6I sighed, crossing my arms over my chest as the final detention bell rang, signaling the beginning of the last hour of the god-awful torture.
In the room were three other students, all sent to this room for something casual, some name-calling, one or two disrespectful students, and maybe some kid with too much free time and spray paint on his hands. The teacher, or more of a warden, Mrs. Gnat (like the bug) sat at the front, hunched over in her desk, her gray hair pulled back in a tight bun as orderly as her silent-detention policy. Matched with a white, pressed blouse, and a black, spotless pant suit, the woman's appearance only reflected her relentless personality. The blood-stained (I exaggerate, as a teacher would NEVER hit a student, right?) ruler that was propped up against the front namecard on her desk was the guillotine blade by which us delinquents acted. Those who spoke got a rap on the knuckles, those who got out of their seats without permission (which was never granted anyway) would get a smack upside the head, and if one even tried getting something out of their bag would get a swift whack on the ass whenever they left.
To sum up detention, it was two hours of silence in uncomfortable chairs that prevented any chance of a nap. But I was used to this. This was my second detention of the week, the fourth of the month, and the eleventh of the year. I had spent almost an entire day of my life in that seat by the time our story begins. Almost 24 hours of mindless staring at Mrs. Gnat's impeccable desk without interruption would've sent any of those honor roll kids to an institution or an early grave, possibly even both. Luckily for myself and my compatriots, we were hardened criminals of detention, worn by the boring afternoons wasted in the white-walled, beige-carpeted room.
Unluckily, however, was this arrangement for any other student to come trailing in, specifically a high-class, low-confidence rich kid like Andrea Elizabeth Victoria Prauss.
That's right, two middle names and a prissy last name like Prauss, coupled with a name like Andrea, and you'd expect some spoiled, over-tanned, bleach-blonde, curvy thing to come waltzing in an entire hour late.
But I was not expecting a pale, wiry, tall girl with absolute no sexual appeal to come stumbling in, an armful of papers and books practically jumping out of her arms as she shuffled to Mrs. Gnat's desk. Her back was facing me the entire time, so all that I could see was the crisp, clean lines of her black, pencil skirt and white dress shirt. Andrea, her name known to me at the time due to the neatly printed roll call on the board, cleared her throat timidly and waited for the warden to look at her.
"Miss Prauss, you do know that it is nearly an hour into detention, do you not?"
"Yes, ma'am, I know. I have a pass from the principal to excuse me from the first hour. I was filing papers for Dr. Craigson, and she forgot to call you to tell you," Andrea replied smoothly, albeit a bit quietly.
"Oh, really, Miss Prauss? Now where is this pass of yours?"
Andrea shifted her things in her arms, struggling to find the small slip of paper. She sifted through her pile several times, each search more frantic than the last, and eventually looked back at the warden with pure terror in her eyes.
"I cannot seem to find it, ma'am. I can go and ask Dr. Craigson for another, or-"
"So, Miss Prauss, you come into my class an hour late, disturbing the work of these students," she began, as if she forgot the ban she had on doing homework in class, "And then you tell me that you have no pass?"
"Yes, ma'am, I'm very, very sorry. I swear, I had it in my hand on the way here, but I don't know where it could have gone."
"Get in a seat, Prauss. Go to desk C6, to the front of Mr. Stein. Mr. Stein, would you please remove your feet from the chair adjacent to yours," she said plainly, looking at Andrea in disdain, "And all of you have to stay an extra hour thanks to Miss Prauss's tardiness. Any complaints can go straight to Miss Prauss."
"Ugh, good job, Prauss," one of the kids in the back moaned.
Andrea's face paled to an unimaginable shade, her eyes staring at the floor as she slowly moved up the aisle. I had removed my feet from on top of her seat, but kept my legs stretched out under her chair.
As soon as she was directly between Ms. Gnat and me, I whipped my phone out and sent a quick text to one of the bozos in the office detention, maybe Jason or Mark was his name, asking for them to do something about my now extended time in detention.
That was the thing about delinquents at our school, we didn't stick together out of any emotional bonds, we stuck together because if we didn't, we'd have been expelled ages ago. The kids in the office detention bailed us out, and when we had Mr. Pickney, an old geezer with worse eyesight than a blind man in a dark room, we snuck out to bail them out.
And with Miss Spoiled Rotten herself hiding my cell phone from the warden's sight, I was a free man already.
My phone buzzed quietly and I peeked at the screen. 'Be there in 5 with excuses. Want the whole class out or just a few?' Must have been Mark, the tech geek who was always in trouble for hacking into the system and putting porn on the online bulletin, printing out over five hundred fake doctor's excuses, and creating a backway around the school firewall. If his parents weren't as rich as they were, he'd have been expelled by the second time they caught him.
'Just get me out if you can. If you have to drag one of these other idiots out with me. They won't complain.' I responded quickly, hoping that it'd be the spray paint kid, since he'd been here before when we were bailed out and wouldn't panic about it.
I looked up from my phone and glared at the back of Andrea's brown hair, glad that she would have to deal with another two hours of Ms. Gnat. Let her deal with something for a change, instead of shirking it off to some lackey of hers.
Andrea was quietly braiding her bangs, her fingers shaking nervously as she did so. For her first time in detention, she wasn't doing very well. As long as she didn't start sobbing, she would make it, but she was practically making dreadlocks out of her hair out of her anxiety.
Ms. Gnat looked up and glared at us, her beady eyes skimming over the silent room, as if she was daring one of us to meet her gaze. Even I wasn't that masochistic, and just so happened to be picking at my fingers when she looked at Prissy-Pants and me.
Suddenly, there was a knock at the door, and I could see a sliver of Mark's blond hair in the door window. Ms. Gnat huffed and got up, clenching her fists and walking over to open the door.
"What are you doing here, Greene?" she hissed, crossing her arms.
"I have excuses for two students to come and help Mr. Kerrigton and me help load the cafeteria dishes onto the cleaning truck," Mark said, holding out the square pieces of paper with a mischievous glint in his eyes.
"Hmm... alright. But if I find out these are fake, it's Saturday detention for all of you. Stein, Prauss, get over here and go help Mr. Kerrigton and Matt. You two could use some exercise."
"It's Mark."
"Greene, I'll have you suspended for back talk like that."
I could feel my blood boiling. Out of all of the people I could get stuck with on this, it had to be HER? The one time that she would be able to be punished for her arrogance, she gets out of it. Of course she does.
"Yes ma'am," Andrea squeaked, picking up her belongings and hurrying to the front.
"Stein, we haven't got all day. Get moving," Ms. Gnat hissed, prompting me to jump up out of my seat and speedwalk to the door. Mark started down the hallway, Andrea shuffling behind him as I internally glared at Ms. Gnat as I passed her.
"Okay, so we have to get down there in the next five minutes or else it won't get done before the truck leaves. Mr. Kerrigton said that- did she shut the door?" Mark said, his voice dropping to a whisper.
"Yeah, dude, we're fine," I sighed, shoving my hands in my pockets.
"Good. Now, we have to go out the back door. Kerrigton's actually on hall duty and he knows about the fake excuses," Mark explained, "So, Prauss? What's your first name, darling?"
Andrea blushed, gripping onto her books tightly. "A-Andrea."
"Andrea, huh? A beautiful name for a beautiful-"
"Don't waste your awful lines, Mark. She's the one who lives in the mansion on Fifteenth Street. The one with like, four BMWs," I sighed as we turned down the hallway.
Mark's eyebrows shot up and he asked, "So what's a rich little thing like you doing in detention?"
"I-I left my bag in th-the gymnasium a-and when I w-went back to get it, I interrupted b-basketball practice," Andrea stammered.
"That's it? Christ, they put you in for anything now, don't they?" Mark smirked, shaking his head, "And you, Roddy, was this one for the announcements?"
"Yeah, apparently those girls and Miss White didn't like being called teases," I scoffed, rolling my eyes.
"How classy of you, good sir," Mark said as he stopped in front of the back staircase. He pulled a keycard out of his pocket and slid it through the keypad slot, entering a short series of numbers before the door clicked open.
"I can thank my mom's scrapbooking set for this baby," Mark winked, holding the door open for Andrea and me.
"Darling, just down the steps, there's another door, but this one's got a camera. I'm going to hold up the excuses and make it look like someone's holding the door open for me. I need you to stop looking so nervous and put a big, nice, shit-eating grin on that cute face of yours. Give me your best, 'I'm-rich-and-you-better-fucking-respect' smile," Mark sneered.
Andrea paled slightly, but composed herself and took a deep breath.
She had to be on some kind of crazy meds or into that meditative shit, because she looked like a nutcase.
She opened her eyes and sent a cold glare my way, as if I were the scum of the Earth, lifting the corners of her mouth to look downright malicious.
The bright blue in her violet eyes sparkled and crackled like lightning, her eyes hardening to be diamonds set just above her sharp cheekbones. This was the first time that she had met my gaze, and I had to say, I was both scared and, admittedly, attracted to the glistening specks of blue, red, and violet that glowed in her eyes. I could feel the intensity of the glare, as if I had completely ruined her life and all of her anger was condensed into her two, icy eyes.
"Wow, darling, that's some class-A acting. Bravo."
"You'd be surprised by the amount of times I've had to look this way," she mumbled, most likely to herself, but loud enough for me to barely make out.
"Alright, gang, let's move," Mark said, skipping down the steps and hiding his keycard between the two paper slips.
Andrea maintained the killer glare as they descended down the stairs, shifting her books to rest on one hip to give her look an even edgier side.
I have to admit, this side of her was rather interesting, especially in contrast to the weak, shy side that I had met at first.
"Alright, looking at the door expectantly… going to grab it, sliding keycard through annndd.. we're done."
Mark stepped through the doorway into the cold, dank service hallway. At the end of the musty corridor was the exit that we would be taking, and the doors on the sides led to a variety of janitorial offices, broom closets, and one or two security rooms.
"Okay, we have to be really careful. There' no one down here right now, thanks to a certain genius that sent a certain firewall down in the computer lab in the north wing, but it's nasty down here, and you do not want to be down here when the lights are off," Mark explained, "And darling, if you get scared, you can hold my hand, or I can hold you in my arms and-''
"Excuse me , but no," she spat, her voice wavering slightly as she looked at the hall around her. Her tone was harsher, and her body was tense, as if something, or someone, was about to jump her.
"Alrighty, darling, but the offer still stands," Mark shrugged, strolling down the hall like it belonged to him.
Andrea followed him, her steps cautious and slow, like walking through a minefield. I followed after her, trying to ignore the slight sway of her hips in that tight black skirt.
Suddenly, light spilled out from behind us, the sound of a door slamming open accompanying it. I saw Mark freeze, then dive into the open closet door next to him silently, leaving the two of us by ourselves against whoever was behind us.
"Stein, what are you doing down here? And who is that- Prauss? What are you doing down here?" a man's voice, an annoying as hell voice, yelled.
I turned to see Mr. Kerrigton, the technology director and co-head of the disciplinary committee, Ms. Gnat being his sidekick in torture. He was younger, maybe 25 or 26, but he was fairly strong and could probably snap my body in two without breaking a sweat. Obviously it was his fearsomeness and not his unending charisma that kept everyone in line.
"Stein, Prauss, talk."
I froze, for one of the first times in my life, not knowing what to say. If I tried blaming her, I'd definitely be ratted out or found out by Mr. Kerrigton. But I couldn't take another trespassing strike. I was dead no matter what I did.
"I brought him down here, Frederick. Some people try to have a little enjoyment in their lives, without another person there. Are you going to stop me from that, Freddy? And you should refer to me as Miss Prauss, unless you want a call from my mother about your complete lack of respect for those above you," Andrea hissed, walking in front of me with that glare in her violet eyes.
Mr. Kerrigton stopped in his tracks, his mouth hanging open in awe of her commanding tone. This stick of a girl was belittling him, a man of well over six feet and well over 50 pounds of muscle on his body.
"And furthermore," she said, pushing her things into my arms before walking towards him, "How did you just happen to find us? Were you following us? That is stalking, Freddy. I could have you arrested and put away for life. Now, are you going to be good about this, or do I need to chat with the woman who signs your paycheck?"
Holy fuck, she was hot. Her demeanor was commanding and slightly offensive, but it was like watching fireworks go off with how shocked and amazed the two men in the hall were. And I could guess that Mark was probably aroused beyond belief, the horny idiot he was.
"No, Miss Prauss. No need, no need, I'll be going. Sorry for the interruption," Mr. Kerrigton said, running a hand through his black hair and hurrying back up the staircase.
Andrea sighed after the door slammed shut, burying her face in her hands. She shuddered, mumbling something quietly as she twisted her fingers into her bangs.
"Andrea?" I asked quietly, creeping towards her.
"Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god. Mom's gonna find out, oh god, oh god," she muttered, falling to the ground and shaking her head.
I set her things down and walked over to her. "Hey, Andrea?"
"Oh god, R-Roderick, I'm sorry, so s-so sorry, oh god. Mom's going to find out and you'll get in trouble and oh god, what d-did I do?" she mumbled, trembling slightly.
"Hey Andrea, it's fine. He's not going to tell anyone, not at all. You probably scared him shitless enough that he won't even try talking to you anymore," I said cautiously, frightened by her violent change in mood.
"No, but she finds out, she probably already knows, and what will I do, I already have detention and now this? Oh god, oh god, oh god," Andrea said, her breathing speeding up.
Mark stepped out of the closet and said, "Whoa, darling, that was badass!"
"Shut up, Mark!" I hissed, afraid that she'd be rendered catatonic by his words.
"Whoa, dude, what is she doing?" Mark asked, stepping back a bit.
"Panicking and your stupid ass ain't helping," I spat.
"Roderick, please d-don't tell my mom. Please, I'll do anything, j-just don't tell her, please," Andrea said, looking up at me with broken violet eyes.
"God, no, Andrea, I won't say a thing, and your mom would never deign to talk to me anyway," I said, laughing weakly.
"I need to go, I have to go, I'm sorry, sorry, sorry," she mumbled, standing up and smoothing her skirt.
"Do you want me to drive you home or something? I don't mind, I mean, you just saved my ass from expulsion," I said, standing next to her.
"No, no, it's fine, I'm fine, thank you, sorry, thank you," she muttered, hurrying to pick up her things and run down the hall, bursting into the cold autumn air.
"Well, that wasn't weird or anything," Mark sighed, rolling his eyes, "And dude, if you're gonna tell me to back off, you should back off a bit, too. You sounded like a teenage girl. 'Do you want to drive you home and hold you and share my feelings?'"
I rolled my eyes at him and stormed out of the hallway, noticing the sporadic footprints in the thin layer of snow on the sidewalk, all heading straight towards Fifteenth Street.
The next day, Andrea was not in any of her first three classes.
I didn't check the system or anything. I just happened to notice the absent list on the bulletin. Totally.
I saw her in fourth period study hall, the only class that I shared with someone as rich as her. She wore a long-sleeved white dress shirt under a navy blue sweater vest with gold lining. The collar was tight around her neck, but I could see a small dark spot creeping out from just above the back of it, a reddish-purple mark that screamed out at me. Her face looked sickly pale, but she had some kind of makeup on her lips and cheeks in an effort to look better, at least from what I figured.
At just about ten minutes into the period, she stood from her seat next to another rich girl and rushed out of the room, a nervous look in her eyes.
I slowly stood from my seat at the back of the classroom, sneaking out to follow her. She hurried into the nearest empty classroom, an AP Chemistry room, her brown braid swinging side to side as she ran.
I crept in after her, noticing that she stood at the back, hunched over a sink and staring down into the basin. She hadn't noticed me yet, and began tugging at her collar and untucking her shirt frantically. She pulled both tops over her head and threw them to the ground, revealing what looked to be at least three layers of thermal underwear, damp with sweat. She leaned forward and, pulling her bangs back, vomited into the sink, foggy liquids splattering the dull metal. She let out a weak sob, coughing and spewing out the contents of her stomach.
I walked over to her, gently taking her hand off of her hair and pulling it back for her, using my other hand to rub her back.
"R-Roderick?" she croaked, gripping the sink tightly with her hands.
"Don't talk, it's just going to make you feel worse," I sighed, wondering where this sudden desire to help her came from.
She cringed and coughed out again, her breathing becoming labored as she struggled to breathe through the vomiting.
"Andrea, it's okay. There are no classes in here until sixth period." How did I know this, you ask? I had to go somewhere to take a short nap between classes, and having a schedule of the empty rooms for each period was a necessity for this habit.
She nodded slightly, taking a shaky breath and exhaling slowly.
"Andrea, do you have these bruises from what happened yesterday?" I asked slowly, receiving a slow nod in response. "And the vomiting?"
"Panic attacks," she said weakly, "Sometimes I faint or start screaming for no reason."
I sighed, knowing that, if my suspicions were correct, there was no way that I could truly help her, not with a mother as controlling and powerful as hers.
Someone walked into the room, whispering, "Andy, you in here?"
Andrea croaked out weakly in response, lifting her head slightly.
"Andy, who is that- Stein? What are you doing to her?" the guy asked, coming closer. He looked like he was one of those big, built lacrosse players with perfect hair and the smile that made all of the cheerleader squeal like rodents, but with a much scrawnier frame. Probably just the water boy or benchwarmer or something.
"She ran out of study hall and I followed her. She's puking and I'm helping her," I said curtly.
"Oh, okay. Andy, did she do this?" he asked, coming closer to lean down and look her in the eyes.
Andrea nodded, coughing again and splattering the sink as she did so.
"Andy, oh, god, we gotta get you out of here," he sighed, checking his watch, no doubt some expensive, waterproof to a billion meters thing.
"We can't just walk her out of here, dude. Someone'd want to intervene since she's rich and they want to be noticed," I said.
"Okay, well, we're on the first floor, why not just go out the window?"
"Are you insane or just stupid?"
"What, one of us goes outside, the other hands her down, and then we take her out of here," the guy shrugged.
"So you're planning on just dropping her out of the window?"
"No, one of us would catch her."
"Yeah, and I'm sure she won't vomit, not at all," I said skeptically.
"Well, it's that or the hallway."
"Fine, but where are we supposed to take her?" I asked, helping her to stand up straight.
"She can't go home, and my house is right next to hers, so that probably wouldn't work either," he said, "Where do you live?"
"Almost to downtown. It's about a twenty minute drive."
"Well, I guess it's the best we got. Andy, can you move?"
"Sorta," she coughed.
"Well, c'mon, then! Stein, get out there," the guy said, lifting Andrea into his arms.
A/N:
Well, gotta go, but please review! I'd love to know whether or not this is worth continuing!
Thank you!