Out of Your League

Chapter 16

The head's office was all too familiar to me - like the rest of the school, it was old, grand and the furniture looked as though it had been there since the Egyptians. As did our headmaster. His hair was tufty, single strands sticking up in random directions, he wore wire rimmed rectangular glasses and his desk constantly had a smoking pipe left on it.

The clock ticked by and with each passing second, the hard, wooden chair beneath me became more and more uncomfortable. This time the head had opted for the silence until I felt so uncomfortable that I admitted it was me. This was one of two tactics he always employed – the other being asking difficult questions until you cracked. Finally, he pushed his glasses down his nose slightly and surveyed me.

'It was your final warning Miss Huntingdon and under usual circumstances you would be expelled, however, luckily for you, your parents have generously offered to fund the refurbishment of the science building on the condition that you are allowed to stay,' I nodded, expecting that to be all, but he continued, 'Despite this, I do need to talk to you about your behavior...'

The repetition of him shaking his head to emphasize his words sent me into a stupor and I stopped listening to his words, instead all I could think about was the bloody refurbishment my parents were funding. If nothing else has, does that not show the kind of world I come from? The unfair privileges that people of money are granted. I knew though, I knew for certain, that my parents would be furious with me. Too many times now they had received a phone call about my misbehaviors and the worst thing about this one was that it wasn't even my fault.

*****

Brooke was closer to the Head's office than I'd thought, although admittedly I was stomping there a lot quicker than usual. I got to the door and to my utter annoyance and disgust, George was there. Before giving me a chance to say anything, he pushed himself off the wall he'd been leaning against and took a step forward.

'You're welcome,' Was he kidding me right now?

'You can't be fucking serious,' he looked at me in mock shock,

'Swearing? How rude. But seriously, I did you a favour Colette. You wanted to be expelled, and now you are. I gave you your wish,' Fine, so maybe he had thought he was doing a nice thing, but I knew him. He never just did nice things, he'd known exactly what he was doing when he sent me that ridiculous 'present', he'd known it would get me expelled.

'I know that you know that I don't want to be expelled anymore but thanks to your stupid prank I nearly was. So stay the away from me,' His lips pressed together and he sighed, looking genuinely sorry, before his eyebrows lifted and his mouth tried to bend into a smile, that's when I knew he found it hilarious. He actually wanted to get me expelled even though he knew I didn't want to be. But why?

'Dickhead,' then pulled open the door and he had the audacity to look smug. That relit me anger and I swung back around and slapped him soundly on his face before sauntering inside leaving him with a ruffled, shocked expression on his face that gave me much more satisfaction than I should admit.

Wearily, I opened the door to my room – feeling lots of strong emotions in the space of a couple of hours had sapped me and I was ready to flop on my bed and watch Netflix until the sky darkened and the stars emerged to light the way for the lost ones. But my room wasn't empty – Ed was sitting on my bed.

'Will told me everything. I'm so sorry C,' another strong emotion rushed into me, but this time it wasn't anger. It was gratefulness – gratefulness that he cared enough to sneak into my room, and gratefulness that Will had explained it all to him so I didn't have to repeat the story again. He held out his arms and I nestled into them before he wrapped them around me tightly and we sat leaning against each other, not speaking at all, just each thinking our own thoughts together. At some point, Belle burst in, demanding to know what was going on, and she saw me and Ed and I hoped she was going to leave us to it but of course, she didn't.