Exotic

~ crush is an onomatopoeia ~

I nearly leapt out of my chair when the bell rang to signal 3pm. My chair hit the ground with a startling bang, and Miss Riley, my Modern History teacher, gave me a dirty look.

"Somewhere to be, Mr. Stewart?"

I did have somewhere to be - anywhere but the school grounds. I'd stupidly made an unsavoury comment about Marisol Ursa's hair extensions within earshot of the soccer captain and, being her boyfriend, he had declared me dead. I considered ducking out the door and waiting for Monday to face the consequences.

What a delusion. I picked up my chair and sat down submissively as Miss Riley closed her lesson. I tapped and fidgeted as she dismissed each row of my peers, before narrowing in on me.

"I need to have a talk with you," she said darkly, to the low jeers of my class. Miss Riley was not one for subtlety, not that I deserved her discretion. I hung my head as she ushered the final students out the door and turned on me with the look that a mother might give her screaming toddler in the supermarket.

I tossed my bag over my shoulder and followed her sluggishly to her desk. She slipped into her chair and began shuffling through a stack of essays on the Russian Revolutionary War.

"I'd like to have a chat about your latest test score, Miles," she plucked one paper from the pile, and pushed it towards me. "This just isn't acceptable."

I bit into the inside of my cheek. The front sheet had an 8 in a red circle - which might have been uplifting if it was out of 10, disappointing if it was out of 20. Out of 40, which it was, was just plain pathetic.

"Are you struggling with the material?" her tone was sympathetic, yet I found it incredibly patronising regardless. "Did you even look at the rubric?"

I pulled my shirt up over my mouth and sighed through it. "I'll do better next time. I had a bad day."

It wasn't a total lie. I'd worked a gig at Execute the night before the test, for which I'd done virtually no study. I had read the rubric - on the bus, on the way into school, intensely hungover.

"Right. Thing is..." Miss Riley cradled her head in her left hand. "You seem to be having an alarming number of bad days lately, Miles."

No. I was having a lot of great nights. But that didn't really translate to amazing marks in modern history.

"Is everything alright at home?" Miss Riley asked plainly. "Your dad is doing alright?"

Reece isn't my dad, I wanted to say, but to avoid Miss Riley actually worrying about me, I nodded curtly.

"Any problems at school?" she continued, "Girlfriend troubles?"

I didn't respond.

"Boyfriend troubles?" she added without missing a beat.

"Can I leave now?" I said sharply. Miss Riley pursed her lips but waved me towards the door.

"I will have to call your dad," she called as I walked through the doorway. I resisted the urge to double back and beg for her to do anything but that and made sure to slam the door behind me to emphasis my disdain.

I was three metres from the front doors when someone wrapped their thick fingers around my collar and pulled me back as easily as a ragdoll, sending me flying. I landed on my backpack, leaving my arms flailing in the air like a flipped turtle.

"Happy 3pm, Stewart."

Aidan McCaffrey threw a kick into my side before my brain could connect with my survival instincts. It only caught my hip but, being the soccer captain, the kick had some training behind it. Immediately I felt an ache blossom around my thigh, and mentally cursed because my skin was the colour of rice-paper and I bruised easier than a peach.