Not Important

Detention and Dreams

In class with Kerry, Niamh and Allison, I find myself in a strange mood. I'm completely lost with dad no longer home, and depressed about it, but these friends of mine seem to help me forget for a while and have fun. We all are playing hangman in class without our teacher knowing, by passing the paper to one another.

"Oh, it's the cheap prostitute", a voice says behind me. I already know who it is. The idiot girl that I wanted to drop kick yesterday, and I still do. I ignore her, but she starts throwing something at my head. It's pieces of paper.

"Miss Denton, stop throwing paper", our teacher says, not knowing how she was throwing it at my damn head! She stops.

Lesson goes on for another few minutes, until someone taps me on the shoulder from beside me. It's Addison, the quiet girl, as everyone calls her. She's holding a piece of paper in her hand, not looking me in the eyes.
"Who's it for?", I ask, knowing how passing notes works, obviously. She mouths the word 'you'.

I unravel it at my desk, and find that there is a picture and some words underneath it. The picture is of a girl that has an arrow coming off of her saying 'you'. And there's a guy underneath her, with a strange beard, saying 'your dad'. It's repulsive. She's drawn me a picture of my dad and I doing it. What the fûck is wrong with her head?!

'Everyone knows u r a whore, so stop pretending you're anything but'.

I crumple it up, ripping it into tiny pieces and not caring where those pieces fall.
"Excuse me, Miss White, but what on earth are you doing? Pick all of those pieces up, put them in the bin, and then you can sit down and learn", Sir says.
I don't listen to him. I don't listen to anyone. What I do is stand up and turn in my chair to face the bitch that I gave a promise to.
"What are you going to do, whore?", she asks me, smirking.
"Go on. Run away and cry. That's what you're best at", she tells me.
Those words. They are the ones that get to me. Devon White never runs away. Or never used to.

"Sit down, Devon, or I'll have to take you to the principals office and as you've already been given your last warning, we'll have to phone your dad in", Sir says, and my blinding rage calms down a bit. Dad. If I do drop kick this bitch then the principal will find out that dad left and I'll be sent to a care home to rot my way through life.

That can't happen.

'Come on, Devon. What's more important: your reputation and pride, or security and loyalty?', a voice murmurs in my head. A voice I haven't heard in a while.

I unravel my fists with pure effort as they refuse to go in any other shape.
"Okay, now turn around, pick up the pieces of paper and sit down and be quiet", Sir orders.
I grit my teeth, turning around and kneeling down to pick up the pieces of paper that my friends have already started picking up for me. We give the pieces to Allison and she puts them in the bin at the front of the class. I sit down in my seat, my hands shaking to the point where I think that I'm having an epileptic fit. But I don't have epilepsy, so that's probably not it.

I hate that girl. If I hadn't left the gang in the first place, she would be near the top of my revenge list. I'm still not in the gang, but they are keeping me with them so I can carry out one last form of revenge.

If I was still with them, I wouldn't starve, I would have company, and I wouldn't be in all that trouble with school. I would have a place to go if I was caught out, which isn't going to happen.

But that voice I heard in my head. The voice that now makes me shake and feel sick to my stomach. The voice that I wish I no longer heard. Caleb.

When the lesson is finished, I get up from my desk and walk out with my bag on my shoulder, just wanting to get out and punch something.