Time Between

Trivan was asked politely to leave his second class.  The teacher was tired of looking at the top of his head as he slept bent over his desk.  After waking him up for the third time, she handed him a pink piece of paper and told him to go down to the disciplinary office.  Insubordination and Sleeping In Class was scribbled on it in her red pen.  Trivan squinted at it for a moment, wondering what had possessed her to write in red on pink.  But he just shrugged his shoulders, and complied.  She glared at him until he was out of the classroom and only looking at her through the small rectangular window in the door.  The class’s whispering followed him out, bits and pieces of it forming completely phrases in his mind.

“…in trouble again…”

“….completely ignored her.”

“…used to be good…”

Trivan shook his head, waving one hand lazily as if to fan them away.  Idiots, all of them.  They only paid attention because they were afraid of what people would say if they didn’t.  They didn’t enjoy any of these either.  They had no drive to know just for the sake of knowing.  Idiots, idiots, not worth respect.

Trivan started down the hallway, casually glancing into the other classrooms, sometimes pausing to figure out which subject they were working on.  A few students glanced up at him, but he ignored them.  If the teacher looked his way, he smiled merrily and waved before continuing on. 

When he spotted Ghent in one classroom, he paused.  The teacher was working on the blackboard along side the same wall the door was sin, and couldn’t see him from there.  But he could see Ghent.  Ghent was a year younger than he was, and had lived next door to Trivan a few years back.  Trivan smiled at him, and tried to catch his attention.

The younger boy was bent over his desk though, and not looking at the door.  He wasn’t sleeping, but instead copying down word for word what the teacher said without glancing up.  His handwriting would be a mess of hastily scratched out lines, and not the orderly block printing Ghent etched out for all of his papers.  He was a “good boy.”  Quiet, smart and did what he was told.  He also had a great mind for working around restrictions, and did whatever Trivan told him to.  A good boy.

He looked up finally, and Trivan smirked in success as golden eyes locked onto him.  Ghent blinked twice, and Trivan waved cheerfully.  Ghent glanced back at the teacher, then to Trivan, his pen lying limply in his hand.  He nibbled on his bottom lip, then mouthed the word “okay?”

Trivan just nodded, shoving the pink slip of paper into his pocket.  He jerked one hand backwards, pointing behind him.  Teachers trusted Ghent since he was a “good boy.”  He could get out of class easily, and then Trivan could have some company.

Ghent went back to nibbling on his lip.  “Later.”  He mouthed, his eyes twitching back to the teacher, and his hand jerking a little.  “Lunch.”

Trivan nodded, his hand fisting about the pink paper and crushing it.  “Okay.”  He said out-loud, even though Ghent couldn’t hear him. 

Ghent nodded once, then picked his pen back up, and bent over his desk again.  His hand flew back and forth over the paper as he tried to catch up.

“Okay then.”  Trivan stepped back and away.  All he could see was the top of Ghent’s golden head, and his hand moving back and forth. 

But he was standing in the middle of the hallway, and that wouldn’t do.  He continued down, no longer glancing into the classrooms, but passing by them.  At the end of the hallway there was a water fountain, the restrooms, and the flight of stairs down.  The disciplinary office was on the first floor, next to the attendance office.  Mr. Menhaden presided over both.  He was a bureaucratic kind of man.  Young and serious, made up of straight lines and file names.  His IQ was average, but not exceptional.  He had completed the bare minimum of schooling for a government job, and resented anyone that had the potential to do more. 

He liked to stand by the stairway in the mornings, glaring at the children as they passed by.  Ghent was terrified of him, and about near fainted the time Trivan had brought him in late for morning classes.  Trivan had to keep one hand under Ghent’s arm to keep him moving, but had smiled at the man and waved their forged blue pass slip under his nose.

The man had never liked either of them, and took a perverse pleasure out of seeing Trivan sent to his office.

Trivan turned before he reached the stairs, and slipped into the bathroom, the door swinging shut behind him silently.

Teachers rarely gave out bathroom passes during class.  They were usually offended if a student would even ask for one.  Except in cases like Ghent’s of course, where it would just be assumed that another teacher had held him late going over some finer points.  “Good boys” had perks, but Trivan didn’t have the discipline for the charade.

Trivan slumped down against one wall, sliding down ton sit on the floor.  He didn’t care if it was probably dirty.  It was dry, and that was clean enough for him.  Maybe he could take a real nap in here.  The tile wasn’t as comfortable to sit on, but he could lean his head back against the wall, and that was a lot better than being hunched over a desk.  Lunch was an hour and a class away.  He had time.

He woke up between classes, when someone shouted something in the bathroom.  Three boys had just tumbled in when Trivan opened his eyes.  All of them were laughing, but the first one managed to get enough control over himself to go take care of his business, and the others followed suit.  Trivan ignored them, leaning his head back and closing his eyes again.  There was ten minutes between classes.  Then he could go back to sleep.  He had to put up with their noise until then, their laughing and their sarcastic remarks.

“What’re you up to Trivan?”

“Flunk out of another class?”

“Not as smart as you used to be, are you?”

One of the boys purposely splashed him as he washed his hands, but Trivan didn’t open his eyes.  He waited until the boy was drying his hands to kick his legs out from underneath him.  The boy fell down with a thud that shook the floor, but his head missed the sink.  He yelped, then snarled, but Trivan was already back on his feet, his hands pressed against the wall, ready to lung forward. 

The boy scrambled to his feet, his face red.  He had come in with two other boys, and the stopped washing their hand immediately, and moved to stand behind him.  Trivan smirked at all three of them, pleased to see he had them riled, pleased to see he had shown them he was still better than they were, and pleased to know that even though there were three of them, he still had the advantage.

“If there’s a fight, both students get detention, you know.”  He announced to the casually, and all three blanched.  They wouldn’t risk getting into trouble.  They cared too much about what a bureaucrat said.

They backed off, and left murmuring to themselves.  Trivan paused for a moment, then followed them out.  If they could attack him directly, they would get help.  He didn’t feel like dealing with Mr. Menhaden.

He ran into Ghent in the hallways, the smaller boy seemingly appearing out of nowhere in the crowd before him.  But Ghent had a class across the street on the top floor.  He didn’t have time for more than a smile and a brief touch on the shoulder, before disappearing into the crowd again.

Trivan smiled, and milled about, watching out for Mr. Menhaden down the hall or for a teacher to be watching him too closely.  But the teachers moved back into their classrooms, and Mr. Menhaden hurried upstairs to check the bathrooms there.  Once the man started up the stairs, Trivan meandered back towards the stairs, and this time disappeared into the girl’s bathroom.  It was deserted too, now that the next class had started, and Trivan sank back down to the floor for another nap.  The floor wasn’t any softer, but Lunch was closer.

The first screeching girl started his headache, and it only got worse as he had to talk around a teacher.  But he slipped away from there before Mr. Menhaden could run up the stairs again, and crawled down the fire escape ladder in the fourth classroom.

And Ghent was sitting out by the old picnic table they used to have lunch at every day.  His books were piled up beside him as he sat on the table part, his legs swinging back and forth like they always did.  And he smiled when Trivan came up, and was nice and didn’t ask what he had been doing, and went to class five minutes late.