The Dating Game

Chapter Twelve

Justin

Standing right in front of my locker, a group of unfortunate souls had the treacherous task of traipsing round school before anyone got in to tape up these posters to people's lockers and doors and other absurd places.

And of course, one of them had the audacity to tape one to my locker, or they simply were just oblivious. Even so, I ripped it off and put it on the locker next to mine.

I felt like my time of speculation had ceased by now because some people were beginning to loiter and gawp aimlessly at me inspecting a preposterously-brightly-coloured poster about the annual fair in the football pitch for Halloween... on Halloween so it would be decorated with the necessities that come with Halloween: big, counterfeit spiders, cobwebs dangling and fancy dress.

Actually, on the poster, right at the bottom it said, "ONLY ONE DOLLAR ADMISSION FEE AND YOU HAVE TO BE IN FANCY DRESS." It was typed in bold, block, capital letters for extra prominence.

I felt a hand on my shoulder as I was still unwittingly staring at the poster on the locker next to mine. Detaching from my thoughts, I turned my head to see Rachel standing beside me. Her hand lingered on my shoulder until I effortlessly shrugged her hand off my shoulder. I kept my eyes on hers rather than her body barely concealed underneath her "outfit".

"So, you were staring at the poster about the fair," she began. "I wondered if you wanted to go together."

"No," I protested, "I'm good. I might just not go and skip it. What's going to make this one different to the preceding three?"

Rachel blinked once at me as if she didn't quite comprehend what I was articulating. "Well," she said, composing herself from this setback, "you'd be with me and my friends for this one instead of your friends."

"You know," I said, beginning to turn the dial for the lock on my grey locker, "as enticing as that sounds, I have to say no. I'm turning you down, Rachel." The lock clicked and I pulled open the locker door. I began switching from book to book, stuffing a few into my bag that I swung round to rest on my front, whilst Rachel continued to stand next to me using her reasonless tactic to get me to go to the fair with her.

"Come on, Justin," said Rachel, leaning against the next locker beside mine. "We could be great together. We'd be the power couple."

I slammed the locker shut and feigned a yawn. "I need to get to homeroom now. I'm growing weary of this discussion. And my answer is not up for debate: I'm not going to go to the fair with you."

Turning away from Rachel, I began striding down the corridor to homeroom. I met Ryan and Chaz as soon as I entered. We took a seat in the back corner and then some football jocks took up the rest of the back row. Needlessly, the girls took up the front half of the chairs near to our homeroom tutor. Today, our allocated homeroom tutor was not in so today, we had a substitute who was a woman in her early twenties. She looked bamboozled by everyone in the room and was continuously asking the nerdy girls on the front row what she was meant to do.

"Take the register, Miss," one girl who was plaiting her hair explained. "Or we can do it for you."

The woman handed over the register hastily to the girls. She ran her hands through her hair as a sign of suffering distress from being bombarded with the homeroom with the most rambunctious group of people. Most of the jocks – energetic, loud and vigorous – were slotted into this homeroom in the hopes that our usually-absent homeroom tutor could whack them into shape.

Before the students could terminate taking the register, the bell clanged through the building, filling everyone's head with the incessant ringing that was the repercussions. I strolled out of homeroom with Ryan and Chaz in front before they separated to go to Engineering. First, I had Woodwork.