Fall in May

~29~ Study Buddies in the Other Library.

But when I walk into the Other Library I am in for a surprise, because all the usual suspects who normally haunt detention are not to be had. There are no hardened hards, no shaved head puff-puff tough guys with numeric neck tattoos, no Mal Flores switchblade sisters looking to scissor kick the crap out of anyone "for looking at them wrong". Not even that one hazed out dude, who might have nodded off in the last class before detention and is just sleeping one off.  Nada. 

In fact, all the normal detention denizens are painfully absent from this place. The few kids that are doing time in here are smiling and talking? Which I find is highly disconcerting for detention, and to be honest somewhat offensive. 

"Name? And subject?" The stereotypical skinny geeky kid with a name tag "Clifford" with a clipboard inquires hopefully. Clifford with the clipboard, which I mentally readjust that to "Cliff'board" is just standing there looking at me all kinds of wrong, like we are comrades or something?

"Dean. Detention." I drone.  

"So Math, Science, English? What are you good at, or what do you need help in?" This guy is so irritatingly super upbeat, he is like the living embodiment of nails on a chalkboard.

"Detention?" Yeah, I need that, not whatever crazy Koolaide this after-school special Cliffboard kid is selling.

"Oh..." Cliffboard eyes me suspiciously. "...are you a first-time freshman by any chance?"

"Naw not, Junior." I shake him off stupid. "So can you just point me in the direction of detention or not? Cause I don't need another tardy detention, for detention. I already know that trick."

"Um...this is detention, and you're here on time. Or you will be, just as soon as we get you stamped in and signed up?" He smiles shyly awkward and taps the clipboard sign-in sheet. "So Math, English, Science or History?"

"Oh okay, bro ...whatever." I shrug him off,  because there is no way I am falling for that roof pool new guy bullshit.  "So if this is detention, where's the teacher that runs this sideshow or whatever the flock this is?"

"Um, the teachers don't run detention? The student counsel runs detention and handles all honor code violations?" He is looking at me all puzzled like. "I'm Clifford Sinclair, the Senior class vice president of the AV club, and this is my thing for the year. So yay me!" He cheers softly to himself, and I swear to the sea this cat smiles embarrassingly like he blazing means it! Yay him!

"Say what's what now?" I shift out of the drift and eye bone him hard, because now Cliffboard has my full and undivided attention. I know there is no way in hell any institution worth a whit is going to let students police themselves. That's just like inviting anarchy and mob rule, and no tearchering type is ever gonna let that happen on their watch.

"Ah, so you've never been to detention before then?" He smiles shyly like this is our a first date of many. And now all the dark voices in my head really want me to smack the crap Cliffboard with his own clipboard, then run around screaming "Attica!" after I set this book place on fire. 

"Yeah, I've been to plenty of detention before, bro. Not whatever the hell this is, casue this whit definitely ain't it?" I glare out at the smiling faces of the detention detainee's.  

Because everyone knows that detention is always run by the most sadistic asshole in administration. Who hates you for sucking air hard enough to keep on living, and takes schadenfreudian glee in watching you suffer for an hour after school trying to hold your piss in. While he lords over the little people, doing some mindless ass bullshit, like copy a couple pages out of the rule book by hand. Detention is most definitely not run by the inmates. Like some sort of sick reverse Stanford Experiment paradigm, in order to help students do better at school? That's just crazy, and I am half Insanistani on my mother side, so I know what insanity looks like when I smell it.