Lighthouse Lullaby | ✓

Part 5 | Monday, 21st September

"Remind me again why I have to use this singing toothbrush," I mutter, staring down at the black and gold brush in my hand.

Just then, my dad whoops from his bathroom, loud enough for us to hear him from all the way across the hall.

"Your father loves it," Mom beams at me. "Most of the time, we don't brush our teeth long enough. If you use this brush, you can listen to the song and brush until it ends. It's a fun way to keep your teeth clean!"

"Are you kidding me, mother?" I groan, rubbing my eyes. "Can I just have my old toothbrush back?"

"I thought you'd love this, sweetie," she says, looking at me dubiously. "Lady Gaga is cool, isn't she? She has fleek, as you kids would say."

"Nobody says that," I say with a laugh. "And I'll use the toothbrush if you promise to never say the word 'fleek' again."

***

"Ugh, here they come," Patrick O'Donnell (my locker mate/acquaintance) says as we pull our books out of our lockers. "Onto the next victim."

I hear the unmistakable sound of pure evil; four pairs of stilettos (the heights of which are directly proportional to their wearers' bitchiness) clicking in unison as Greasy Bitch and Co. parade the hallway. The air around them is filled with the stench of hairspray and hostility.

"Hey, how was your weekend?" Greasy asks Dylan Frost, who is standing in front of his locker a few feet away from me.

You would think that it's an innocent question, but Greasy has acquired the talent to ask it with the same animosity as, say, "Why don't you drop dead?"

Frost keeps his eyes on the floor as he tries to walk away. But the girls have now cornered him against his locker.

"Why are you such a loser?"

"I bet he cries himself to sleep every night."

The girls stop to twirl their hair and bat their eyelashes at a group of senior boys that walks past us. The guys wink at the she-devils before smirking at Dylan. They head further down the corridor, laughing and joking to themselves.

Dylan mumbles something to the girls as he attempts to push his way through them.

"Where are you going, loser?"

"Are you going to hide in the library and cry?"

My body is angled away from the scene as I watch it unfold. But for one horrible second, Dylan raises his head and looks right at me. At that same moment, the bell rings for first period.

I slam my locker shut with excessive force and get out of there faster than you can say 'blame the bystander'.

***

"At this stage, the cement is still mostly liquid," Mr. Fernandez (the over-qualified and underpaid high school chemistry teacher) says, pointing at the flowchart. "It's not hard enough."

"That's what she said!" Justin Summers shouts, grinning with self-satisfaction.

Sean Larsson and his cronies burst into laughter and high-five each other.

"I'm sure you get that quite often, Mr. Summers," Fernandez says with a sympathetic nod. "But I'd be more than happy to give you detention if you continue to disrupt my class."

The entire class erupts with laughter, shouts of "Whoa!" and "Burn!" echoing through the classroom.

Suddenly, Evy pokes my back with the tip of her pen to grab my attention.