Chapter Three – History!

“Loki… Loki wake up!” a searing pain shot through the side of my head as it deflected a History book. Not just any History book, ‘The History of Medicine through Time’ which was rather large, even for History book standards.

“Here sir!” I jumped up from the seat and rubbed the side of my head, checking it for blood.

Maybe I could sue me...

“Do refrain from falling asleep in my lesson Mr. Alkahest. I would hate to have to keep you behind, yet again…” The last words were spoken with, what I’m sure was, pure hatred.

Now Mr. Singleton wasn’t the smallest of people… he was really quite large, well, round really more describes it. Round and short. In fact some students had even photo shopped me into an ‘Indiana Jones’ film. I don’t need to tell you which part…

He wasn’t the kind of man to upset as he really did seem to enjoy shouting at kids. The smaller the better as they were more prone to tears. And tears really seemed to make his day better.

He was a bit of an odd teacher, for one, he always had a bottle of mineral water on his desk. None of the students had ever seen him actually drink it but, nevertheless, it was there. Day after day, Boring lesson after boring lesson.

A joke that had been played time and time again was to wait for him to have his back turned, or leave the classroom, and then punch a few holes in the bottle with a compass.

The resulting effect was always the same, a large puddle on his chair, and extra homework for the class. It was worth it though, every essay of it.

“Now would you care to tell me what the Neanderthals did to each other to relieve headaches Mr. Alkahest?” he seemed to stare straight into my head.

“Did they by any chance sacrifice their History teachers?” the class giggled. Mr Singleton did not.

“No Loki, they bored holes in each others heads using a process known as Trephination.” he went to turn back to the board.

I’m not in the mood for this lesson today...

“So a bit like what happens every History lesson? It’s just you use the power of words sir!”

Time seemed to slow, the class mentally laughing this time. Mr Singleton turned towards me, his face growing redder and redder as he did.

Well here it comes... get ready for it...

“HOW DARE YOU MOCK ME IN MY OWN CLASSROOM! YOU HAVE THE AUDACITY TO ACTUALLY SIT THERE AND SMUGLY DECLARE YOUR JOKES AT ME. GET OUT!”

I practically ran for the hills. Quickly lunging fore my bag, which I hadn’t actually bothered to get anything out of, and almost dove from the class room.

That’s one way to get out of lessons early.

I smiled to myself as I quickly pulled my phone out of my pocket to check the time.

Quarter to eleven... great half an hour to kill before Break...

I turned into the corridor which led out of the Humanities block, covering my nose as the toilets always stank, and pushed the door which was oddly labelled ‘Caution Automatic’ aside.

In front of me was the area dubbed ‘the mosaics’ and, as inventive as students are, just so happened to have a series of mosaic tiles around the edge.

Behind and to my right were the windows to my classroom, luckily they had the blinds down. There was a small wall with a bush on top of it to my right, which had been flattened and decimated by me and my friends for the past two years.

During Years 10 and 11 at the school, that had been our meeting place for lunch and break times. But now that we were in the 6th Form we had a nice warm common room to loiter in and as such, the area had now been colonised by a new group of Year 7’s.

The circle of life...

I walked across the open area towards the main block of the school; which housed the staffroom, the reception, the 6th form common room and, on the first floor, the I.T. rooms.

Jumping over the metal guide rail and pulling the door open, I made my way to my locker.

Hah... my locker...

During the last Half-Term, I had left my Chemistry books in my locker and managed to lose the key. So after a daring entry into the school with one of my friends, Ben, we had acquired a fork, a pair of scissors and a stick of bamboo and had broken in, taken the books and made our way home again.

I strolled into the Common room, bag newly laden with books, and bumped into the one person I was completely expecting to be there. Damos.

“Hey Damos!” I moved to the left to let him pass.

“What’s up Loki?” now then... something to explain about Damos. For starters that isn’t his real name. That’s Danny Amos. You can see how his nickname came about.

Secondly, he was far older than all the other students... some referred to him as the eternal student. He was in Year 15 or 16 (The school only goes up Year 13) because he just kept taking up new subjects and refused to leave...

“Got kicked out of Single Tons class again,” I smiled and moved towards the vending machine.

“You know at this rate you’re gunna end up here as long as I have?” he laughed to himself as he left the block, late for some bus or some lesson.

Weirdo... now then, what do I want...

I scanned over the items in the vending machine, all of which were horribly over priced.

“Hmmpphh, nothing good...” I walked over to one of the couches and plonked myself down; remembering the time we had moved it and found some weird silvery worm like things living underneath.

I quickly rummaged through my bag and dug out my water bottle. After taking a quick sip, I promptly spat it out.

“Damn, didn’t change it from last week... probably mouldy... I’ll give it to Luke” As I put the bottle on the floor and was just wondering what he should do, the buzzer went.

It played about 6 times, the same old note, but it meant the same thing to every kid in the school. Salvation.

Suddenly I felt a pair of arms around my neck and the closeness of another body behind me.

“Hey babe”

“Luke... how many times do we have to go through this? Not in public... your girlfriend will get jealous.” He let go and sat around on the table in front of me.

“Hey, what’s that?” he had already grabbed the bottle and started to drink without waiting for a reply.

“Water from last week, I should really clean that...”

“Water?” he took another sip. “This is defiantly not water... dude it’s Coke” He emptied the bottle on the floor. “Yup, definitely Coke”

The brown liquid was sucked up into the carpet leaving a large stain.

“Weird... I could have sworn I didn’t put Coke in there...” there was a sudden bang as the door flew open and a screech filled the room. “Luke... Suzy’s here... go comfort her before she makes my ears bleed again...”