Fight Or Flight

Chapter 6 - Drama

Chapter 6 - Drama

I needed to know what Adam's fascination was with Beattie and Waugh. And, more importantly, why they had it in for Ed so much.

"Hate those two," I said as they passed our line on their way to their English class one day. They were in a classroom further down the corridor from ours. They coolly nodded to Adam as they passed. Adam returned their acknowledgement.

"They're all right. Not as bad as they used to be," Adam said, as we waited and waited for Mr Mason to turn up to class. His classroom door was locked and no other teacher thought it might be a good idea to undertake the simple task of opening it and letting us go inside to sit down.

Later, a supply teacher turned up - without a key - and it took a while for another teacher to come to open the door. Mr Mason was out that afternoon at a meeting, Miss Clarke, another English teacher told us. She came inside the class, looked at the note pinned to the desk, then barked out a number of orders regarding Romeo and Juliet coursework that needed to be completed.

I now found it natural to sit next to Adam during English. I liked him and knew he liked me, even if, at first, he just wanted to take me to the other side of the brook.

We hadn't started meeting after school or anything like that by then. I knew he fancied me, and I was attracted to him. But something stopped me from going out with him, something about him nagged at me. His friendship with Beattie and Waugh was only a part of if.

I wasn't sure if I could trust him. There was a cockiness about him that both attracted and repelled me.

Layla was absent that afternoon. There were often afternoons were she would just seem to leave school, without telling anybody where she was going. Although I made sure that we sat close to Ed, who was alone in her absence, to show him that the 'away' group was just like a 'home' group.

I also felt guilty for the way I spoke to him that time in Resistant Materials.

Adam grumbled, "We don't have to sit in our groups, come and sit over here by the window."

"You go there if you want," I pointed over to where Aaron, Jade and a few of the others were sat. "I'm staying here."

He looked to Ed, who was scribbling inside a book, an earphone in one ear, and not doing the work - like everybody else in the class. The supply teacher had taken his seat at the front of the class, his disinterest in all work-related matters matching our own.

"Sit!," I said. And he did. "What have you got against Ed anyway?" I whispered as he sat down next to me. "What's your problem?"

"Nothing," he said.

"He doesn't bother anybody but you all treat him like dirt. Why's that?" I asked.

"He's got a reputation."

"What? Is he a serial killer or something equally horrible I don't know about?"

"Worse," he laughed. "Anyway, it's a long story."

"Tell me. We're not doing anything in this class today," I said.

"You really wanner know?" he asked.

"Yes, all of it."

And so he told me.

He told me of a day way back in Year 9 when their Maths teacher, Mr Esher, was absent. "He was always off. Can't say I blame him," said Adam. "I remember we had him in Year 7, and even then we gave him a hard time. He couldn't handle us."

The substitute teacher was one of those real weird teachers - a Music teacher, of course, Mrs Batt. Adults would no doubt call her eccentric. But I and many others thought she was just outright mad. She was always forgetting stuff: either something she was saying - like stopping mid-sentence...then trying to figure out what it was she was chatting about. Or she'd lose a piece of equipment or books we needed, and then spend most of the lesson going in and out of stock rooms and draws and other classrooms trying to find whatever it was she'd lost.