Beginnings
Amelia grabbed her bag and raced out of the classroom. Another school day was over, finally. It was a Tuesday, her most loathed day of the week. It was far enough through the week that she felt like it had been forever since the weekend, but not far enough that the next weekend was right around the corner. She sighed as she marched down the corridor towards her locker. Fifteen months, two weeks and three days until she could walk down this corridor for the last time. Fifteen months, two weeks and four days until her real life would start, life after high school.
Turning left down a second corridor she took a few steps and paused next to classroom B16. Her best friend Risty was in there, supposedly learning how to be an actress, but as far as Amelia was concerned she was already one of the biggest drama queens around, and didn't need any more training. Amelia dropped her bag on the floor and slid down the wall beside it. She wasn't sure how her absolute hatred for school had come about. Once upon a time she had bounced out of bed every morning right at seven and kept on bouncing all the way onto the school bus. These days it was more like a reluctant roll out of bed and a stumble onto the bus after some persistent shoving on her mother's behalf. Whenever she thought she could get away with it she tried faking some mysterious illness so she could stay in bed but after being bedridden by "stomach cramps" for two weeks straight her mother twigged and became much more difficult to convince. During that two week period of “hiatus” as Amelia called it, Risty had phoned consistently every few days to make sure she was alright. She was the only one in Amelia’s group of friends that stuck with her during that period. The small group from their roll call class had stayed together for a few years but as Amelia's disappearances from school grew Risty became the only person interested in making sure she was alright, so they'd branched off and started having lunch together, just the two of them. This was the favourite part of Amelia's day, when she and Risty sat down on the grass trading sandwiches and chatting, about nothing in particular.
Amelia fiddled with her bag straps as she thought about how her life had changed over the years. Now that she was at the end of year 11 she could see the light at the end of the tunnel. School would be over soon and she could choose to do whatever she wanted then. Her thoughts were just starting to drift off to possible after-school vocations when the door to her left swung open suddenly and a swarm of kids came pouring out in all directions. Upon seeing Amelia sitting against the wall, a tall girl with glasses and long black hair veered towards her. She smiled a mischievous grin as she approached, leaned down suddenly, grabbing Amelia's bag and sprinted off down the corridor.
Amelia quickly took up chase, pushing herself off the floor with her arms. She knew she could easily beat Risty over a straight sprint but the surprise of the chase had left her with an immediate disadvantage. By now the corridor was teeming with children excited about the end of the school day and chatting animatedly about the cool shows that were on television tonight. Amelia dodged right and left to avoid heavy schoolbags filled with homework assignments patiently waiting to be completed. She could see Risty half a corridor ahead doing exactly the same thing.
Ducking her head to miss an open locker door Amelia looked up just in time to see Risty disappear down a corridor to her right. Amelia took the same corner, jumping quickly down the half-a-dozen stairs at the top. As Amelia reached the bottom, a sight greeted her that stopped her dead in her tracks. Risty was standing still, four short paces in front of her, puffing slightly. The two schoolbags she carried we slung haphazardly on her left shoulder. Facing her, only half a step further away from Amelia, was the head of the mathematics department, Mr O'Neill. Obviously he had just come out of the maths staffroom, a door slightly further back on the same side of the corridor to which they were standing. And judging by the brown liquid pouring down his usually crisp white shirt, and the empty coffee cup rolling on the floor at his feet, he had recently been enjoying his regular afternoon coffee.
Amelia groaned, if there was one teacher you didn't want to annoy it was Mr. O'Neill and from the colour his face was turning he was royally pissed off. Most teachers at their school were reasonable enough, as long as y got your work done and showed them respect they were fairly relaxed when it came to the occasional late morning or whispered conversation in class. Mr O'Neill, however, was the exact opposite. He started his classes exactly when the bell rang and if you weren't sitting at your desk with your text book out by then, you would have extra homework. If you hadn't finished your homework from the day before, you would have extra homework. And if you didn't do well enough on his surprise pop quizzes you would have extra homework. This being the case, most days the entire class had extra homework, which they generally scrambled to copy off each other in the few minutes before class each day. Amelia slowly took a step backwards up the stairs. Risty and her had never followed the three musketeers "all for one and one for all" principle. Actually, the fact that they purposely disregarded this principle probably stopped them each from being on permanent afterschool detentions for the rest of their school careers. They each had enough infractions to drive the school crazy but as they almost always avoided sharing the blame, they were each reported for only half the infractions they were actually responsible for. Amelia glanced at Mr O'Neill's face. By now it was the same colour as a can of Campbell’s tomato soup but thankfully, Amelia noticed; he was too busy glaring at Risty that he hadn’t yet looked in her direction. His top lip was quivering slightly and his balled fists, although currently kept tightly by his sides, looked ready to explode at any moment. Amelia could see him lick his lips lightly to prepare them for the imminent verbal attack. Before he could begin, Amelia took her chance and quickly fled back up the stairs she had just jumped down. Once around the corner she managed a few paces until the screaming erupted from the hallway she'd just escaped from. If his voice had been any louder the sheer force of it would probably have knocked her to the ground. Legs sightly trembling from the shockwave, she slowly wobbled her way through the school children and walked the long way to her locker, as Risty and Mr O'Neill were now blocking the more direct route.
Amelia didn't react particularly well to confrontation, although after four years of being friends with Risty she had become a lot better at it purely through practice. Generally she took the submissive approach. A lot of "I didn't mean it" and some "I'm so sorry", occasionally with the hint of tears in her eye (this she had learnt from Risty). Risty reacted to things a little differently. Her tendency to scream back at the teachers usually didn't help the situation. Amelia could imagine the conversation currently happening behind her. Risty would have interrupted Mr O'Neill's yelling and somehow managed to make it his fault that he was walking down the corridor at the wrong time. Most teachers fell for this but Mr. O'Neill was in a completely different category of toughness, although this would never stop Risty from trying.
Reaching her locker, Amelia entered her combination and took out her phone. Flipping up the lid she checked the screen. No messages. This was pretty usual, most of the messages she received were either from Risty or her parents and neither had any reason to send her a message during the school day. Grabbing a couple of text books and her current novel she placed the pile delicately on the floor beside her. Until Risty was done being Mr O’Neill’s verbal punching bag she had no schoolbag to take her things home in. “Oh Well” Amelia sighed to herself “maybe I can use this as an excuse not to do my homework”. She looked at the pile of text books at her feet and for a few seconds actually contemplated starting her chemistry work while waiting for her friend but then came to her senses and picked up her current novel, Frankenstein. Amelia loved reading. She much preferred it to anything that happened at school. In fact during her two week hiatus she had managed to get through almost a whole book every day, much to her delight. Books were just much more interesting than real life.
“Man I’m glad this day’s over” said Risty, dumping the two school bags on the ground next to her and leaning her head against the wall. Amelia looked up from the page in front of her to her friend “You’re still in one piece” she said. Once again she was amazed at how Risty managed to walk away from a situation without multiple limbs missing. “Barely”, Risty replied standing up and opening her locker, “I think O’Neill almost had a stroke while yelling at me. I could see that vein in his head getting bigger and bigger. I swear it was about to pop”. Risty made a loud popping noise with her mouth to demonstrate her point. Amelia giggled, she and Risty were on a first name basis with that vein in Mr O’Neill’s head, they called it Bluey. Risty grabbed her bag from the floor and started piling books into her locker. When Risty was finished deciding what books to take home the girls grabbed their bags and walked together down the corridor to the entrance hall. By now most of the kids had already left, just a handful or stragglers were still around loading books into lockers or chatting.
crumble decided to put pen to paper at 2:58 pm
It's interesting that when I eventually sit down to write something my fingers freeze up and nothing happens.
crumble decided to put pen to paper at 10:01 pm
