Game of Patience

Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Day two of school was better than her first day. For starters, Sam met her by the gate. Phillips smiled when he saw him and asked if that was her friend. He seemed to relax when Brooke confirmed that Sam was.

Secondly, Morgan wasn't in form. She was going to be in isolation for a week, which meant Brooke had a whole week to settle in before trouble arrived again. She handed her detention slip back to Mr Foster.

"Your detention will be with Mr Gardener, he'll meet you in the head of house's office at the end of each day."

The morning passed smoothly, lunch came and went and the bell rang out for the first lesson of the afternoon. English was reading more of the book, Brooke managed to catch up to the rest of the class last night. She skipped all of the other homework, hoping to do it later in detention and concentrated on this. She could tell Mrs Peterson was impressed, but she barely looked at her. Brooke tried so hard to get into her good books, and being ignored the whole lesson hurt. She was disappointed, but she wasn't going to give up.

The day passed quickly and she was back in her form room at the end of the day. Sam had his head on his bag. The last lesson of the day was P.E, they had to do a mile run. Brooke found it easy, Sam on the other hand didn't.

"How are you so good at running?" He asked for the tenth time.

"I told you, I did a lot of running. It cleared my mind."

"I could sleep."

"Not long left until you get to go home."

"And you have an hour detention." He smiled.

"What's detention like?"

"You'll find out. But it's different with each teacher. Some make you do homework, so have odd jobs for you to do, others make you sit in silence doing nothing at all, and a couple of them don't mind what you do."

"How many detentions have you had?"

"Two. But I have an older brother who had detention as often as he had lunch."

"How much older is he?"

"Three years. All the teachers judged me when I first started, thinking I'd be like him. Took me a whole year to convince them I wasn't."

"I have no siblings, so guess I'll never have that problem." She laughed.

"You can have friends that are as close as family."

Brooke looked at Sam for a moment, tossing the thought through her mind.

"Don't think about it too much, Brooke."

The bell rang out. Mr Garderen said goodbye to everyone and said that he would see them all in the morning.

"Good luck in detention." Sam said as he moved in for a hug.

Brooke hesitated.

"I'm sorry." Sam said as he backed away.

"No. Don't be sorry. I've just not been hugged by a boy before. Well not by anyone my own age actually."

"Do you want to hug?"

Brooke smiled. "Yeah, I'd like to."

Sam held out his arms and Brooke slowly moved towards him. She wrapped her arms around Sam and rested her head on his shoulder.

They parted and Brooke smiled.

"Thank you."

"How was your first hug from a boy?"