Chapter Text
“This is so fuckin’ stupid”
Ishmael started as she lumbered her way out of the room connected to the principal’s office, her dedicated wrestling bag getting stuck on the door frame, and the snide woman at the secretary’s desk watched her struggle to get it unstuck.
It was the spring season of her senior year in high school, and she woke up this morning amped for her final tryout. Nowadays, they were really a formality - she was the school's best women's wrestler (just best wrestler, for that matter) and her coach loved her; always fighting till the last bell and never backing down from an opponent, no matter how much larger they were. Ishmael herself loved wrestling - she had since 6th grade, when her middle school allowed the students to choose a sport. There was something so appealing about being able to express herself through grappling some chump to the floor, and NOT getting in trouble for it. As an antisocial, headstrong kid who would enjoy that kind of thing, it also did her some good to be on a team - her mates cheering her on from their seats, going out afterwards for food when they won. The fact they were all strong, beautiful women wasn't a detriment, either.
But now, the school threatened to suspend her from her team after the stupid fight earlier.
She wasn't even in the wrong, but she had to practically beg on her knees to the principal to not take away one of the only things she really cared about - thank God she let her off with a measly detention, that she would serve tomorrow. Her father wouldn't be happy, (If she ever told him) but when would he ever be?
On the way to her brown Chevy trailblazer in the school's parking lot, her pride and joy, she couldn't help but think about why she had to be dealt a punishment at all. ‘it's just protocol, it's in the school syllabus’, The principal had said. Her tone and smile reeking of that polite business attitude Ishmael had dealt with most of her academic life, the same one her father expected her to prepare for in the future.
She couldn’t stand that kind of person. She genuinely couldn’t bring herself to. Soulless eyes, shit eating smile, as they told you the worst news you’ve heard that week. It was the type of person her father was. His corporate job, smiling around a water cooler, the stereotypical ‘desk jockey’, chatting it up with his coworkers about whatever the fuck mattered to them there. It was all so… performative. So inhuman. It pissed her off.
“Bullshit!” she exclaimed aloud while throwing her bags into the car's trunk and slamming the opening down. “That asshole was the one in the girl's locker room!” she huffed as she climbed into the driver's seat and pulled tightly at the doors handle to close it, sending a loud echo into the mostly empty lot.
It had started after the spring tryouts - even though they happen in the middle of winter, the team had to be culled and prepped for the season upcoming in March. The final bell had rung and Ishmael eased up her grip on the poor girl under her, catching her breath for a second before unsticking herself from the mat, standing, and offering her victim a merciful hand upwards. The floor of the school's gym had temporarily been covered by wrestling mats for the event, while they still made renovations to the actual dedicated wrestling room. Only 2 pairs of girls were facing off at any given time, as there was only one women's wrestling coach, and her attention could only be spread so thin. The boys team, with around the same amount of wrestlers, had 3 coaches.
“That's all the time we got girls, good job today.” The coach noted, nodding towards the locker room to signify them to get going. The length of her grey hair mirrored Ishmael’s, and it bobbled as she swiveled her head behind her. The stickiness of Ishmael’s blue uniform became apparent as she cooled down and strode away from the mat, following Coach Ahab’s order - it was a familiar clamminess that signified the end of a successful match. The team’s navy uniforms bore the insignia of the Limbus Whalers, named after the coastal town's history as a whaling company - seems like a strange thing to be proud of, but it was an old county, and how could you expect them to change?
Ishmael stretched and followed the pack of girls headed for the locker room at the corner of the gym - the cluster of them funneling neatly into the doorway as they approached the entrance.
Coming straight out of a high intensity match between old and new bodies, the girls were beaten, most taking their first few moments of respite just to breathe. However, just getting off of winter break sent a buzz into the room that carried their spirits, making the interior of the locker room rather jovial. The local season itself would start in around two months, giving them that long to get back into the swing of things. For the older, more seasoned girls, who had seen their share of tryouts and cuts, it was a breeze, and they made fun of the newbies for being so anxious. The team itself was sizable, with around 30 slots for the girls to fill out of the 40 that showed up today. Ishmael was sure to be one of them, of course.
The room was divided into two sections, one bigger than the other. The first section, which led straight out to the gym, contained about 5 rows of 40 lockers each, with some lining the wall. There was a changing hall connected to the actual wrestling room as well, which was smaller and contained their pseudo-assigned lockers (really, more like claimed), but they had to make-do with the main gym for now. The second section contained a handful of showers, which were a welcome retreat after a tough match, though Ishmael could never attest to that, as she didn’t use them herself. The sections were divided by a small half-wall for privacy, with the showers having a curtain and rod for the same reason. Ishmael, waltzing to her declared locker, tried to put in the locker code, but messed up the numbers when she had been punched in the arm by one of her fellow wrestlers.
“Ishmael! You were killing it earlier!” She said, with a huge grin on her face. “My neck still hurts, and I was the first one to take you on.”
Ishmael turned over, being met with the face of Cordelia, a senior wrestler like herself, who was quite sweet, but normally pretty quiet outside of the rowdy environment of the sport. She took the praise with a toothy grin as she finally got her locker open, taking a second to admire her face in the small, pre-attached mirror. She thought herself cute in moments like this - freckles pricking her sweat-glistened skin, her complexion red and spotted as the blood rushed around her body, and her big, green eyes that could stare down any opponent she came across.
“You took it pretty well though, when I got you into that headlock and flipped you straight on your ass.” Ishmael started again, maintaining her smile, and Cordelia just giggled, “The newbies could learn a lesson from you,” Ishmael continued, speaking kind of funny through her mouth guard, but making sure she was still loud and clear enough to be heard by those mentioned.
She had just begun to fish the damn thing out of her mouth when she heard the screaming coming from the shower side of the locker room, disturbing the positive energy circulating around the girls. Cordelia and Ishmael locked eyes, and like most of the other seniors they rushed over to see what the problem was. While the freshman just turned their heads, sort of frozen, out of either fear or confusion.
There was a group of girls surrounding the entryway to the showers such that Ishmael had to push through them to see the offending sight - one wrestler, who thankfully was still in her uniform, was pointing to a male student in front of her, on his hands and knees, mouth agape in a confused daze as he stared back at his spectators. She knew enough about the kid to recognize him, they had a few mutual friends, but she couldn't really remember his first name. His mom was a teacher though, permitting her to remember his last. Samsa, or something. He had a pair of wired earbuds which now fell to his shoulders, the blaring music audible in the small, tiled locker room. They stood looking at each other, in that moment of shocked silence, where the only thing audible was the loud cry of some sort of shitty rock band, and in that same moment, Ishmael resolved to break the glasses off of the guy’s head.
She strode towards the guy, who scrambled to his feet, and put his arms up in pitiful protest. He looked fucking terrified. He couldn't even get a word in before Ishmael socked him in the face, causing him to fall back on the ground. He panickedly splayed out his arm to break his fall, but as he landed on the floor a pained cry erupted from his trembling mouth. Ishmael pinned him down and ignored his wails, just like she would do in any wrestling match, and bellowed out to Cordelia to get coach Ahab.
As the older woman rushed in and picked up the scraggly kid by the collar, Ishmael took a certain pride in ridding this room of such an offender. Not that any of the girls here needed protecting, mind, but it felt good to punish a creep like that. The kid stumbled over his words, attempting to talk to Coach Ahab and explain what the hell he was doing there. She wasn't having any of it, nor should she, Ishmael thought, because all she heard coming out of his mouth was one big fake corporate apology.
It was only at the end of the ordeal that she felt unsure about her course of action - When Coach was leaving the room, perpetrator in hand, she turned around as if suddenly remembering something, a solemn look on her face as she beckoned Ishmael to finish changing, and then to come meet her in the main office.
Turns out the kid was working part time at the school as a janitor, had been put on locker room duty, and not knowing that the girl's wrestling tryouts had been moved to the gym, he resolved to finish his work before all the activities had been dismissed. He didn't notice anyone coming in because of his earbuds, and he explained all of this when both of them sat down in front of the principal. Ishmael called him out on that. The kids mom ran the JROTC for fucks sake, which he was in. You think he wouldn't have the spatial awareness to notice a huge group of rowdy women coming into the locker room? He tried defending himself, and Ishmael slung some choice words at him. Calling him a homophobic slur felt wrong considering his transgressions were against a group of girls, but that didn't stop her.
She was taken outside of the room after that, where she intently tried to listen to the principal punish the kid through the door - the only thing she heard clearly was that he was getting a detention too, and that some punitive action would be taken against him regarding his status as a janitor, to which she heard him give some sort of loud, pathetic plead against. Though not unlike her protest to be kept on the wrestling team, she reflected, but immediately brushed the connection away. Better to be a hypocrite than side with that freak.
Reinvigorated by her recollection of the day's most notable event, she didn't even notice she had driven all the way home. She didn't bother saying hello to her father when she entered the house, God knew he was drunkenly unconscious in his room anyway, and where she'd normally doom scroll Instagram for a little while, she instead opted to angrily fall asleep.
Bullshit.
Ishmael thought again as she closed her eyes, lamenting her undeserved detention tomorrow.
School went by fast the next day - One period blurred into another, took a test, failed a test, tuned out a class, then another… and then another. In truth, she spent most of the day on her phone stalking the Whalers group chat on Snapchat about the incident yesterday. As she glanced at the phone screen from underneath her desk in fourth period, she saw she had an incredible amount of pings from the freshman to senior wrestlers. Her eyes glazed over the messages as she angled her phone underneath the desk, making sure her teacher couldn’t see. She felt a little bad about not responding to the seemingly endless questions about the outcomes of her meeting with the principal, but she knew that they probably understood it wasn’t something she wanted to talk about. In fact, there really wasn’t anything to talk about. The altercation had encouraged some gossip around the school, but nothing different from what usually happened when two kids got in a fight - there would be talk about it in classrooms, teachers would look warily at the offending students, but nothing that wouldn't be forgotten by the next day. She expected the girls in the chat would forget it all the same.
As the final bell rang at 2:45, Ishmael had to stop herself from autonomously following the path from her last class to her car, and had to make the conscious effort to head to room 72 to serve her detention. She purposefully meandered a bit - she walked noticeably slower, she remembered her coat was in her locker so she stopped to pick it up, and she saw some friends on the way who she talked with for a bit - they of course asked about the prior evening. When she finally forced herself to make pace to the detention room, it was just after three, which was cutting it close considering that the email she received about her detention said she had to be there before five minutes past the hour.
Ishmael halted in front of the door, fingers on the cold handle, and peered into the small window slit before sighing loudly. The only thing she could see was a grey haired man at a desk who she didn’t recognize. They swapped out whoever was in charge of detention all the time, so it didn’t come as a shock that she didn’t know him. He was hunched over his keyboard and his eyes looked glossy as they swept across the screen. Ishmael opted to go and meet him.
'Let’s get it over with.'
The teacher immediately looked up from his computer, startled by the noise of the opening door. From her peripheral vision, Ishmael could see the brief stirring of the other students sitting to her left, but she didn’t pry her eyes off of the teacher’s as she strode towards him. It wasn’t the first time she had been in detention, there was a walkout last year that landed plenty of kids, including her, in this very room, but she was always a little annoyed that she had to spend 2 hours and 10 minutes after school doing absolutely nothing. Waste of an evening.
When she arrived at his desk, the teacher asked for her name. Standard procedure.
“Ishmael” she answered, with the same cool energy he posed the question with.
“No sleeping, no laying down, no talking, no devices other than the school provided Chromebook, yes that includes Bluetooth earbuds. If you need earbuds to complete an assignment, there are pairs of wired headphones in the AV cart. Sit where you please.” He pointed behind Ishmael and returned his eyes downward, but not to the computer. The man picked up a pen and crossed her name off a list she didn't bother to note the length of, and without further verbal exchange held up a small plastic box with several phones in it. She got the hint, and begrudgingly put hers in.
Ishmael turned to survey the room. There were three rows of three tables, each of which could seat two people, for a total of eighteen people. She didn’t get an exact count of how many kids were in there with her, but she could figure it out because she saw that there were only two tables that had nobody in them, one right in front of her and one in the back. And because everyone else was an antisocial freak like her, there was only one kid per table. She parked herself in the empty chair in front of her, which came with a luxury window view, and did the math.
'Eighteen divided by two… equals nine' - she hummed to herself.
'Maximum of nine if everyone is sitting alone… minus the two empty seats…
…seven.'
Seven other kids were there with her. God, she needed to find something to do.
She looked around. The small room had gray-blue walls and the window next to her just gave a view to another side of the brick building, but she could see a street if she craned her neck to the right a bit. Like she said: Luxury.
There was also an analog clock on the wall above the door. Strange, considering that the school mostly had a digital clock system now, such that every single room had a timepiece with bright red LED numbers embedded into the side of the wall, normally positioned behind a teacher's desk. They either ran out of money to do the whole school, or just wanted to punish the dumb asses in detention who wouldn’t be able to read that kind of clock. Ishmael lent towards the latter. The school might suck, but they pulled in a considerable amount of cash because of the area of the city they were located in.
In any case, the clock’s ticking sort of lulled her eyes half-lidded, but intent on not breaking the ‘no sleeping’ rule, she tried to rev herself up by remembering why she was here in the first place, and thought back to the conversation she heard outside the principal's office the day prior.
“I understand…………But …………. … .. altercation….. Unacceptable.”
“Yes......”
“You…………. Serve detention…………….... Email……….”
“.....Ma’am.”
“However….. Circumstances……………… revoke……………… terminated.”
“What?!”
“.......Calm……..”
“You Can’t! You…………! It was a mistake! It’s all……. Please, it keeps me…..!”
“...gor.”
“.....”
“......................................Mother……………….?”
“No Ma’am.”
After this was a period of silence. Ishmael felt good that the kid seemingly actually cared about his punishment, but, if only for a brief moment, she did wonder if it was all a mistake. If the circumstances that led him to that locker room weren’t driven by teenage perversion, and if he really truly did happen there by chance. She shook off this moment of empathy, resolved to still believe she was done an injustice by her punishment, and grappled on to the rope of hatred. However, as the door to the office opened and the brunette kid stepped out, cradling his arm, glasses missing, revealing red, swelling eyes that darted to the floor, she couldn’t help but notice that rope fraying slightly.
With this memory in her head, Ishmael determinedly scanned the room for the kid who put her here in the first place, swiveling to meet the faces around her.
From where she was, she could see the two other people in the first row. To the table closest to her, there was a girl with short white hair. She maintained a neutral expression, as she worked on what was presumably a homework sheet, but her light colored eyes almost seemed pained. Not like the work was particularly hard for her, but rather, like she was thinking about something else while she was doing it. The pale fingers on her right hand moved deftly on an advanced graphing calculator, while her other hand simultaneously wrote something down on the sheet. Picture perfect nerd, Ishmael considered her.
The other person she could see in the first row wasn't much more interesting. He seemed a miserable kid, eye-bags drooping down his face while his lips curled in the same direction. He gently cradled some sort of book, as his eyes savored the page they rested on, looking at the words with a kind intent. It looked like, despite his demeanor, he was at least enjoying himself in that book. It looked thick, and Ishmael briefly wondered what two kids with the intent of using detention as a study hall were even doing here in the first place.
Her deliberations were cut short upon hearing the opening of the door, and she quickly glanced at the clock above it: 3:03.
Her blood boiled as she saw the fucker from the locker room slowly pace himself into the doorway - a fresh, blue, medical sling around the arm he had fallen on yesterday. She almost laughed at him, finding it funny that he somehow broke his bone during their brief interaction, and relished in the fact she could hurt someone so significantly: it wasn’t totally unlike the twisted pleasure she felt upon overhearing him being dealt his punishment by the principal. He, unlike Ishmael, took a brief moment to gaze around the room before walking forward. He seemed to recognize someone just behind her, as his eyes perked up and lips formed a slight smile, but unfortunately for him, he managed to notice Ismael too, souring his expression once more. She, in turn, stared relentlessly at him, as if to assert some sort of dominance. His head shrank into his neck once they locked eyes. Fucking coward.
Looking down now, he continued walking and relinquished his phone the same as Ishmael did. She perked up her ears and definitively learned the kid's name was Gregor, briefly remembering that in the principal's office yesterday, but she was too busy calling him… other things to care. He gave her a final nervous glance (which she still furiously reciprocated) as he passed by her desk. Listening to him pull his chair back, she judged that he was right behind her now, sitting with the person he saw when he came in. Great. Ishmael placed her hand under her chin, and she knew that that little shit was boring holes into the back of her head. She heard a faint whispering from the two of them, before they inevitably were shut up by the teacher. She almost laughed at that too.
Ishmael decided in this time to pull out her Chromebook. It had a singular sticker on it, produced by the Entrepreneurship Club, of the logo of the Whalers. She had to pay for it, of course, but as someone who normally didn’t necessarily decorate themself or their belongings, she felt a certain pride in representing her team. She didn’t really use the thing more than necessary, having her own laptop at home, but she figured she could pass this detention by watching some of the wrestling recordings taken from the previous season.
While the computer powered on, Ishmael took a glance at the two behind her through the reflection of the screen. She saw Gregor had either a new pair of glasses, or was using a spare, and that there was a huge bruise just under his eye where Ishmael had met it with her fist. His eye socket was also dotted with little cuts that were most likely from when the lenses shattered in his face, and Ishmael recalled the pain she felt in her knuckles as the glass embedded itself into her skin as well. She looked at her right hand, and sure enough, the same little cuts decorated her fingers. She hadn't noticed yesterday.
Sitting next to him was a girl with long brown hair. She wore a heavy amount of makeup that softened her face, but her icy blue eyes still cut at Ishmael like a knife. She knew that more than Gregor, this girl was studying her - with the way she stared at Ishmael from behind the screen. If they were friends, she likely heard about the ordeal yesterday, and she probably didn’t have too high of an opinion of Ishmael based on that. It was a bit of a shame though, because this girl was hot.
She was wearing some pretty simple clothing - just a black t-shirt and a large, red overcoat with a fur hood. The winter had been pretty kind snow-wise, but that didn’t stop the biting cold from seeping into the school. The bastards were cheap with the heating, and if this room can’t get a digital clock she doubted it would be a priority to get heat here either.
In any case, the girl's brown hair swooped gracefully around her figure, cupping her face in a beautiful brunette frame. Her warm-toned eye shadow, her burgundy lipstick, her deep red blush - it gave her face a certain warmth; all offset by the piercing blue of those eyes, however, which unsettled Ishmael as they continued looking onward, until her gaze was finally drawn downward by a spark of an idea.
The girl bent down, likely to her backpack, and procured a raggedy notebook from under her. It was a simple 3 subject ringed notebook that had a brown paper cover - or at least had one. It was falling apart. The pages themselves didn’t seem much better off, as multiple papers stuck out from the stack, like they had been ripped off and placed back in the notebook again. She opened the notebook, produced a short, number two pencil from her pocket, and wrote something on the page as she passed it to Gregor. She couldn’t see his reaction, because the Chromebook had finished powering on.
They recorded videos of the wrestlers every season so the team could go over them after every match. The practices where they sat around a screen watching them beat or get beaten were boring, but it made for some quality bonding time between the group when someone would toss out a joke or a comment. Logging into the laptop, she navigated to the Google Drive Coach Ahab shared with her, and pulled up a recording of one of her best matches from last spring. She cringed seeing herself in the video, but it’s only natural. It means she’s gotten better, after all.
While the page loaded, Ishmael briefly considered taking up the teacher’s offer of the wired headphones in the AV cart for the optimal viewing experience, plus she might want them for something else, but she opted to stay seated so as to not disturb the silence in the room, and draw all eyes on herself.
Thanks to the school’s shit WiFi, it took almost two minutes to load the damn video, and as the door to room 72 opened again, Ishmael realized that both on the analog clock, and on her Chromebook, it was exactly 3:05. Whoever this was should be the last person to enter the room.
She turned her head to the right to face the kid that opened the door, looking for any sign that she might have known them or seen them before, hoping to have maybe a friend to sit this through with her, like Gregor and the brunette. She was almost disappointed to find she didn’t recognize him. He had a good build for a wrestler - tall, broad - but nothing else about him really stood out. He strode purposelessly to the teacher’s desk, as the older man repeated the cycle of looking up from his computer and asking his question.
“Name?”
“Patrice Meursault” The kid responded.
Ishmael hadn’t of needed to provide her last name - she figured no other kid in this school, much less the small confines of this detention room, could possibly have the same name as her - and certainly no other kid in the county was named fucking Patrice.
The teacher silently held out the bin of phones in reply, but it elicited no reaction from the guy, opting instead to continue to stare blankly at the teacher’s face.
“Put your phone in the bin.”
He obliged.
“No sleeping…” He yawned. “No laying down, no talking, no devices other than the school provided Chromebook, yes that includes Bluetooth earbuds. If you need earbuds to complete an assignment, there are pairs of wired headphones in the AV cart.”
“Sit where you please.”
The kid turned and passed Ishmael, taking up his seat far behind her, presumably filling the last empty table in the last row.
Quite abruptly the door sprang open once more, but with more pomp and vigor than Gregor or Patrice had expressed. More than anyone entering detention would reasonably express, for that matter, as the handle of the door slammed against the wall with a loud bang. It seemed to startle everyone she could see. The pale girl stopped writing for a second, and the miserable boy seemed almost scared - both of their attention being drawn to the door handle slamming against the wall. Even the grey-haired proctor seemed at least slightly phased, straightening out his back from its hunched position. Ishmael saw the remains of some sort of door stopper standing in the place where the door handle hit, but the pitiful rubber device wouldn't stop anything now.
The door's opening revealed two girls, one short and blond, (almost too blonde, she hurt to look at with how bright the enthusiasm was exploding off of her), the other had hair as long as she was tall - and she was quite tall. They both were clad in various pins and badges, and seemed to have matching backpacks, as equally decorated with wearable merchandise belonging to whatever show, game, or movie you could think of as their bodies were. The blonde one lunged forward with her phone, almost like she was using it as a joust, while her friend happily followed behind, a kind, dumb smile on her face.
“Well met! I am -” She began, seeming to know the drill.
“I know who you are, Sancho. You know this.” He held up the bucket and crossed off both of their names on the list. Sancho’s spirit didn't seem defeated, as she placed her phone in the bin and strode with purpose behind Ishmael. Her friend followed.
“Good sir!” Her voice rang from the back of the room, “Me and my accomplice have recurrently used the sitting table you are in. Would you consider relocating such that we may continue to practice such a cherished tradition?”
Ishmael perked her head up to follow the voice, but snuck a quick glance at the teacher in front of her. He was looking at the two of them in the back of the class, but instead of shushing the girl like he had with the kids behind her, he sighed and returned to his computer.
Ishmael turned her head backward. Though strangely Sancho had spoken, Ishmael admired her unabashedness to talk at full volume in a completely silent classroom.
Ishmael saw the two nerds had returned to their ‘scholarly activities’ (🤓☝️), however, the boy still seemed rather rattled, as he now heartily gripped the book in his hand, almost like he expected it to be taken from him. Behind him was a kid she knew of. They were pretty infamous for being mute, and spoke exclusively through sign language, or note passing. Whether it was because they couldn't talk or wouldn't talk isn't her place to know - though there were surely enough assumptions and rumors being passed around the school. Their name was Dante though, hard to forget a name like that.
In the table next to them was a tan girl that Ishmael didn't know. She had shiny brown hair, almost like it was intentionally greased with some sort of product, and she wore the school’s JROTC uniform. Strange, considering the program only ran in the morning and replaced one’s gym class. Hopefully she wasn’t in that thing all day. Her face conveyed an extremely stern expression, and her entire body was rigid; almost like she was tensing herself up at all times for an unknown purpose. Fitting for a kook in the JROTC, Ishmael figured. She loved wrestling, but taking extracurriculars so far as to be at the school every morning at 5 am was a little much, especially when school started at 7:45.
But then the girl did something a little funny.
There were two seats per table in the room. At this girl’s table, she was sitting in the seat closest to Ishmael. But suddenly, as if taking advantage of the disturbance of the quiet in the room, she stood up, and switched seats - but not to another table, just to the seat to the right of her, taking her bag with her. Ishmael could not possibly figure out why she did this, and opted to turn her attention back to the blonde girl instead.
Her and her friend were propositioning Patrice to move so that they could have his seat. He quickly expressed he didn’t mind moving, though he seemed the least bit annoyed, and got up to sit at the table next to him. Already at this table was a kid whose name she couldn’t place, but she knew his face because he was rich as all hell. His parents were big shots at some sort of company, and she saw him roll into the parking lot everyday with a nice, white, BMW. Though with how young the guy looked, she couldn’t really imagine him being allowed to drive at all.
As Patrice took up his seat next to him, the kid’s eyes bugged, and his face flushed. For whatever reason, he seemed almost scared of the company he now found himself in, but assumedly in an attempt to regain his composure, he seemed to turn back to his own Chromebook.
As Sancho and her friend sat at their newly acclaimed seats, they too procured their heavily decorated Chromebooks out of their equally adorned bags, and quickly began typing on their keyboards, filling the room with a soft clacking noise. Odds are, they had access to some sort of messaging service.
On their right, was the last person she hadn’t taken notice of yet. Her hair was black, cut into a short bob, and she had her feet kicked up onto her table. She wore a comfortable, yet expensive looking, track suit, and was drawing something into a page intensely: flipping the pencil from lead to eraser with a deft action of the fingers. A type of madness flashed in her red eyes, one Ishmael could see even though she was sitting the furthest away from her, but the girl seemed at least happy as she scribbled away.
Now having a good idea of the people that surrounded her, and surmising that nobody else would enter the room (as it was past 3:05) she resolved to return to her Chromebook and prepare for the long haul.
Much to her surprise, once more the door opened, and a short woman entered. Her hair was black, streaked in grey, and she wore a lax expression on her face. She leisurely walked up to the grey-haired teacher, and asked for the attendance sheet, which Ishmael surmised was the list of names he was crossing out as students dribbled in. He looked up at her, without moving his hands.
“Give him a second” He said, and rested his chin on his hand after using it to point at the door.
Without protest, the teacher seemed to understand what he meant, and quietly questioned him about how so many kids landed in detention at once, seeming genuinely curious. It wasn’t a small school, but rarely did this room see more than five kids at a given time. The man shrugged, saying it was all the same to him, because he got a few more hours of overtime being here, no matter how many people showed up.
At the conclusion of their short, but genial, conversation, they stared at the door, awaiting its opening. Pages turned. Keyboards clacked. Pencils scribbled. Ishmael began to feel the flow of the room, and the weight of the presences in it. For a moment, she felt a small pang in her heart as she realized that she was supposed to be here.
That feeling quickly went away as the door banged open once more. Ishmael recognized that familiar nest of hair and ratty appearance near instantly, it was Heathcliff, the school's resident chud. She once again almost laughed, shaking off the strange realization from a second earlier, because of course he was here.
“You're late.” The proctor said, crossing off the last name on the attendance sheet and handing the paper to the short woman.
She thanked him and walked out as Heathcliff walked in. Ishmael heard the door shut for what she knew for sure was the last time now. He started to mumble some sort of excuse, but the proctor cut him off. The kid looked pissed, a vein bursting in his forehead, but he threw a phone with a cracked screen into the bin and meandered towards the back of the class.
“No. Up front Heathcliff.” He called after the kid, and pointed at the seat next to Ishmael.
‘Oh fuckk no’ She thought, as her eyes widened, and she rested her head on her hand.
Now that everyone was accounted for, and as Heathcliff begrudgingly took his seat, she tried to focus on her chromebook. Maybe this was how the rich kid felt, she thought, as the world’s biggest asshole plopped down right next to her.
This was it. She was in for the long haul.
