Fishy Felonies

Let's be honest. Who reads the bits in the newspaper after the sudoku?

All I really wanted was to get home as soon as possible today, it was too nice a day to spend surrounded by people. I twirled my pencil around the floating dust particles made visible by the beam of sunlight falling across the classroom. Far too nice, I thought, shaking my head. Especially with these people; my eyes swivelled around and narrowed critically at the classroom of merry making kids. I could be chilling at home instead of here. It's a perfect day for a Psych marathon. I could roll myself up in my duvet with left over Chinese and ignore the doorbell. However, right now, it was the last period of another school day and Stephanie, who is my best friend (I guess), was talking my ear off.

"Don't worry about it. I know you'll make up for it on the next test and finally get that A you deserve — you totally worked hard for it," she said flashing a sympathetic smile.

I rolled my eyes internally. What is this? Why are you looking at me so... reassuringly? I looked down on my desk and saw that the English teacher, Mr. Goode, had handed back our graded tests. Mine was marred by a large circled "B-" in a red marker pen. Ahh croutons, I was aiming for a C. I quickly registered Stephanie's concerned expression and realised any normal person would act disappointed in this case. I faked a dejected half smile as her words of comfort came in one ear and out the other. Ignoring her for a while, I tuned in to the conversation between the two boys sitting in front of us.

"... It was crazy, I thought she said the purple fedora really brought out the colour in my eyes, but the next thing I know, she's laughing at me with her friends."

"That's chicks for you, bro."

Are you kidding me? I haven't even noticed these kids before; do they go to our school?  Why would you even buy a purple fedora?

I switched back to Stephanie and hoped she was almost done with her consolation speech. I know I really shouldn't be behaving like this, but I didn't exactly ask her to be my friend. She's known me since kindergarten and sticks to me like flaky lasagne crust to an oven dish. It's not like we even hang out in the same crowd. Her hazel coloured eyes locked into mine. Oh crap, want does she want now? 

"Are we still on for tonight?"

"Oh yeah, sure." I forgot I was supposed to go over to her house to finish a chemistry project. Well, there goes the Psych marathon. I'm sorry Gus, Shawn, we'll reconvene another day. I promise.

"Cool. See you later."

And with that, she flounced off to talk to her actual friends. She's not a bad person really, just far too considerate. I glanced at the clock then at Mr. Goode, who was talking to the last student who had lined up to discuss their grade. From the way she had positioned her body, anyone could tell she wasn't there because she cared about E.E Cummings' questionable sentence structure. A rare word of wisdom from Stephanie came to mind: Girls go wild over young single male teachers, as long as they don't look like mouldy sloth. Mr. Goode was definitely young and not at all sloth looking. He was smiling while trying to correct her incorrect use of 'pathetic fallacy'. I've faked more than enough smiles to know that his was not at all genuine.  I feel your pain, dude. He took a quick peak at his watch and the clock hanging on the wall. My butt automatically started hovering above the chair. It's what I like to call the "double clock chuck". He always did it when he was thinking about 'chucking' the class out early.

Suddenly I felt like I was on top of the world and it was laid out at my feet. I could even try fit in an episode of Psych if I ran to catch the early train. Stephanie probably had some lousy club meeting to chair after school. Hell, I could even stop by seven eleven and buy strawberry milk for my neighbour's mangy cat. Being me, of course, this would never happen.