Fiction

I opened the door to room 611 and entered the hot, dull class that wasn’t filled yet with a ton of people this time, thankfully. I took a seat at the back near the window and gazed out as I waited for the time to pass and the bell to ring.

A few people filed in, one at a time as they chatted together, filling up the seats, sitting next to each other and away from me. I didn’t smell bad or anything, I hope, it’s just that people never have really liked me before and always saw me as some kind of loser. I guess I accepted that by now, but it still hurt to think about it.

Finally, the teacher came in as the bell rang. She went straight to the black board and wrote down her name, spelling out Mrs. Peterson. She sat down at her desk and began to call role, people saying ‘here’ when she got to their names. When she got to me, I mumbled a ‘present’ and started drawing on a blank piece of paper in my notebook. I mostly drew my name in fancy letters because I was always better at drawing words than actual images.

It was about five minutes into the usual explanation of how the teacher ran their class when the door opened. Everyone turned their heads to see a person with a heavy build and tattoo’s all over his arms walk in, carrying a yellow slip of paper. He walked in and brought it over to the teacher.
Several of the girls in the room started to whisper to each other, giggling at the other’s comments. It was obvious they were talking about him, but I didn’t know if it was something bad or if they just thought he was cute. By the way they were smiling and batting their big eyelashes at him, I could tell they found him attractive.

He was actually very good looking. He had short brown hair and was around six feet tall. His large muscles peaked out from underneath his tight, short-sleeved shirt. He was turned the other way so I didn’t really get a good look at his face. I just knew from the short glance I did see he was good looking.

Mrs. Peterson looked up at him from over the rim of her glasses. “Can I help you?” She asked, raising an eyebrow.

He handed over the paper. “Yeah, sorry I'm late. I couldn’t get into my locker.”

I chuckled at him having the same problem as I did earlier. This school really needed to update and get new lockers, let alone refurbish the bathrooms from their outdated plumbing and bathroom stalls.

Mrs. Peterson nodded before reading the name on the slip and tossed it into trash bin beside her desk. “I was expecting you Mr. Sanders. Go ahead and take a seat wherever you like.”

He nodded and turned around to look for an empty seat. There were only a few left, one of them directly to my left. When I did get to see his face, I realized I knew who he was. His name was Matt and he was a senior too. I’ve always thought he was cute since the day we shared a class together in middle school, and I wasn’t the only girl in this school to find him attractive. I even had a crush on him all throughout junior high, but then he changed his appearance and wore darker clothing as he started hanging out with the bad kids who always got into fights with other students. My feelings for him changed but that didn’t mean I found him any less attractive and appealing to look at, especially at those muscles.

We never spoke a word to each other before, so I had no idea what he was like. I don’t even think he knew I existed. He spotted the seat next to me and quickly avoided the one next to all of the popular girls who had locked their gazes on him, watching him the entire time he’s been in here. One of the girls, a skinny blonde, waved him over and pointed at the seat next to her for him to sit down but he only shook his head and walked towards my direction.

She rolled her eyes as he denied her offer and started bitching to her friends. I didn’t quite hear what they were saying, but by the looks on her face, she wasn’t too thrilled to be turned down.

I kept my head down to avoid being glared at by them and stared at my drawings. The seat next to me screeched, as he must have sat down and put his bag beside me on his right. I looked at him through a side glanced. From where I sat I could see a lip ring on the right side of his mouth that he must have just done this year because it wasn’t there the year before and his ears were gagged. He faced forward and started to tap his feet underneath his desk. A tattoo of his stood out to me from underneath his shirt. I turned my head to look at it better, not really thinking about if he would notice or not and saw that it was an old fashion microphone.

I was studying the details when suddenly he turned to face me. I quickly sat up, not even realizing I had leaned forward. My face instantly heated and my cheeks turned red. I was frozen in place, unable to do anything but stare at him.

He gave me a friendly smile, revealing one of the most amazing smiles I’ve ever seen. He had the cutest dimples any person could ever have. “Like the tattoo?” He said, quickly glancing down at it then back at me. I could only nod slowly. He chuckled. “Thanks, I got it done sometime in early July.”

I flashed a small smile. “It's beautiful,” I said softly.

His smile grew even bigger, revealing his teeth. “Thanks. Hey, do you have a pencil I can borrow? I must have left mine at home this morning.” He asked, leaning over on his arm, becoming even closer to me so he could whisper.

I nodded, leaning over to grab one out of my bag. “Yeah, here you go.” I said, handing it to him.

“Is there a problem back there?” The teacher glowered from her desk. Matt and I both sat up straight at the sudden sound of her voice and shook our heads. “Keep it down. I don’t allow talking in my class, especially when I'm teaching, understood?” She said in an aggravated tone and raised an eyebrow.

I nodded and he mumbled a “yes, ma’am” before she stood from her seat and walked over to write on the board again.

“Today’s lesson will be on-” Groans filled the room from just about every student, including myself at the thought of work on the first day of school. She threw a look over her shoulder at us. “Don’t get upset with me for wanting to get a head start on this semester’s assignments. I'm here to teach you all what you need to know for the finals at the end of the year. You are all seniors now. You need to be focusing on your school work instead of concentrating on each other.” She lectured us.

I rolled my eyes and rested my head in my hands, not wanting to hear this right now. Matt grunted and slouched in his seat with his arms crossed. This was going to be a long, boring hour.

She continued talking and writing the lesson plans on the board, describing what we were doing. She handed textbooks out to the people in the front row and they passed one back to each of the people behind them. Mine finally got to me. The person in front of me, some guy I've never seen before decided to not even hand it to me nicely and dropped it behind his head and onto my desk, almost hitting my hand if I hadn’t seen him do it and yanked it away. I glared at him, wanting to smack him in the head with it.

He smirked at me. “What are you looking at, bitch?” He mumbled to where the teacher couldn’t hear and faced the other way. All I could do was sit there and gawk at the back of his head, completely speechless.

Matt saw the whole thing and sat up straight. “Hey, motherfucker, you better watch your fucking mouth.” He told off the guy, not even caring how loud he was speaking. The guy spun around to face him. Everyone else started to stare at us. “You don’t talk to her like that, got it? Show some fucking respect, asswipe.”

My mouth definitely dropped open then, shocked to have someone, especially a guy like Matt stick up for me. We didn’t even know each other and he was getting onto someone for being rude to me.

The guy looked stunned, unable to say anything, just like me. Matt shot a glare at him. “Are you going to apologize to her, or are you just going to fucking sit there like a dumbass?”

The guy glanced quickly between me and Matt. “S-sorry,” He said before turning back around in his seat without looking back.

Suddenly the teacher started to yell. “Excuse me! I don’t think so, Mr. Sanders! Get your butt into the principal’s office, NOW!” She yelled. Matt huffed and gathered his stuff. I mouthed a thank you and he nodded before walking away. “You too, Mr. Collins!” She shouted at the boy in front of me.

“What?” He yelled, throwing his arms up as if he hadn’t done anything wrong. “What did I do?”

“Go, now before I have to get the principal down here instead!” She said, pointing directly out the door.

He grabbed his books and stormed out the door after Matt left. Mrs. Peterson gave me a look, as if she knew I was going to be trouble for the rest of the year and sat back down.

After everyone stopped staring at me in disbelief, they started not-so-quietly whispering to themselves. The teacher didn’t even do anything about them talking. She just sat there for a minute, looking at the textbook on her desk.

After a minute she stood back up and we all did the lesson together, reading aloud the paragraphs from page 50-55, and then did a follow up worksheet. I almost fell asleep during the reading and would’ve had to guess the answers from not paying attention if we weren’t doing them all together as a class. Once we were through with the assignment and we turned it all in, I stuffed the giant book into my backpack and slung it over my shoulder, sitting in my desk and waited for the bell to ring.

As soon as the bell went off, I shot up out of my seat and went into the bathroom that was just across the hall. I went into the last stall that was the biggest and put my bag down on the floor. The bathroom door swings open and the sound of several girls giggling filled the room. I didn’t even get a chance to sit down when they started talking about Matt. It must have been the girls from class. They seemed to be gossiping with other girls about what had happened.

One of them was talking about how cute he was when he was angry when another brought up something that caught my attention. I guess they didn’t realize I was even in here because they started talking about me.

“That bitch is dead wrong if she thinks he likes her. He is not going to want some pathetic loser as a girlfriend, am I right?” She asked the other girls.

“Of course, Kristy, he should be dating someone more like me-I mean like you, not someone who can't even afford good clothes. Like, did you see what she was wearing?”

They all laughed and gloated about what they could buy with their precious daddy’s money, not even having to care about how much they were spending on stupid things like expensive purses. They didn’t have to worry about what they looked like or what people thought about them as I had every single day of my life, always worried about how people judged me…just like they were now.

I knew people thought badly of me, but hearing it out loud, outside of my own head hurt even worse than I imagined. Tears started to form in my eyes but I tried forcing them away. I was not going to show that I cared, that what they said didn’t even matter. I didn’t give a fuck about those girls or even what they thought about me. I was going to walk out of here with my head held high.

They were still talking shit when I grabbed my bag and threw open the bathroom stall door. They all jumped and let out a yelp, not even realizing someone else was in here. The most of them were surprised to see me, but the girl Matt had turned down was sneering.

“What?” She asked hatefully. “What the fuck are you looking at-” She began to say but I just had to cut her off.

“Okay first off, you need to shut your fucking mouth. I didn’t do anything to you, so you can just leave me the hell alone. It’s not my fault he didn’t want to sit with your ugly ass in the first place,” She scoffed but I continued, unable to stop now. “And why would he want to sit with some spoiled-ass bitch that does nothing with her life other than mock other people, who by the way, are much better than you will ever be. You’re the one who needs to get a life, bitch, and if you don’t change now, you are going to hell.”

I had to pause for air but I stole the opportunity to go ahead and leave, it was the only time I was going to be able to stop. I pushed past them with my shoulders, shoving a couple of them into the doors as I passed by, not even looking back to see their disgraceful faces.

Notes

Sorry this chapter is a little short, I'll try to make them longer