6. Someone Threw a Gumball At My Head

Soraya’s POV:

“Hola amigos!” I shouted to my friends across the cafeteria. They were all getting their food, and I wasn’t hungry at the moment. I would probably steal some of their chips later on though…

“Hey!” Raven shouted back and I ran over to them.

“So, how was Advanced Spanish class?” Willow asked, tucking her bright red curls behind her ears.

“Bueno, en realidad era bastante mierda.” I responded nonchalantly.

“Uh, what?” Wilbur questioned. I gave them a questioning look, wondering why they didn’t get it.

“Babe-” yes, Jackson had taken a liking to calling me ‘babe’. “-none of us take Spanish classes.” He reminded me. I still don’t see what their problem was,  it wasn’t like I was speaking a completely foreign language… right, I was speaking Spanish.

“Sorry guys, still in Spanish mode. No English is to be spoken during Advanced Spanish because we should already know the basic shit of it.” I complained, “I said ‘well, actually it was pretty shit’. Didn’t learn anything new, but apparently we have a test coming up soon that I’ll have to study for.” I ran my hand through my hair before we all started moving out of the cafeteria.

I was walking on the outside of the group, where I'm vulnerable to being touched by any sort of person. Creepy person, nice person, Ass person… and being my clumsy self I stepped on my own foot and fell slightly sideways with my arms out to try and catch myself before my face hit the ground.

Luckily I never hit the ground, but sadly I was being held by extremely strong and tan arms. “Hey thanks for saving my life and all but I think I would have preferred to break my wrist or something.” I stated, as the person lifted me to my feet again and held my arms to keep me stable. They stood behind me, but apparently I couldn’t turn around.

“You would probably have preferred it but your boyfriend might not.” I heard an all too familiar voice say… wait, did he say boyfriend? So, Ashton Klarence thinks I have a boyfriend? Right… what?

“Uh… may I ask why the hell I have a boyfriend and don't know about it myself?” I asked him, noticing that my ‘friends’ had kept walking without even noticing that I nearly died.

“Isn’t that who your mum was talking about when I bumped into you in…” he looked around as did I, and we both noticed that all eyes were on us. “…Kmart. Definitely kmart.” I went along with his little cover up.

“Dave?” I questioned.

“Yeah, Dave.” Ashton responded.

“Dave? My boyfriend?!” I shouted, before I burst out laughing.

“He’s not your boyfriend?” Ashton asked, completely confused.

“Dave?!” I shouted, not being able to actually say what Dave’s relation to me is in between my hysterics.

“Yes f*cken Dave.” Ashton said, beginning to sound pissed off, I looked at him and found his face practically entirely red. He was getting angry, and it made me laugh even more. Angry Ass was funny.

“Dave is my dad!” I said hysterically, calming down to see Ass’ reaction. His face was blushing red because of his embarrassment over this slip-up and it made me laugh even harder.

“Well how the hell do you call him Dave then?” he snapped.

“The… look on… your face!” I stated instead not being able to hold in my laughter to get the sentence out.

He glared in response. I stopped laughing but still had a ridiculous smile on my face.

“Shouldn't be surprising…” I trailed off, thinking that someone would have guessed by now. Obviously I was wrong.

“What are you on about?” he sounded angry again and clearly confused, I just stood there smiling at them.

“It would be a little weird if I called Dave dad...” I snapped, “…because I'm an orphan.” I stated bluntly. I swear to god the whole cafeteria went silent… so now my secrets out, and my ‘friends’ aren’t even here to know about it.

“Oh shit, Soraya I'm so sorry, I didn’t-”

“Don't start treating me any different Ass, just because I don't know who my parents are doesn’t mean I'm weak. I’ve lived through your attitude so far, I think I’ll live.” I practically spat at him.

“Ray, I-”

“Just shut up, I have friends that I need to get to since they left me behind.” I told him, turning on my heel and walking away to where I knew my friends would be.

“You’re an orphan?!”  Willow shouted, her phone in her hand and the screen on.

“Wow, word spreads like wildfire here…” I trailed off.

“Babe, why didn’t you tell us?” Jackson asked.

“I knew that people would treat me differently if I did.” I responded as I took some chips from Wilbur and shoved them all into my mouth at the same time.

“Well… you’re gonna make some boy happy one day.” Raven joked.

“Raven! Why are you joking at a time like this?!” Willow shouted as she threw her water bottle at him.

“She practically said that she doesn’t want us to treat her differently. So, I’ll treat her the same, I understand what she’s going through.” He stated.

“Wait, you’re adopted?” I asked, pointing at him weirdly.

“No, my little brother is. He’s only six but he knows he’s adopted and we treat him the same as every other little kid, and he doesn’t want any pity.” Raven answered, clearing up everything. “Also, my parents split up a while back… and I understand that she doesn’t want to be treated differently. You guys didn’t treat me differently, so why should we do the opposite with Soraya?” he just gave a fabulous speech.

“Thankyou Raven, you summed it up beautifully.” I stated.

“But aren’t you sad or something?” Willow asked, obviously not being too good with the whole ‘girl’ and ‘feelings’ thing. I suppose I'm not either…

“Well, I’ve had sixteen years to deal with it so I think I’ll be okay. if anything I'm happy because I have people that like me, I'm out of the orphanage and I go to a school where I actually have friends.” I stated, I was grateful when they all gave me a smile instead of taking me into a group hug. They already knew me better than Kelley and Dave did.

“So… what lesson do you have next?”

***

History. I hate history. I hate history so damn much. I can’t even change out of it because there are no other lessons I would like to do during the same period, not a single one. I only had Raven with me in this class, and we hated it as much as each other. Oh, did I mention that Ass was in here too? Somehow the little shit managed to get almost the same lessons as me.

All of them apart from Advanced Spanish (because he was taking the French), we had different Physical Education classes and he wasn’t in the Specialised Maths class. Just because I’ve lived in an Orphanage my entire life doesn’t mean I'm not smart. Anyone ever seen ‘Meet the Robinsons’?

“Today we will be doing Canadian Economic History.” The teacher, Ms Fudge (an old fart that was about the size of a hippo and had terribly dyed, short hair that would be cool if she was someone with long hair that didn’t look a thousand years old).

“Great.” I said sarcastically, probably a bit too loud. Everyone’s eyes all turned to look at me, especially the people that enjoy this subject. So, definitely too loud.

“What was that?” Ms Fudge asked.

“Nothing Miss.” I responded, while Raven gave a chuckle next to me.

“Okay, so when I lived in Canada fifty years ago…” I spaced out after that, not caring about Canada’s Ancient Economics. Then I came up with a brilliant plan… a truly intelligent and masterful plan. I got a gumball from my lolly bag, got the little blue cannonball and waited till Ms Fatass was facing the board to write something on statistics. As soon as she was facing away I got my arm up and pelted it as fast as I could to the back of the head of the guy sitting across and down one from me.

I heard the thud of the gumball reaching its target and sat back, staring at the whiteboard intently. “Who threw the fucken gumball at me?!” Ashton shouted, and I just smiled. Not responding. Ms Fudge turned around at Ashton’s colourful choice of words.

“Ashton! For that language you will be sent to detention!”  everyone was laughing at the fact that someone had thrown a gumball at the Ashton Klarence. I feel so devilishly evil, and ninja.

“But Miss, someone threw a gumball at my head.” He complained as he casually packed his bag and walked up to the front of the class to get his detention slip. Everyone else cracked up laughing again.

“Who threw the gumball at Ashton?!” the teacher shouted to calm the class down. Everyone went silent, and I just sat there with my arms crossed and a smirk on my face. I would have gotten away with my ninja and hilarious prank if it weren’t for the fact that one of the goody-two-shoes was sitting directly behind me.

“It was Soraya.” She said, and I swear that girl has a personal hatred for me. my smirk immediately disappeared as I put a gumball in my mouth to mock the fact I did it. I started chewing it, and as the teacher started writing a second detention slip I got ready to leave. I got the pink piece of paper and blew a bubble in front of the teacher. As I walking out Raven didn’t have any words, he just held his hand out with a proud look on his face. I high-fived him with the hardest shot I had and continued walking out. I got another gumball as I watched Ashton walking in front of me.

At the perfect distance to assassinate him with another gumball.

This time I grabbed a yellow one and I stopped walking as I took a step in front of myself and threw it as fast as I could towards his head again. This time it was a lot faster since I was standing and could do my throwing technique correctly. I threw it perfectly, and I know it would have made my old baseball coach proud.

Okay, so I lied to Dave when I said I don't do sports. Baseball is something I love, also rugby. But I don't have any awards for either. There is a very good reason behind that.

“Hey!” Ashton shouted as it hit him in the back of the head.

“What?” I asked, looking oblivious to what just happened.

“You threw another gumball at me!” he shouted.

“No I didn’t.” I said bluntly… wow, lying came way too easily to me.

“Yeah you did.” He stated.

“How do you know?” I asked him, and waited for him to keep walking… I had no idea where I was going, but he seemed like he knew the path too well.

“There isn’t anyone else in this damn hall!” he shouted, and I swear the teacher in the class we were standing outside of gave us both a disappointed look.

“Are you sure?”

***

So, I discovered detention is boring… and I have to stay after school with Ass for punishment. And if that isn’t punishment enough M Fudge is making us clean the gum from underneath the tables. She said ‘the irony of this is the fact you threw a gumball and now you will be cleaning off gum’. We were to stay silent while we did our work, and we had to clean every. Single. Table.

I heard my phone go off from Ms Fudge’s drawer. Oh, I forgot to say that she took our phones away. “Miss, can I please respond to that? It’s probably my mother or father.” I asked and explained.

“No. I said no phones so that means no phones. I also said no talking, so continue your work.” God damn it I hate that fat ass. It was after six by the time we had finished. That’s almost three hours of cleaning tables since school finished at ten-past-three. We finally got our phones back and I immediately called Kelley.

“WHERE IN THE NAME OF HELL HAVE YOU BEEN SORAYA?! YOU HAD ME WORRIED SICK!” she shouted, instead of greeting me with a simple ‘hello’.

“Hey, hakuna your tatas. I got detention-”

“Detention?!”

“Yes Kelley, detention, and I had to stay after school.” I explained.

“Okay, but you’ll have to walk home because Zeke and Dave are at work and I'm starting to set up the club. Be careful.” She told me.

“Okay, I’ll see you later.” I stated.

“Bye.” I hung up after that and looked at Ashton who had apparently been watching me.

“So, how you getting home?” he asked me.

“I have to walk.” I said bluntly.

“Don't you have a car?” he questioned, which was slightly stupid.

“If I had a car… why would I be walking?” I responded with a question.

“Touché’.” He replied, before I started to walk away. “Ray!” he shouted, making me turn around.

“What?!” I asked.

“You want a ride?!” I thought the idea over, and couldn’t think of many cons apart from the fact that it was going to be in Ashton’s car with Ashton driving. I agreed, forgetting about the fact that there would be awkward silences. I gave him directions to the house I live in, and he drove a little faster than I would have liked. However for what I expected, he was actually driving really carefully.

“So… you have a good arm on you. Where’s that from?” he asked.

“Baseball.” I answered bluntly.

“Cool, how long did you play?” he was trying to make a happy conversation here, and it wasn’t working for him.

“Three games.” I answered, looking at my hands as I remembered the time I was on the baseball team.

“Whys that? Didn’t like it?” he questioned.

“Loved it.” I corrected him and I saw that we were getting closer to my home street.

“Then why did you quit?” he became confused.

“Because sometimes, when the choice comes between paying for me to play or for an 8 year old boy… I chose to let the boy play. I kept training with them, but I didn’t play. I trained for four years, but never played.”

After that he stayed silent before I got out of the car and went straight to my room contemplating my life and whether I could try out for any baseball team…

That was before I went to sleep anyway.