Chapter 3: M&M's

I'm twenty minutes late to my first class.

It took me that long to open my locker. Turns out I was putting in the combination wrong. Oops.

Now, I'm walking really slow to my Chemistry class with the large bag of Skittles in my left hand, my right one reaching in every few seconds to pop a few in my mouth.

Since it took me so long to open my locker, I decided to reward myself by taking the entire bag of candy with me.

I make it to the Chemistry classroom and knock on the door, popping more Skittles in my mouth after I do.

The green ones were my favourite until the flavor changed from lime to green apple—which was pretty stupid, if you ask me—so now I like the yellow ones.

A student opens the door for me, and I step in to see that all eyes are on me. Normally, this would make me a little uncomfortable, but I'm already in uncomfortable as fuck clothes, so what's a little more?

I swallow the Skittles in my mouth and give them a head nod.

"Hey, guys."

Multiple 'hey's are heard around the room.

"How's your day going?"

'Good' is the main response, this time with more voices.

"That's good. Where's the teach–"

A throat clears.

"There he is," I say, I wince, turning towards the sound to see a male that can't be older than forty staring at me.

He looks down at a sheet of paper in his hand. "I'm assuming you must be Ms. Parker."

"I go by Cass," I say. "But, yeah."

"May I ask why you are twenty minutes late to my classroom?"

"I mean, if you want to, I guess."

Laughs ring out from around the classroom.

How was that funny?

I see nothing remotely entertaining about what I said.

"Why are you late?" he asks me, a look of exasperation on his face.

"Couldn't open my locker," I say as I pop more Skittles into my mouth.

"It's the first day of school. You have not received any textbooks to place in nor retrieve from your locker."

I shrug. Please don't let him ask what I wanted from my locker.

"What, exactly, did you need from said locker?"

Shit. Luck is just not on my side today. "Well, funny story. I like to keep bags of candy in my locker, and, like, five minutes before the bell rang, I tried to open my locker, like, ten times. When the bell rang, I was still trying to open my locker and continued to attempt to open it for twenty minutes, and here I am." I give a little shrug as I finish speaking.

The teacher stares at me. "So you are twenty minutes late to my class because you wanted to obtain yourself a bag of... candy?"

I pretend to think about it. "Sounds about right, yeah."

His eye twitches and I struggle to keep a straight face.

The rest of the class laughs and I feel my lips quirk up into a smile before I clear my throat and make my face emotionless as the teacher glares at me.

God, I'm disrespecting this guy, an adult, and I don't even know his name.

Does that make me a bad person?

"I apologize for my tardiness, sir." His face lights up in surprise at my apology. "May I take a seat now?"

He eyes me, most likely judging my sincerity. "Yes, you may," he says, and I make my way towards a table in the middle of the classroom. "And then you can take yourself to the senior detention room after school, where you will be staying for an hour."

He smirks at me and my mouth falls open.

"What?" I shriek.

"I believe you heard what I said. Detention, after school, one hour."

"Why?" I groan. "My parents are going to kill me."

Detention on the first day of school, under half an hour into said day, is not something parents, especially mine, would like to be able to brag about.

"You walked into my classroom twenty minutes past the bell and then proceeded to disrupt my classroom, disrespecting me in the process. I thought that was pretty obvious, but maybe your less intelligent mind needed someone to spell it out for you."

'Ooh's are heard all around the classroom, along with a couple of 'burn's.

I grit my teeth to discourage myself from saying anything back to him. My mom says that's my problem: I don't know when to stop, and on the rare occasion that I do, I have trouble restraining myself from having a smart retort or 'talking back'.

He turns away and I glare at his back. "Dick."

My eyes instantly widen.

Holy shit, I meant to think that, fuck I've really done it this time, I'm fucked, holy shit.

"I apologize, s-sir, I-I didn't me-" I stutter as the teacher turns back around with a smirk on his face, looking extremely smug.

"That's another hour for you, Ms. Parker," he says. "For that obvious show of disrespect towards an adult," he adds on. "Just in case you missed why."

The class laughs, the teacher winks at me, and that's when I realize:

I just got played.

By a teacher.

Holy shit, I'm starting to like this dude.

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Mr. Griffith, as I later found out was his name, left us with a worksheet where we had to identify basic substances and equations and formulas and whatever as homework.

On the first day of school.

The first. Fucking. Day.

Is it too late to retract my previous statement about starting to like him?

Even though I don't want to do the dumb first-day-of-school worksheet, I carefully put it in a folder and slipped the folder into my bag.

Griffith also gave us our textbooks, which I immediately deposited in Phil.

Which reminds me, I need to change Phil's name, seeing how the whole 'why won't this dumb thing open' thing was mostly my fault.

As I'm staring at my locker, Gabs and Gracie walk up to me.

"How do you already have detention?" they ask in unison.

I turn towards them. "Okay, first off," I say. "Don't talk at the same time as each other. It's creepy." They both roll their eyes at me. "And second off," I continue. "How did you hear about that?"

"Everybody's talking about it, but we didn't know if it was true or not, so we came to ask you," Gabs says. "So explain."

I sigh. "I wanted to eat a few Skittles before I went to class, but my locker wouldn't open so I spent a good twenty minutes trying to open it, and when I did, I decided to just take the entire bag with me, and I ended up walking into Chemistry twenty minutes late, and I may have made a tiny little scene, after which the teacher insulted my intelligence and I may have called him a dickhead and I left the classroom with two hours of detention after school."

I stop talking and wiggle my hands around—jazz hands—and Gabs and Gracie stare at me. "Only you would manage to get detention on the first day of school," they finally say together.

"Seriously," I say. "Stop doing that."

They both laugh.

The warning bell rings, interrupting Gracie in the middle of her sentence, which was about the circus—I have no fucking idea why—and she and Gabs rush off to their respective classes, wanting to be on time.

I'm about to do the same, walking down the hallway at a much slower pace, when my mind whispers the word chocolate to me.

I turn to look at Loki the Locker—I fucking love Loki, and Tom Hiddleston, but who doesn't?— and I suddenly have an intense craving for the M&M's I know are in there.

My fingers twitch from the effort of holding myself back.

I just ate an entire bag of Skittles in under ten minutes, I don't need any more candy.

But they're so good.

I know.

Chocolate in a crunchy shell.

Mmm.

So open the locker and take some.

I can't. I've already eaten an entire bag of candy.

Just a few.

I'm going to sugar crash.

It'll be worth it.

No.

Just think, behind that locker door, there's a hundred pieces of delicious chocolate waiting for you.

Fuck it.

I walk back to Loki and my fingers fumble to open him.

He doesn't open.

"Come on, Loki," I groan. "Work with me here."

That bag of M&M's is all I can think about.

"Why are you talking to your locker?"

"His name is Loki," I say, turning to look at none other than Aaron Brewer.

"Why did you assign a gender and a name to your locker?" he asks with amusement.

"Because," I shrug. "We're going to be spending a lot of time together, and I need to be nice to him or he won't open."

I don't tell Aaron that Loki's original name was Phil and that it came from a hurtful acronym.

"Still having trouble with your locker?" he says as he nods towards Loki.

"His name is Loki," I correct. "And he is still obviously my car."

Aaron's face breaks out in a ginormous grin.

"Sarcasm. I like that."

"Glad you approve."

"Am I still not allowed to open your locker?"

"I still don't know you."

"My name's Aaron Brewer and I'm 18 years old. Now you know me."

He's still a creep.

"Whatever," I say.

I move to the side and tell him Loki's combination.

Aaron opens it on the first try and turns to look at me.

I'm silent before speaking. "Well, Brewer," I say. "It has been decided. You are now opening Loki for me every day from this moment forward. Come by between every class period."

I reach for the bag of M&M's but he snatches them up before I can grab them.

I glare at him. "Give me back my candy, Brewer."

"No," he smirks. "Not until you tell me about you."

What?

My eyebrows jump up and my glare falls away.

"You know me but I don't know you," he explains.

I stay silent, not wanting to tell him anything.

Not because he's a creep, I mean, even though he is, but because if we grow close and he walks away at some point in the future, it's going to hurt.

A lot.

It's happened before and I don't want it to happen again.

I don't think I'll recover if it happens again.

"Come on," he says, softly, his eyes focused on my face. "It's just a name, how old you are and your birthday. I'm not asking you to marry me."

I let out a sigh.

Whatever.

"My name's Cassandra Parker, call me Cass, and I'm also 18."

"Well, Cassie," he says, the smirk back on his face as he hands me my bag of candy. "It's nice to meet you."

As he walks away, I yell at his back. "I never said you could call me that!"

"Too bad!" he yells back over his shoulder.

I smile and turn back to Loki, closing him, and then I put the bag of M&M's in my bag.

I turn around and come face to face with one of those attention-seeking hoes I mentioned earlier.

Blonde hair, most likely extensions, hateful green eyes, an atrocious fake tan, and no clothes.

Oh, wait, my bad, apparently she is wearing clothes; I think they're supposed to look completely nonexistent.

Behind her are two carbon copies of her, except with different hair and eye colors.

I pay no attention to anybody in this school besides my friends and, on occasion, the staff members, so I have no idea who this witch is.

I think her name might be Rebecca or Amanda or something.

"Hey, I'm Tiffany," she says, fake bitch oozing through her words.

Okay, so I wasn't close at all.

"Hi," I say slowly. Brittany stares at me, and I start to feel slightly uncomfortable. "Can I help you with something?" I ask in the same slow tone.

"Just wanted to tell you to stay away from my boyfriend."

My eyebrows shoot up. "Excuse you?"

"You heard me," she says, all niceness gone from her tone. "Stay away from Aaron. He's mine."

I scoff. "Okay, look here, Brittany–"

"It's Tiffany," she snarls.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever."

I'm normally a super nice person, I swear. It's just that bullshit from somebody I find to be aggravating tends to piss me off and causes me to say things that aren't exactly nice.

And Brittany's really starting to aggravate me with her bullshit.

"Aaron came up to me. I did not seek him out nor do I plan on doing so in the future. So I suggest you back the fuck up and get out of my face before I do something I won't regret."

Brittany, along with her minions behind her, glares at me before the three of them walk away.

"Bye, Brittany!" I call after her.

"It's Tiffany, bitch!" she yells back.

Oh shit, that's right. I really need to remember that.

I look around me and finally notice the people staring at me, awe and shock the dominating expression.

"I swear I'm a really nice person."

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How'd you like this chapter? What do you think of Cass being a 'super nice person'? How about Aaron so far?

--Rose