Game of Patience

Chapter 15

Chapter 15

The lift dinged.

Jack walked out and Brooke followed. She could never get over how busy this room always was. Jack weaved wasily between the people and tables.

"Jack!"

A short man ran up to Jack and passed him over a piece of paper.

"Here's the information you wanted."
"Thank you Luci." He leant towards him and whispered something that Brooke didn't catch. Luci nodded and walked off smiling.

"What's that all about?" Brooke questioned.

"Work stuff, something for a case."

He slid the paper into his inside pocket as he continued walking towards Phillips' section.

"Pierce, you're late. There's a suspect in holding room three. Find out what they know." Phillips walked around the desks and placed a bunch of papers on another desk. "Howell, when Knox gets back, please tell her that these are what she was looking for."

He walked back to his desk and sat down. He didn't acknowledge that Brooke was there.

"Anything I can do to help? I can organise files or hand things out." She looked at Phillips, but he didn't even look up when she started speaking.

"No. You're a child and this is a place of work for adults. You should be at home doing homework and watching TV. But seeing as I can't trust you to do what you are meant to, you'll have to wait until I'm finished. So sit on the spare desk next to Knox's and do some homework or something." He slowly typed something on his computer. She continued standing where she was. "Brooke, sit... now."

Brooke moved towards the desk. She placed her bag on the top and fished through for her learning log. She was planning to sort out a routine of checking the log and doing homework straight away. Sam had warned her about getting behind on homework and coursework. So if she could get into the routine right away, then that's one less thing to worry about.

She looked at what she wrote down for today. Maths she had to do pages twenty to twenty-three of a workbook. Science she had to make sure all her predictions and equipment lists were complete before the experiment. In English she had to read part of a book and make notes. She was already behind the class with the reading. They were half way. Her teacher Mrs Peterson had told her that she would help her catch up with the others during a lunch break, but that was before the fight. She'd probably start with that, she needed to get into Mrs Peterson's good books, or at least better books.

She pulled out her copy of 'Animal Farm' and started reading it. Well, rereading it. Her own tutor had done this with her over a year ago. She pulled out a notepad and started writing down notes as she read, she'd build on them when she writes them in her actual English book. Hopefully that will give her some extra brownie points.

An hour later and she was a quatre of the way through, she placed a blank post-it that she got from knox and placed it in the book to mark her place.

She looked at her notes and took out her english book. She flicked past the page of work that she did today in class. She made sure to date the page, write the title of the piece of work she stared at the page. How would the teacher know it was homework? She drew a hyphen and added 'homework' at the end, just to make sure the teacher would know she did this after school.

She wrote her point down then added quotes and an explanation behind it. If she did this, she hoped it would be better than just bullet points.

"What are you doing? Anything interesting?" Knox said quietly. She pushed off on her desk and her chair shot from her area to Brooke's. She looked at what Brooke was writing and smiled.