By The Sidelines

O

For the next week, Alice avoided Daniel but unfortunately for her, his attempts to ask her out on a date only grew to the point where she no longer met me by my locker so she wouldn't have the unfortunate luck of either encountering him or Jack there.

"I will see you later, Alice," Her mum called out from her driver seat as Alice escaped from the car.

"See you later," She gritted through her teeth. Alice looked around and saw me getting off the bus. She wanted to catch the bus, not get dropped off by her mum every day.

She could hardly bear the journey every day where her mum would chat non-stop about all the things she was going to do that day. Like she cared.

But no, when she pleaded her mum to allow her to be able to catch the bus, her step-father put his foot down and said that it would be better if her mother dropped her off every day.

"He's so annoying, don't you see," Alice told me that morning. "He tries to act like he's right every time but he isn't. He tries to tell me what to do as if he's my father but he's not. And that gives him no authority to boss me around."

Alice forgot that no matter how much I wanted to, I could not possibly sympathise with her. My parents both died in a car crash when I was about 6. I lived with my aunt for about a year before my older sister, by 15 years, acquired the right to take care of me.

But Alice had forgotten that, or she might have never knew, so she carried on chatting obliviously till I brought her to a room.

Alice peeked in and then brought her head out. The teacher was already at his front desk and so probably wouldn't abide latecomers. She took a breath and stepped in but I yanked her out.

"Hey," I said, "could you pass this to Daniel?"

Alice felt suspicious as she watched me pull papers from my bag and into hers. She didn't know why I wanted her to hand over something to Daniel. After all, the two weren't like best friends anymore.

But she couldn't question anything as I had knocked on the door and announced her presence to the teacher.

"Thank you Rosina," the teacher said. "You may go." Alice felt a twinge of fear as she watched me disappear, then faced the teacher. He was a teacher she did not recognise so he would not know of Daniel's and her rivalry.

"Welcome Alice Variet. My name Mr Bails," the teacher introduced himself. Mr Bails looked round the class. "Where can I place you? I'm afraid our class is very full. You may need to get a chair from another classroom. No, actually there's a spare seat there!" He pointed to an empty chair.

Alice looked to the chair's neighbours and hesitated. For there Daniel was sitting, chatting amicably to other students around him.

"Well," Mr Bails said impatiently.

"Maybe I could sit somewhere else? Move the chair maybe?" Alice suggested. Daniel had to look up at this point and smile at her. That smile grew wider as he glanced at the empty chair next to him.

"No, you may not," Mr Bails replied. "Young lady, you do not tell me what to do. I tell you what to do and I'm telling you to sit down now."

Alice crawled to her seat, but she eventually ended up in her seat. To her shock, Daniel did not spare a single glance to her, instead he carried on the conversation he was having with the group that was surrounding them. Alice made no effort to contribute.

And so she sat there awkwardly, pretending she was not eavesdropping on to what he was saying, even if she could not help it.

After some time, Daniel took something out of his pocket and threw it to her. She caught it and opened up her hand. Inside was a charm that came from the bracelet that she was sure Daniel had stolen.