Special

I Bet

Emily giggled. "Yeah, my parents need to chill sometimes – oh no, I think I forgot myhomework, damn it." She searched through her bag again but seemed to come to the same conclusion.

"Which one?"

"Physics," she mumbled and rubbed her forehead. "I forgot my entire folder at home. Ugh!"

"Do you want to copy mine? Or I could copy it for you during class," Daniel offered but Emily shook her head.

"No, I don't want to copy your homework," she hissed and threw her English book onto the table.

Daniel swallowed hard and looked down at his fingers that were fidgeting with a pencil.

"Sorry," he whispered. He had rarely seen Emily angry before and preferred to keep it that way as she could be more intimidating than the devil when she got angry enough. She noticed his nervousness when she looked at him and the friendliness returned to her eyes immediately.

"Oops, that sounded a lot more rude out loud than it did in my head. I didn't mean it like that. Just, seriously mate, you need to stop doing other people's homework for them. That's not your job."

"I know but I also don't want them to beat me up so I'd rather do their homework. And it's just two more years of school anyway. After that I don't have to see any of them ever again."

He felt Emily's intense gaze on himself. "Is that why you are studying so hard? So that you will get accepted to universities that the others can't get into with their grades?" She joked and grinned at him.

"Sure," he laughed and then turned his attention towards Mrs Williams, the English Literature teacher, who had just entered the room and assumed her usual position beside the chalkboard, with her hands on her hips. While she was resuming the lesson Daniel went back and forth between taking notes and doing Matt's homework, carefully checking every now and then if the teacher was looking into his direction. But even if she did catch him not paying attention it probably wouldn't matter, which was another yet less obvious advantage of having straight A's in almost every subject. He really hoped that all these advantages were going to be worth the trouble in the end. A quiet sigh escaped him when he finished the homework just as the bell rang announcing the five minute break in between classes. Quickly he collected his papers stuffing them into his bag and tried to hurry out of the classroom before anybody else had even gotten up.

"Here, it's all done," he said handing the physics homework to Matt who was sitting closest to the door and without waiting for a response, which he most likely wouldn't get anyway, he fled into the hallway.

They had to change rooms for classes all the time and he had found it to be safer if he arrived at the rooms before everyone else did, avoiding the crowded hallways where it was far too easy for someone to 'accidentally' bump into him. Today however it seemed like life had different plans forhim.

"Daniel! Can I speak to you for a moment please?" Daniel turned around on the spot when he heard Mrs Williams call for him and hurried back to her desk.

"Yes, Mrs Williams?" he asked and played with the strap of his backpack. He didn't like it one bit when teachers, who were chronically oblivious to bullying going on under their noses, diminished his chances of safely getting from one classroom to another. Agonizingly slowly Mrs Williams sorted the books on the desk while appearing to be searching for words.

"Is everything okay? You looked quite distracted today," she finally said and Daniel had to resist the urge to roll his eyes.

"Everything is fine. I'm sorry but I forgot to do my homework for a later class during the weekend so I thought I would be able to do it quickly during thisclass."