A Year Full Of Surprises

A Year Full Of Surprises - Chapter Four.

Chapter Four…

I managed to drag Mel to a seat at the back of the classroom in Maths today. Digging around in my bag, I retrieved my Ipod. It was a bad habit that I had had even before I became a rebel, to listen to my Ipod in class. I never had it on so loud anyone else could hear it and I couldn’t hear the teacher, but still loud enough so that I could listen to it discretely. I had never been caught before and even Mel hardly ever noticed when I had it in. 

Pulling my Ipod down through my t-shirt and around my bra strap, so that it wouldn’t be seen, I pulled the headphone out the top of my hoody. I always wore my hair down to disguise the brown headphones I had chosen for this specific purpose. After flicking through my artists and settling on My Chemical Romance, I put all their songs on shuffle. It was always tempting to sing along, but I doubt anyone would appreciate my dreadful singing voice. 

When Mr. Armstrong entered the classroom, I drowned out the sound of his voice and just watched the problems he was demonstrating how to solve on the board instead. We had moved on from the simple equations we were doing yesterday, to a trickier version of them. I still understood them, whereas Mel had an even bigger look of confusion on her face than yesterday. 

I tapped my pen along to the rhythm of Bulletproof Heart, whilst taking notes of how to do the question on the board, mainly because everyone else was doing the same. When it came to a test on what we had been learning this lesson, I promptly finished, getting half the answers wrong again. 

As I pretended to be puzzling over a question, but really listening to the melody of the song playing in my ear, I didn’t notice Mr. Armstrong walking over to me. That is until he held his hand out and demanded, “Ipod.” 

My eyes widened slightly. No one had ever caught me listening to my Ipod and I knew it was barely visible against the brown of my hair. I glared at him before taking out my headphone, pausing my music, and reluctantly handing it over. He smirked happily, before saying: “Thank you Jess.” 

I think I actually hated him more than any of my other teachers. Sure, I could appreciate his good looks, but he seemed to read me better than the others, like when he could tell I was lying. That either proved he had intelligence the other teachers didn’t possess, or he just wanted to annoy me on purpose. He called me Jess, which was even more annoying than when Zack called me ‘Babe’. I really hoped he would get sick of this job soon and leave. 

We had this lesson before lunch again and when it reached 1 o’clock and the bell went he told me to stay behind. I groaned. I didn’t want to put with him telling me how I should be fulfilling my potential in my subjects and putting in a ton of effort. 

Instead, he said, “Well, I’m glad if you’re going to listen to music in my class you’re listening to something good.” 

I gaped at him, then recovered and grinned. “You like My Chemical Romance?” I asked, impressed. 

He nodded. “Always have, always will.” 

None of my friends like any sort of music like that, they were all too busy listening to N-Dubz and that crap. Nobody else appreciated good music like Greenday and Fall Out Boy. “Well, at least you have good taste in music. Anybody who likes My Chemical Romance is considered great in my books.”