I finally left Cole and his friends when the bell rang. Taking a deep breath, I made my way to my classroom. The familiar faded, dull blue walls matched my mood. Home time couldn’t come soon enough. When I walked into my form room, the teacher was already sitting at her desk, thankfully. Hannah smiled as I took my seat next to her. Everyone sat in the same seat, even though they weren’t assigned to us.
Once the register was taken, we were given our timetables for the year. I had double maths, then English and biology, and after lunch, it was double business studies. Double maths on the first day back was harsh.
I made my way to maths, this time without Hannah as she was now in a higher set to me; she was a whiz at maths. I wasn’t bad at it, but I hated it so I didn’t put much effort into the class.
I sat one row from the front, next to someone new. He was quite petite and looked painfully shy and nervous. I smiled at him, which he returned without saying a word. I pointed to my name written neatly at the top of my notepad.
“I’m Kyle,” he whispered. “Oakley’s a weird name.” His eyes widened. “I didn’t mean weird. I mean… Unusual. Sorry.”
Holding my hand up, I shook my head and smiled. It was kind of weird. I didn’t think it really suited me. I should have had a more common name that no one would bat an eyelid at. Oakley made me stand out too much.
About five minutes into the lesson, just when everyone had settled down to work out some equations to ‘get us back in the swing of things’, the door opened, and Julian came strutting in as if he owned the place. I did envy how much confidence he had. It was just misplaced. Great, so I had him in all my maths classes for the year.
“Sorry I’m late,” he mumbled, ignoring Mr Jones telling him off for arriving late and disrupting the class.
“Julian, I saved you a seat,” Leanne whined, looking at him through her eyelashes.
“Get back to it, all of you,” Mr Jones barked as everyone had used Julian’s entrance as an excuse to start talking. Julian chuckled and sat down on the opposite side of me. What the heck was he doing? I picked an equation and stared at it, desperate not to make any eye contact with him. Why did he sit with me and not his friends?
“Oakley,” he whispered, leaning a little closer to me. My heart beat faster. I was worried. What was he up to? He sighed in defeat. “Oakley, please?”
He actually sounded… Sad? Something was going on. He had been in my company for over five minutes and hadn’t made a dig or a nasty remark.
I took a deep breath and forced myself to look at him. His thin lips pulled up at the sides into a real smile. A real smile for me? Why? He was acting as if we were friends and he hadn’t been a jerk to me for years.
“Look I’m sorry, okay. Sorry about your party, and everything else.” He shifted in his seat nervously. He didn’t make apologies often. That much was clear from how uncomfortable he looked. “I know I’ve been a dick to you, and I don’t deserve anything, but I’d like to be friends,” he said quickly. “I really am sorry. Can you forgive me?”
If I had been standing up, I think I would have fainted. Julian apologising and wanting to be friends. What on earth happened to him over the summer holidays to make him nice? I wasn’t sure if I could trust him, or if I even wanted him as a friend in the first place.
He grimaced. “So, can you forget–”
“Enough!” I jumped at the sound of the teacher shouting, cutting Julian off. “I told you I wanted silence! Detention, both of you this lunch time.”
Did I just get detention for talking? I stared open mouthed at him. Could he not see the irony here? The guy had been my maths teacher for the past two years, so it wasn’t as if he didn’t know me.
Julian mumbled a string of swear words under his breath and started his work. This sucked so much. Detention on my first day back, because of talking! Julian was an idiot. After a couple seconds, he nudged me and nodded to the paper in front of him. I reluctantly looked down to see what he’d written: sorry.
How about stop doing things to be sorry for? I smiled half-heartedly just to get him to leave me alone so I could concentrate.
At lunch, I made my way to the detention room. I didn’t even have enough time to see Cole first so he would be waiting for me by the front doors. Frowning in anger, I plopped down on the closest seat and pulled a book out of my bag.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Julian smile sheepishly from across the room. I ignored him and started to read. About ten minutes later, I saw Cole looking through the door. His face was filled with amusement. Oh yeah, this is hilarious! There was nothing even remotely funny about this.