The Nobodies

1. Olly's In Deep Shit Again

Olly 

[Three months ago]

I'm good at detention. 

I like scraping gum off desk bottoms. I like tipping the pencil sharpener box upside down into the trash, so all the shavings puff up like clouds. I like the mess it leaves on the floor. I really like the cross look I get from whichever jailor asked me to empty it. 

Emptying the pencil sharpener box never did shit for moral fibre, apparently, cause it still looks like the inside of my locker.

In detention, at least I can eat lunch. I always smuggle half a sandwich in my blazer pocket for sit-ins, enough to hold me for a good ten minutes. Oh my god, today's meatball sub day. This is complete ass. I'm missing Meatball Sub Thursday while thinking about missing Meatball Sub Thursday.

The finest slop from the cafeteria's hairiest lunch lady. Not a bite of it going into me.

Oh, man. Too bad this wasn't detention.

My stomach growls.

I'd rather detention to this.

"How much longer is he going to take?" I ask reception lady. I'm sitting in front of the principal's office. My heels bounce off the carpet. 

Betty—lovely reception lady, two kids, wire-frame glasses—gives me an evil look.

"This might be a shock to you," Betty says, "but when he's not yelling at you in his office, Principal Roach has more important things on his plate."

More important than smacking me around all the time? Bullshit. 

"Such as?" I demand.

She goes back to typing. Her acrylics sound sharp. If she scratched me, it would sting. Could I get her angry enough? I kind of wanted to find out. 

Eight full seconds of Betty's silence follow.

"What are you doing?" I blurt out. "Today's Wordle?"

"Three guesses," she preens, not looking up or slowing down her click-clack. It's distracting, all that click-clack, spacebar-enter, clack-click. 

It's more distracting to me that she can clack and talk at the same time.

"Don't tell me today's word," I warn her.

She sips from a giant water tumbler. "Ah." She smacks her lips. "It's 'doubt'."

"Evil woman."

"You weren't solving any mysteries today anyway, Sherlock. You're in too much trouble."

I was in trouble. I should tell you why I'm in the shit, but—

I was still zero from thirty-three on Wordle. Depressing. Not something to be proud of, but there you are. My deal's the same with Tetris, Connect 4, Scrabble, or that Australian Letters and Numbers show mom binges.

My brain doesn't do the thing it's supposed to. It's like, if letters don't already make up a word, then maybe that word doesn't want to be made. You get me?

You get me.

Betty, looking mighty proud about the bigness of her brain, goes back to typing.

Ten wordless, clackity seconds pass, and then I'm no longer vibing the silence. It's get-a-reaction-out-of-Betty time. "Do you think Roach combs his hair over his bald spot himself? Or does he get his wife to do it?"