Tainted: Listening to the Silence (Book 1)

FIVE

                Class started just like normal. And just like normal too, about half an hour after class had started Sal arrived and handed the teacher a tardy slip. I didn’t really know him all that much, I had only talked with him yesterday but I thought he probably had a relaxed attitude towards everything. He never minded arriving late, or if teachers sent him to detention. I had even seen Brent mocking him, shoving him around and insulting him once or twice the last week and he looked like he didn’t really care. The teacher asked him why he was late and he just shrugged his shoulders. The teacher, who sounded mad already, looked even angrier.

                Oh. He’s going to get sent to detention again today. Maybe we’d be there together again. It seemed teachers didn’t like that I didn’t talk and didn’t answer them when they talked to me and I always ended in detention. I imagined them taking turns to find reasons to send me to detention. Assholes. As if they’re going to make me talk by doing that. I was happy the principal hadn’t told my mother about that yet because when he did, damn, hell might break lose. My mother. I smiled internally about calling her that. Anyway, she was small and cute and normally happy but she could be deadly when she was angry.

                The teacher told Sal to go take a sit and Sal rolled his eyes like he always did when teachers told him that. There was a free seat right in front of me and he took it, sprawling on the chair and slouching. He was always slouching. I wondered if he looked tall slouching how tall he’d be if he stood straight. I didn’t think he’d be taller than me, but maybe he’d come close. He also never seemed to take notes during class, actually looking kind of bored. Why didn’t he ever take notes? I thought about it for a little and finally decided to ask him myself. I wrote the question in a little piece of paper and threw it towards him.

                It landed in his desk and he looked at it for a few seconds tilting his head to one side. Finally he opened it and read. He took out his notepad and put it in his desk. He wrote something in the corner of the notepad before moving it to one corner of his desk. Oh. Smart. Instead of passing me another note he wrote it in the pad and I could read it. Nice. In the corner it was written, “I already read about what we’re seeing. I have too much free time.” That’s cool. But you had to like reading far too much in my opinion and have way too much free time in your hands to read text books about, biology for example. A novel I understood, but a text book about genetics? Boring.

                I decided to leave it at that for now. I didn’t really want to get caught sending notes during class. I should probably ask for his phone. That would be a lot faster than the notes. Class ended and I went to my next class and so on. Everything seemed to be going alright, and by alright I meant I didn’t have detention for now. When finally the bell for recess rang I went to look for Sal, I wanted to know if the asshole from this morning had given him a detention slip. I didn’t see him anywhere, though, so I went to his locker planning to leave him a little note. It turned out when I got to his locker he was coming down the second floor stairs. He saw me and gave me a lazy smile. The second floor? What was he doing up there? I think the question was written in my face because he took out his notepad and wrote, “In the music classroom.” Oh. That was a pretty amazing classroom. It had a piano. I asked for his notepad and he gave it to me.