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The teacher doesn’t even look up as she hands Lex a pink ‘DETENTION’ slip.
“What? But that’s not fair!”
“You’re late, Alexandra. By nearly an hour. That means detention.”
“But it wasn’t my fault, it was—”
“You’re in charge of your own time.” She says flatly, not even wanting to try to understand Lex’s perspective.
“But my mom drove me and she wouldn’t leave—” Lex tries to speak again, but it is in vain.
“Alexandra you are nearly an adult. You cannot keep blaming your poor mother for things that are in your control She was busy and couldn’t drive you? You could have walked. Now sit down and stop disrupting class.”
Lex groans and practically throws her bag next to her desk. The teacher arranged the desks so that the ‘troubled’ students sat on one side so that they weren’t sitting next to anyone, and everyone else had a desk partner. It was like they were in the fucking third grade. And of course, she was a problem student. More like she had a lot of problems, she didn’t cause any! Or at least, she wouldn’t cause any if her teacher wasn’t such a prick.
It really wasn’t her fault
At least shop class, her last class of the day, isn’t so bad. There’s actually a half-decent teacher there. If only the rest of the teachers were as understanding as Mr. Houston.
“Hey Lex, how you doing today?” He asks, taking a look at the side table she’s building. He nods as she shows off what she’s done so far.
“Well, my mom wouldn’t get out of bed to drive me today and went to get coffee after we finally left. And of course, it being so early there was a huge line, so she got her coffee, I was late and got detention. And told off for blaming my ‘poor mother’.” She does air quotes at this, clearly frustrated at everything that's happened today.
“Man, Lex that's real unfortunate. If you want I could talk to your homeroom teacher, Ms. Mulberry, is it? Get her to understand a bit better?” He suggests. Lex has been dealt a bad hand, but he sees who she is. How hard she tries. If there’s anything he can do to help, he wants to. He knows he’d want someone to do that for his kid if anything happened.
“No, no. I appreciate it, Mr. Houston but that will just cause more problems. It’s just one detention, I’ll live. I’ve had much worse.” The two grimace remembering her suspension. He’s still proud of her for that, punching the lights out of a kid who made fun of her sister. That girl is lucky to have such a strong older sister looking out for her.
“Alright well, if you change your mind you know where to find me.” He raises his hands in the air, in a show of surrender.
Eventually, the school day ends, and after debating whether or not to skip detention, Lex decides it would be better, and easier, to just go. When she walks in she sees that it's a slightly busy day in detention, a group of popular kids grouped in the back right corner. She wonders what happened, were they all skipping class and got caught? Maybe. She sits in the middle left of the classroom, next to someone whose name she can’t quite remember. He’s been in a few of her classes, but they’ve never really talked. All she really knows about him is that he wears a leather jacket. And now, that he has detention. But is he a bad kid, or someone like her who got the short end of the stick? He looks at her and smiles. Maybe he’s someone like her? He’s kinda cute, Lex always liked guys with long hair and earrings.
Lex opens her bag and rummages for her notebook and math textbook to start some homework. She begins to write the date, Wednesday, September—
“Hey,” The guy next to her interrupts softly, making sure the teacher can’t hear him. “I couldn’t help but watch, not in a creepy way just… Uh. I just wanted to let you know thats not how you spell Wednesday. It's W-E-N-D, the way it sounds?” He’s a little awkward, and Lex is endeared by it.
“Oh shit thank you. I won’t be graded on that, but shit that would be embarrassing if I misspelled the date on my homework.”
“Yeah, yeah of course. So, what’re you in for?” He asks her, leaning over slightly.
“Oh, I was late. What about you?” Lex would be lying if she said she wasn’t curious about this guy.
“Oh y’know, fighting.”
“Fighting?” Lex raises an eyebrow. He seems proud, but typically a fight isn’t a good thing, and she wouldn't want to associate with someone like that. But he doesn't seem the type to just start fights for no reason. “And why were you fighting?”
“Glad you asked, now I get to brag. Okay so, I was minding my own business right, walking through the halls, and I come across Tommy Clark, a senior, bullying a poor little freshman! So I of course told him to back off and when he wouldn’t, I decked him. The rest is history.”
“You don’t look like you got in a fight, though.” There’s not a single bruise on him.
“Yeah well, I say fight but Tommy didn’t really put up much of a fight. Why do you think he’s not here? He’s in the nurse’s office, probably getting his bruises iced.”
“Well that's noble of you, to defend the freshman,” Lex remembers her suspension for doing something similar. Maybe her and this guy have more in common than she thought. He seems like the kind of guy she’d like to get to know more.
“Yeah well, it was noble of you to defend your sister the way you did last month. I uh, heard about that and thought that was cool of you.”
“Yeah well, she means the world to me. And if the world won’t accept her, then I’ll fight the world. I’ll make a new one where she can live happily. She deserves it. She’s such a good kid, it’s the least I can do for her.” She smiles sadly thinking about Hannah. She really doesn’t deserve the hand that life gave her. Lex believes that she herself deserves it, but not Hannah. She is everything good in the world, and Lex probably would have given up a long time ago if it weren’t for her.
“Well now, I think you’re the noble one.” The two smile. The guy, whose name Lex still doesn’t know, has leaned quite close at this point.
“Ethan Green get back to your desk, this is detention, not a free period!” Ethan simply smiles at Lex as he leans back to his desk.
Soon enough, a crumpled-up ball is tossed at Lex’s head from Ethan’s direction. She turns to him and gives him a ‘What the fuck?’ kind of look before he mimes opening up the little paper ball. Lex does so, and on it is written:
ur cool, wanna hang?
And it has a phone number on it. Lex smiles and nods at Ethan. He physically and audibly celebrates, looking like a complete goof, before getting told off by the teacher yet again.
He definitely seems like a character, but Lex has a good feeling about him. A really good one.