❝ so i never really knew you ❞
— moral of the story, ashe —
jay
Jay wasn't sure as to how exactly he'd manage to wind up in detention. He'd been in here a couple times before, mostly because Kai and Cole had somehow roped him into a few pranks. The detention teacher had left to get coffee, but Jay knew she smoked at the back of the building to 'help her stress'. Pulling out his maths textbook, he sighed, rummaged around his backpack for his pencil case and unzipped it just as the door flew open with a bang. In came Kai, as noisy and as boisterous as ever, tossing the basketball back to Cole, who still had his headphones on and was jamming out to some sort of music.
"Jay?" Kai sounded somewhat surprised. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm in detention you big buffoon," he replied simply, placing his protractor on the graph paper with another sigh.
Cole lifted off one side of his headphones. "How'd you end up here without...us?" his hands gestured towards himself and Kai in confusion.
"I — I'm not sure..." he answered, rubbing out a wonky line.
Kai and Cole stared at him until the latter came to a conclusion.
"You blew up the science lab?"
"I didn't mean to! And how did you know?"
Cole pointed at the chemically stained clothes Jay was still wearing. "Everyone in the school's wondering who did it. Honestly, I'm a bit offended you didn't invite us."
"It was an accident." Jay insisted, crumpling his homework with a sigh. He couldn't concentrate.
Kai snatched the ball out of Cole's hands and bounced it distractedly on the floor a few times, running a hand through his hair. "Yeah, well, Nya's pissed."
Speaking of the devil, Nya stormed in, followed by a wide-eyed Pixal, clutching a stack of textbooks almost as tall as the girl herself.
"Why did you blow up the lab?" exploded the raven-haired girl, slamming her hands down onto his table.
"I —"
"I was this," Nya's index finger and thumb were millimetres apart. "Close to finishing my assignment and oh, ho! Someone blew up the science lab."
"How did you find out anyway?" Jay asked, stuffing the rest of his books and work into his bag.
"News travels fast." Kai piped up, waving his phone about.
"You mean your fingers travel fast," Jay muttered under his breath. He zipped up his bag, stood up and made his way to the door when for the third time today, it flew open and Zane and Lloyd tumbled in. The first boy immediately made his way over to Pixal, the second slumping into a nearby chair with a groan.
"My uncle's going to kill me."
Unfortunately for Lloyd, his uncle Wu was the headmaster of their school, and even more unfortunate, he got in almost as much trouble as Kai and Cole. It seemed like Pixal and Zane were total newbies to the detention room, and Jay knew for a fact that Nya, having punched more than her fair share of people was more than welcome here.
"What did you do this time?" Pixal asked, setting down the stack of science textbooks.
"Everyone thinks I blew up the-" Lloyd's phone pinged loudly, and the blond read the notification with a grin. "Never mind, everyone knows Jay blew up the lab."
Jay groaned and sat back down covering his head with his arms face down on the table. Kai snickered from behind him.
"Hey, why don't you tell us how you blew up the lab?" chirped Nya in an overly sweet voice.
"Okay, first of all, it was a mistake, second the chemicals were labelled incorrectly and someone left a burner on and it just progressively got worse with every passing second." gave in Jay, slinging his backpack over his shoulder. "Everything just went kablooey." he said, miming the last words with his hands to mimic an explosion.
And then for the fourth and hopefully final time, the door to the detention room swung open, and in stepped someone Jay had never seen before.
"Is this detention?" she asked, one hand holding her phone and the other holding a crumpled slip of paper.
"Yeah." sighed the group in unison.
She bobbed her head in thanks, plopped in a seat towards the back of the room and popped in her headphones without another look at them.
"Ow!" cried Kai, holding the side of his face from where Nya had swatted him with a heavy book. "What did you do that for?"
"Stop staring at the new girl." his sister answered, unfazed by her brother's overdramatic yowls of pain.
"I wonder how she got into detention already. It's still the first week of school." mused Jay as the other settled down around him.
the new girl
So, being homeschooled wasn't the best preparation for high school, living on a private island with absolutely zero to none interaction with people her age. It was the fourth day of her new highschool, Ninjago High, and she could safely say that she'd avoided trouble for the first three. There had been a surprising number of fights, an even higher number of cliques (not even Mean Girls or High School Musicals could prepare her for that) and a lot of glares.
Considering she'd come pretty late in the year, it made sense, but all the stares made her want a big hole to open up in the floor and swallow her whole. She'd just finished first period, a maths class that had a horrible teacher she'd have to bear with for the rest of the year and was on her way to science when she heard an ear-rupturing 'BANG!' go off in the direction of her classroom. She froze in shock for the first few seconds, and then sprinted over to the charred walls and blasted back door of her science room.
"Excuse me miss," barked a sharp voice. Steeling herself, she swung around to find her maths teacher, who she was convinced was some sort of demon that could track trouble.
"Sorry Mrs Hatfield — I just came here to find the lab —" before she could finish her explanation, the teacher was scribbling away on her well used detention pad (honestly, it was the fourth day of the first week).
"Detention, after school, room D-25 near the art blocks. I advise you that here at Ninjago High we do not tolerate tampering with explosive substances to get out of class." lowering her half moon glasses with a sneer, she continued her lecture, "I hope that this will not reflect your studies in maths."
She muttered something in response, took the bright pink slip and stuffed it into her backpack with a nasty scowl. Not even the first week. Her dad was going to be so disappointed in her.
"Students in Mr Jones' science class for period two, please move to classroom S-4." instructed a voice over the loudspeaker.
She sighed and pushed through the now moving crowd, head down and face burning with shame. Maybe if she tore up the stupid pink slip it would go away. Eventually, she arrived at S-4 and slipped inside the half-full classroom, moving to the back and taking a seat there. All the classrooms at Ninjago High smelled like jasmine weirdly enough, like they spent every spare moment wafting the unique smelling through the corridors.
And that was how she got her first ever detention.
pixal
Nya didn't even have detention, but that was no excuse for her to barge into the classroom and demand Jay to explain their blown up classroom. She'd dragged Pixal along despite her many protests, leaving Pixal to lug around their books and hope that Nya wouldn't punch Jay. They were very close, to finishing an assignment that should have earned them full marks, but Jay accidentally exploding the classroom as they were trying to sneak in and out before second period set them back.
She hurried along behind the huffing girl, apologising as Nya shoved her way through the crowd, with furious expression even Kai would cower at. Pixal nearly tripped over a shoe, managed to keep the tall stack of books in place and burst into the detention room after Nya. Seconds after Zane and Lloyd's entrance, a new girl, one Pixal's uncannily good photographic memory could not recognise, came in much to the boy Smith's interest. Studiously, the newcomer sat down in the back, ignored the babbling group of her friends and started working on english homework Pixal had as well.
Pixal sighed and sank into a chair, the others doing the same as they peppered Jay with questions. To be honest, she didn't mind ending up in detention-she had nothing else to do after school and she'd finished her homework last free period. She squeezed Zane's hand reassuringly, and her boyfriend smiled nervously back at her. Neither of them had been in D-25 before, steered clear of the kids who normally spent a lot of their time there, but it was very hard when you were friends with Kai, Lloyd and Cole.
What she found strange was the members of their friend group. From Kai, the most popular boy in their school who split his time between the popular kids, and their little group, to his sister Nya who was the exact opposite, keeping to the people she could trust and had a temper to rival her brother's. Cole, the ever calm somehow keeping his passion for music and working out like three times a day. Lloyd, nephew to the headmaster, determined to cause as much trouble as possible and then whine about getting caught. Zane, who was bored in every class and started taking over from the teacher, who was the smartest boy in school and could roast you into oblivion with his deadpan sense of humour.
Jay Walker, president of the STEAM club, their official worry pants with a knack of getting dragged into trouble and inventing whenever he could. Now that she was thinking about it, Lloyd probably hooked Zane along with him when he was accused of blowing up the lab and hauled him off to detention. Kai and Cole probably managed to get up to a thousand shenanigans on the way to detention before they'd even received the looming pink slip.
"Did y'all just multiply in the two minutes I've been gone?" announced the detention teacher, walking back into the room faintly smelling of smoke.
"You've been gone for ten minutes Mrs Jatezski." Jay sighed yet again.
"Who's the one in the back?"
The new girl didn't look up from where she was listening to her music and doing her english homework.
"I said, who's the one in the back?" repeated Mrs Jatezski in a firmer tone.
Kai took the opportunity to sidle up to the newcomer, tap her on the shoulder and point to the fuming teacher. "She wants to know your name." After a short pause, he grinned cheekily and added "I wouldn't mind knowing either."
Jay's eraser flew across the room, courtesy of Nya, and nailed Kai in the back of the head.
"Hey!"
The new girl looked at them with wide eyes, one earbud out. "Oh, I'm Skylor. Skylor Chen."