Full Summary: All Lorraine Summers wanted was to survive detention and to get closer to Mr. Gorgeous New Kid. But Mr. Musician just likes to mess with him too much. She knew he was immature, hardly serious, and liked to fool around. However, she never expected to be friends with him, never expected him to be there for her when she spills her innermost thoughts, and she definitely never expected him to be standing on her lawn at midnight dressed in a green bunny costume. But why is he suddenly hanging out with Mr. Chess Club? And what's with all the secrets and screw-ups?

The Dungeons

Sigh.

Three minutes later…

Sigh.

Six minutes later…

Sigh.

I continued to bite at my nails, slowing down my pace once I realized that I only have three fingers left to chew on.

My Italian teacher, Mrs. Gambino, obviously wasn’t aware that most of us weren’t paying attention to her heavily accented lecture on why she believes Italy is shaped like a boot. And that if it were a real boot, it would most certainly be Prada because Prada is Italian.

Right.

I glanced around the room, wincing at her gaudy display of Italian pride. It’s fantastic that she loves (and I’m using that word lightly) her heritage, but is it really necessary to literally cover the walls with maps of Italy and its soccer teams? I suddenly had a flashback of last year when she sulked for a whole month because the administration wouldn’t let her paint the walls red, white, and green.

It seemed like I was the only one giving her an ounce of my attention. Half of the class was sleeping behind their thin textbooks, often being startled awake as Mrs. Gambino annunciated a word rather loudly. A couple of other students were doing homework for other subjects. I saw Frank Portman, head of the chess club, rapidly solving Calculus problems without the need of a calculator. I scoffed.

Show off.

Oh, and you can’t forget the few ‘jokesters’ in the back, who were cracking ‘jokes’ about Super Mario. Ah yes, Mario does grow to be twice his size when he gets a Super Mushroom.

…

Ha. Ha.

What am I doing? I’m inconspicuously sighing my way through this class. Not very productive, I know, but at least I’m not doubling over in a fit of giggles because of some lame Mario joke.

“You guys know what a fig tree is, correct?” Mrs. Gambino was asking us in her accented voice.

Someone snorted in the back. “There’s a such thing as a fag tree?”

Sigh.

I sneaked a look at the clock, hoping to see that there were only a few minutes left. It felt like it had been hours. However, much to my dismay, it had only been ten minutes since the class started. I groaned. “When is this class over?”

“Yes, Miss Summers?” Mrs. Gambino said, turning her attention to me.

Whoops.

“Um, what?”

“Did you have something to say to the class?” she asked. At least I think that’s what she asked me.

I looked around towards the other students for some kind of help, but I should’ve known better. They were still dozing off in lala land. The Super Mario ‘jokesters’ in the back were now snickering because someone had asked, Does his penis get bigger if he gets a Super Mushroom? No wonder Daisy’s with him.

“Uh… no comprende?” I replied weakly. In my fit of embarrassment, I had used Spanish rather than Italian. Normally, this would have been a frivolous matter, but not in Mrs. Gambino’s classroom. Not since last year when Mike Richards wore a sombrero and had the Mexican flag printed on his T-shirt. Once he started talking about how great Taco Bell was for half an hour, she kicked him out for “mocking her.”

The funny thing was that Mike Richards wasn’t even Mexican. He was German.

She narrowed her eyes at me, and I shifted slightly in my seat under her stare. “Go to the principal’s office.”

My eyes widened in surprise. “For what?”

“For trying to crack jokes in my classroom.”

Oh, so I, one of the few people that pass her tests, get in trouble but the Mario kids don’t?

Well, at least she thought I was purposely trying to pull a funny instead of accidentally using the wrong language, even though I had been studying Italian since eighth grade.

That should save me some embarrassment.

My dirty sneakers annoyingly squeaked against the newly swept hallway (won’t stay like that for long) as I made my way to the office – nicknamed “The Dungeon.”

Yeah, we have a bunch of nerdy D&D kids in our school.

Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.

As I stood in front of the dreaded door that lead to the big muscled man of whom we call our principal, I straightened my limp hair and hoped he’d go easy on me since I’ve never been in any kind of trouble.

I let out a deep breath and turned the rusty doorknob.

...

Well...the whole ‘going easy on me’ thing didn’t happen, unfortunately. After scolding me for causing a disruption in class and giving me a huge lecture on how I’m suppose to set a good example for others, he gave me detention.

At first, I was aghast. Detention? I hardly know what that word means. Later on, as I thought about it more and more, I came to the conclusion that it can’t possibly be as terrible as they make it seem like in the movies. There’s a teacher supervising the students, after all.

When the 2:45 bell rang, signaling the end of the school day, I reported “promptly to the Detention Room” just like the principal said. It’s a large room located at the very end of fifth wing that’s completely set aside for—well, detention. Shows what nice rule-abiding kids we have in this school.

The Detention Room is never empty and it’s also oh-so-cleverly nicknamed “The Dungeon.”

I stood outside the room and gave myself a stern talking-to. Be tough. Show them you’re not to be messed with.

As soon as I turned the knob that lead into that hellhole, I started coughing—no, hacking, as cigarette smoke filled my nostrils. So much for showing that I’m not something to be messed with.

While I was choking to death, everyone just stared at me dumbly, wondering what someone like me was doing here.

I was wondering the same thing. But what I was really wondering was why no one was coming to my aide! I guess I couldn’t expect much from these scrambled-brained, lung cancer-ed, juvenile delinquents. Yeah, that’s right. I said it and I’d back it up, too, once I stop choking on polluted air.

But damn it, people wake up! I’m dying here! After a few more seconds of blunt staring, someone finally used their head and came to rescue me. The guy gave me a water bottle, which I gratefully drank from and spilled.

Why I drank from a stranger’s water bottle is beyond me.

When I finally stopped coughing, I got a chance to look at my rescuer, who was trying to hide an amused smile for my sake. Even without me taking in his dark hair, smoky gray eyes, nice physique (oops, I think I just did), I could tell it was Jayden Reminson from my European History class because of his confident stance.

Oh, and the fact that aside from Big Man on Campus, Danny Thompson, Jayden was the most widely known guy in school.

“Thanks,” I mumbled and shoved the bottle back into his hands before scurrying off to an empty seat. I didn’t even wait for his reply. I’ve never been anywhere near him before, but I just realized how nervous it made me.

I recognized a few of the kids around me. I saw Mike Richards trying the bend the leg of a desk. Kevin Jikeal was timing how fast Lawrence Scott could smoke a cigarette. Ryan Volentz was making a video of it on his cell phone. On the other side of the room, Heather Wilke was full-blown making out with some guy on a desk. The rest of the people in the full room I’ve seen around the school before, but I just didn’t remember their names.

Everyone was either laughing with someone else or writing on the desks or listening to music. I awkwardly dropped my hands to my lap before placing them back on the desk again. What am I supposed to do for the next half hour? And where was the teacher? The teacher’s desk at the front of the room was entirely bare except for the badly drawn graffiti decorating it. I took a closer look around the room for a second time before gasping.

The guy that Heather Wilke is making out with is the teacher.

I pulled a disgusted face and happily stared back down at my hands. Biting my lip nervously, I scolded myself for not whispering softly enough in Italian class. A lean body suddenly plopped into the seat next to me and I felt my body jolt. I bit down on my bottom lip hard enough to taste blood.

“Hey” came the husky male voice.

I raised my head up to look at Jayden. He was grinning. “Hi,” I squeaked out, a flush creeping on my neck. What could he possibly want with me?

He raised a perfectly pierced eyebrow before inquiring, “So what’s someone like you doing here?”

“Someone like me?”

“Someone so goody-two-shoes like you,” he elaborated.

I scowled and sucked on my lip. “For disrupting my Italian class, I guess.”

A pleased smile spread over his handsome face. “Dude, that’s awesome. What’d you do? Rip the pages outta your textbook? I did that once just for fun. Curse the teacher out? Almost did that, too, before she slammed the door in my face. Got into a catfight with some other chick? Now that, I would like to see.”

“Umm,” I felt really stupid now. “I…implied that I didn’t like the class.”

Jayden’s smile didn’t falter like I expected. He shrugged. “I should’ve been able to guess that. Anyways, hope you enjoy your time here, uh…”

“Lorraine,” I told him, despite the fact that he should already know because I’m in his damn class.

“Yeah, that.” He turned as if he was going to leave, but Jayden must’ve had an additional question because he abruptly turned back around.

I was in the middle of poking at my lip to see if it was still bleeding. I froze when he swiveled towards me again. Grinning mischievously, he pointed to my lip. “Does that hurt?”

“Kinda?”

“Yeah? Want me to kiss it for you?” he asked innocently.

My eyes widened to the size of Alaska and I know my face is tomato red.

I sat there wide-eyed, staring at him while he leaned forward.

Closer and closer…

Oh god, what do I do? I don't even know him! This is totally against my principles!

With a face red enough to challenge a bucket of blood, I stood up before he could kiss me, stammered something about shaving a queen, and dashed out of the room. I could hear him and his friends laughing behind me.

SHAVING A QUEEN!? Was that the best I could come up with?!

Apparently.

Jayden’s POV

I was, again, in detention. For what? For nothing, really. For nothing that mattered.

Last time, it was because Adam and I were using the little pipettes in Chemistry as water guns and running around the classroom, squirting each other with it.

This time, it was because Josh and I were just fooling around by adding whatever we felt like into the beaker. A pinch of this, a little of that. You know those chefs on TV? The ones with the catchphrases when they throw some spice or salt into the pan? Yeah, that’s what we were doing.

Except we did it with chemicals.

“Pow!” Josh had shouted when he was adding some red liquid. We cracked up because, well, who says ‘POW!’ anymore? The fluid started foaming a few seconds later. The teacher, Mrs. Highplate, came over to us when it was my turn to add something in, so I threw in some clear liquid with a “Shazam!”

…Which caused the thing to blow up in her face. By the time the smoke cleared up, her eyebrows were gone and she looked like a raging bull.

And that’s how we ended up here.

Josh and I, along with Adam and some of our other friends were just hanging around while Mr. Crawford, who was supposed to supervise us, made out with Heather Wilke. He doesn’t really give a shit what we do as long as we don’t disturb him.

So Adam and I were discussing last night’s show when this girl walked in and almost immediately started coughing. I’m guessing it was from the smoke. While serving detention in this room, you don’t breathe oxygen; you breathe cigarette smoke. No one was smoking at the moment, so I have no idea where it came from. It simply just lingers in here.

We turned to look at her because she’s not the type to be here. She’s the, you know, “Oh-oh-pick-me!!” or “the-circumference-of-the-earth-is-equal-to-the-radius-of-the-diameter-of-e-equals-mc2-crossed-multiplied-by-pi-and-shit.” You get my point.

The other dumbasses just sat there watching her cough her lungs out, so I walked over to her to hand her my water bottle. She spilled it.

I would’ve normally laughed, but I could practically feel how intimidated she was, so I tried to keep it inside. That was my random act of kindness for the day.

She wasn’t that bad looking, really. Her black hair didn’t exactly look like the ones in the hair commercials, but she had nice eyes. Nice blue eyes. I was about to ask her if she was wearing colored contacts, but she mumbled something and scrambled off.

Interesting. I usually had to peel girls off me like stickers, depending on who they were. Sometimes they just stared, in either awe or disgust. Personally, I think they just look constipated when they make that face.

I decided to go over to her to ask her what was she in for. She looked so nervous, I almost laughed. For a second, I had believed that she did something on a moderately dire level. Once she told me that it was only because she said she didn’t like the class, I only felt my smile grew wider. I should’ve known better.

Then I forgot her name. She definitely looked familiar to me, but I couldn’t recall her name. She told me it was Lorraine, and I nodded before standing up to leave. There was nothing left for me to say, really. Before I took a step, I remembered that I never got to ask her if she was wearing colored contacts because I’ve never seen a dark-haired chick with blue eyes before.

I turned around to ask her and caught her making the funniest face. Her bottom lip was stuck out like she was pouting, her head was tilted slightly upwards in order a good view of a specific spot on her lip, and her finger was frozen in mid-air once she caught my glance. A tiny spot of blood leaked out from the right side of her lip. An idea swiftly popped into my mind.

“Does that hurt?” I asked.

“Kinda,” she said, shooting me a puzzled look.

“Yeah? Want me to kiss it for you?” I fought back the temptation to laugh. Lorraine stayed frozen, so I started to lean forward like I was going to kiss her. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Josh watching us, just as confused as she was.

Suddenly, she mumbled something about having to go shave a queen and fled from me like I was a leper or something. I cracked up from her answer as well as Josh, Adam, Ken, and Nick.

“You’re an asshole,” Josh grinned.

I shrugged, still smiling at her reaction. “I was just screwing around. I wouldn’t have done it if she did stay glued to the chair.”

“You’re lucky she didn’t kick you in the balls,” laughed Adam.

“I know.”

a/n: edited on 9.29.07.