The Boy In The Back (Muke)

2

Less than a minute before the bell rang, a boy with light blonde hair came in.

He looked up for a moment, hesitating when his green eyes met mine. They were pretty, like pale emeralds, but I only got to glance at them for a second. He flitted them back to the tiled ground as quickly as he focused them on me.

He plopped into the seat next to me and put his head down onto his arms.

"Clifford's here today. I'm shocked." A girl in the front chuckled to her friend. A couple people looked at the boy next to me, but quickly looked away.

Clifford? I had never heard of anybody named Clifford before. It was unique, though I probably wouldn't choose it for my own child.

The girl's friend chuckled and said something in return. I caught the word stupid, but nothing else.

Clifford lifted his head and shot a hard glare at them.

"Fuck off." He growled, lowering his head again.

The bell rang and the teacher walked in.

"Okay, class, we have a new student! His name is Luke, and I'd like it if you were all nice to him." He stated. I felt my face get hot as almost every student in the class looked at me.

After the teacher got everybody's attention again, I glanced at Clifford. He still had his head down, his face hidden in his arms.

Did he plan to sleep the whole class period? I wasn't sure, but I decided to focus on what the teacher was saying instead of the mysterious boy next to me.

The teacher, Mr. Clark, was drawing a diagram of earth on the board. After adding and coloring in some messy shapes that were supposed to be continents, he shaded the rest of it in blue.

"Okay, guys. Apparently, we have trouble remembering the oceans and which continents are which. So, we're going to learn about them. You will have a quiz on Wednesday." He informed us. Great.

Clifford still didn't lift his head, even though Mr. Clark was calling on random people to answer questions about his sloppy picture.

Not me, not me, not me was all I could think as he said random names and they guessed the answer. A good majority of them got the answers wrong, so he would explain them.

"Luke, do you know which continent this is?" Mr. Clark questioned. He pointed to the one he was referring to, and I immediately recognized it.

"Africa?" I replied.

He smiled and nodded.

"Good." He labeled it with his black expo marker before looking back at the class.

He continued calling on kids and asking pointless questions for about twenty minutes. Then, he grabbed a thick stack of papers from his desk.

He began passing out the packets, which had three pages. Not too bad, but not my favorite thing to do, either.

"Clifford?" I asked quietly. I didn't want him to get in trouble for keeping his head down.

He shuffled before looking at me.

Before I could speak, he opened his mouth to say something.

"Fuck off."

With that, he buried his face in his arms again.