so even if he's dead and in the ground rotting away I'm going to graduate.

"Katie can you answer number four for me please?" Mr. Miller asks. I could, but I wasn't paying attention and quite honestly, I don't want to answer right now.

"I can't answer it," I say eventually.

"Why's that?"

"Because I honestly don't care about anything you ever teach in this class and I don't see why I have to answer."

Mr. Miller laughs. "Want to try and make an answer or try and get detention again this week?"

I know he's being sarcastic, and he really doesn't want to give me detention again but watching him get frustrated is funny. "I mean the sleep I get in detention is some of the best sleep I get ever. I wouldn't mind taking a trip there after school." Okay maybe I lied, I spend some time in detention, at least once a week. I literally have nothing else better to do. And Mr. Miller never minds my company.

His face turns a little red once I respond, he expected me to back down. Ah, Mr. Miller your hope in me being the student you want me to be must die out eventually.

"You must really like spending time in the same room as me if you don't mind getting detention all the time," he says causing the class to have low chuckles or murmurs as he places a pink detention slip in my hand.

"Oh, I couldn't think of anything better that I rather be doing than spending two hours in an empty classroom on a Monday afternoon with you," I tell him as the bell rings with a tight smile.

"My desk now." He mouths as everyone's leaving out the door in a stampede.

I walk to his desk, slip still in hand, book bag hanging off my left shoulder. "Can I help you? I have lunch to get to."

"You know you don't have to get detention just because you're bored."

"I get it because it's better than sitting in the little four walls I call my bedroom all day long, but when you hate basically doing everything there's nothing really better to do."

"I think I have something you can do in your free time," he says handing me a file folder with some papers in it.

"What's this?"

"The school needs someone to take pictures at the baseball games this season, well when February comes around, and write reports about them," he starts off. "I remember that you and your dad used to go to Major League baseball games all the time. So, I talked to Coach Jones and he said it wouldn't hurt to ask you. I thought it was something you'd like to do."

"I barely like do your homework and you think that I want to spend time sitting on cold metal bleachers watching people I despise play a game my father made me love? That's stupid."