De Nelson's Senior High

Chapter 7- Excruciatingly long minutes

Dedicated to Mitch

Post malone- Goodbye

Ashanti stares at the ceramic mug of the said porridge they were having as breakfast. This food scared the wittiness out of her and she almost gagged.

After several excruciatingly long minutes later, the bell goes off signalling the end of dining on another Monday morning. She managed to pretend her porridge had spilt over by mistake onto the floor so she wouldn't go through the terror of being fed by teachers.

Everyone stood up and begun to exit the building with their mugs and spoons. Ashanti went over to the near by pantry for a mop to clean her mess. Others who didn't bring along their cutlery were punished as usual so she wasn't alone in the dinning hall cleaning. She was done in five minutes and returned the mop and bucket before heading out the building with her lunch bag on an empty stomach. She had been slightly late for dinning because of her job allocation since Grace period was now over. Unfortunately, she had to find out that if you don't arrive early, your table members can eat your bread and leave you the porridge which they obviously hated.

She was so busy thinking of how late she was for assembly that she tripped on a loose tile at the veranda of the dining room and almost fell when a warm hand gripped her by the arm and pulled her back.

" Hey stranger." He smiles and she recognized him.

" You..." She managed to say and he nods and begins to walk away " Wait!"

He stops and turns to meet her canny eyes and smile.

" Ashanti Goodman" She introduces with so much politesse, extending a hand.

" Zaron Daniels" He grins with a nod and leaves without shaking her hand.

She smiles to herself. Sly, I like that. She thinks to herself with a smile as she resumes her walk to the durbar grounds.

She got to the grounds rather fashionably late and was restricted from joining the queue by the protocol prefect. She was standing at the back of the third queue for the second years with the prefect. So simply, she was in big trouble.

The Chapel prefect was on the podium leading the school to sing a hymn Ashanti barely knew and barely cared about learning.

She spots her dorm prefect walking towards her from the queues of the third years. The protocol prefect smiles. Anita whispers to her and after a few hushed words, she turned to Ashanti.

" You've been excused."

" Come on." Anita beckons and she walks towards her.

" Stop taking chances honey, else you're gonna be leaving the house soon. She let you go because I let her know you're from Manhattan. Any other house and she would have handed you over to the Sanctions prefect. So tread lightly." Anita whispers sharply to her and leaves.

Ashanti finds her way into the queue but Heather spots her first and snakes her way out to pull her to her side.

" What'd I miss?" Ashanti whispers because of the roaming eyes of the deputy protocols prefect who was looking for a scapegoat for talking at assembly.

" Nothing apart from the depressing morning hymn Praise just had to give the time to." Heather drawls and Ashanti chuckles as the Protocol prefect assumes her role on the podium and begins to give the daily announcement. Periodically, people begin to yawn out of boredom and stress.

  Their minds were slapped back into reality by the revving engine of a smoky black dodge challenger that sped into the nearby parking lot of the durbar grounds. Everything the protocol prefect said now was falling on deaf ears as the first years who's queues were closer to the parking lot stared on.