Chapter Thirteen: Detention Seven Billion Times

      “I really don’t want to be here! I’m going to get, like, mugged!”

      “Piper, shut up!” I snapped, slouching down in my seat as far as possible. “Preston is our ride home and he has practice or he’s hooking up with some girl. So since we have to be here anyways, just chill!”

      “How can I ‘just chill’?” the nervous blonde fired back incredulously, as if the idea itself was preposterous. “Seriously, Livy, I think that I’m going to get mugged!”

      “By who?” I demanded, crossing my arms across my chest. “Piper, it’s just going to be a bunch of rich kids who showed up to school late with Starbucks cappuccinos in hand, but claimed that they ‘totaled’ their million dollar sports cars or that they hit ‘traffic,’ but Harry sadly didn’t believe them. That’s it!”

      “I don’t believe you!” she huffed defiantly, moving her bag from the floor to her desktop in paranoia.

      “Piper, who the heck do you think gets stuck here? Axe murderers? Robbers? Stoners? Seriously, why are we here?” I questioned, trying to calm her down, though I knew that I was doing a crappy job. I wasn’t a born consoler. It just wasn’t who I was. I much preferred the hands-off approach, allowing the upset party to go about with their own issue and get as far away as possible from them.

      “Because we skipped gym,” she mumbled.

      “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that,” I smirked.

      “BECAUSE WE SKIPPED GYM, OKAY?” she said much louder than her first attempt.

      “So if that’s their standard,” I yawned, mentally preparing myself for a nap, “then what do you think lands other kids in here?”

      “Murder,” she concluded in all earnestness.

      “Elle happens to be a lawyer, so I have a hunch that larger courts deal with that stuff,” I rolled my eyes at her absurdity. “I was actually going to suggest something like, I don’t know, being a repeat dress code offender, parking in the teacher’s parking lot, or even skipping a class—like us. I promise no murderers will be in here.”

      “If you’re lying, then I’m going to dye your hair pink when you’re sleeping one night,” she threatened, resorting to curling her knees up to her chest as she rocked back and forth in her chair lightly. On the Irrationality Meter, Piper was only at an eleven, assuming the scale was one through ten. She definitely had it in her to get to a fifteen or twenty, and I had witnessed it first hand, so was actually somewhat relieved that she wasn’t overreacting that much. Sure, spending an hour locked up in a room with her didn’t seem all that appealing to me right now, but since it was our fateful reality, I would be able to deal.

      “At least settle for a cool color like purple,” I tried to joke, but Piper clearly didn’t find my jibe at one of her main components of life all that humorous.

      “Pink is a cool color,” she pouted, not taking kind to what I had said. “Pink is, like, life, Liv!”

      “Of course it is,” I nodded sociably, though I didn’t believe a word of what I was saying.

      The clatter of a door handle in the distance suddenly gained both of our focuses, our heads snapping in the direction of the noise synchronously, as if it had been choreographed in a movie. Slowly, the wood panel of the entrance swung open, revealing two individuals. One was an aging man in a suit with a boring tie of red and blue stripes who I had seen many times before and always referred to by the first name. The other was a loser in his standard ensemble of a leather jacket, jeans, and Converse. Their facial expressions were from alternate galaxies, for the elder of the two looked as stoic and edgy as always, white the teen was a carefree relaxed.

      My eyes moved from connecting with the one in authority’s dark eyes to the gray ones belonging to my new “friend” who had also landed himself a spot in the dismal land of detention. He winked at me as I looked away, staring down at the torn jeans that I happened to elect to wear in my state of limited perception this morning. They weren’t the type of pants that were distressed due to wear and tear and actual time, but rather “fashion.” Personally, I held the philosophy that buying overpriced jeans with rips in them was absolutely insane when cheaper ones could be bought and just cut up to look the same, but maybe that was just me.

      When it came to fashion, I had a very passive style. I wasn’t the type to obsess over my attire, though my parents were more than willing to splurge for whatever I wanted in the realms of clothes. Fashion wasn’t my thing, and I was just fine with a T-shirt and jeans. I liked Converse, and occasionally wore flip-flops, if the weather required it. There wasn’t much range in my closet, mainly because I happened to hate skirts, dresses, heels, and anything that I didn’t find comfortable.

      Occasionally, I branched out and wore oversized sweaters with leggings, but for the most part, I wasn’t all that adventurous with my appearance. Even with my hair and face product—I only got trims, never straightening my natural waves, and refused to put makeup on, for I hated the fake feeling it left, and it was just too much effort. Honestly, I just didn’t dress all that interestingly. I looked boring.

      “Olivia, Piper,” our beloved principal addressed us as he broke the silence.

      “Hi, Harry,” I smiled at him gleefully.

      “Olivia,” he returned with a tight and fully restrained grin. He then regarded Piper, but with more authenticity than I, for he claimed to like her more than me, but in reality I was secretly his favorite. “And how are you, Ms. Kent?”

      “I don’t really want to be here, actually,” she told him solemnly.

      “Well, it’s just an hour, and then you’ll be out,” he returned politely.

      “Hi, Livy!” the boy standing next to Harry called.

      “Luke,” I nodded in acknowledgement of his presence.

      “So, as you can probably tell, detention today will consist of the three of you,” Harry sighed, using his professional voice to inform us. “Olivia and Luke already know what’s going to occur, but for Piper’s benefit, I’ll go over the rules once more.”

      “Seriously, Harry?” I grumbled, not wanting to hear the same speech for what felt like the seventh billion time. Legitimately, I was pretty sure that I had been sent to detention seven billion times. Now, it may have been a slight exaggeration, but I was fairly sure that the accurate number was in that general ballpark. The concept of detention and Olivia Ross had gone through quite a few battles against each other over the years.

      Ignoring my comment, Harry went straight into The Speech. “You must be in this room for the next hour. If you leave, you will have to return to complete the time missed tomorrow and until the full hour is served. A teacher will not be in the room, but the office is right across the hall, so I will be informed if any of you choose to leave.” He stared hard at Luke and me, completely overlooking Piper because she was clearly an angel. A slutty angel who liked hooking up with people and having sex, but an angel, nonetheless.

      “There will be no inappropriate touching—or any touching in general. Anyone who engages in sexual activities with another will be given more severe punishments than just this shithole,” Luke continued the memorized monologue, adding his own spin on it at the end.

      “Don’t do anything that would land you here in the first place, or further disciplinary actions will follow,” I went on with the next line, smirking. “Talking is allowed, but no music, and all electronic devices must be turned over at this moment in time.”

      “Thank you,” Luke concluded the soliloquy with the last two words that I knew so well. “So, Harry, how’d we do?”

      “You forgot the part about not defacing school property,” the grumpy gentleman muttered, crossing his arms across his chest.

      “Crap! Why do I always forget that one?” Luke exclaimed, hitting his hand on his thigh dramatically.

      “So, um, can I ask a question?” Piper timidly inquired.

      “Of course,” Harry nodded at the blonde.

      “So, like, if I can’t leave the room, what if I need to go to the bathroom—and the phones thing, what if there’s a fire?” Though Piper was in a bad state already, I had a strong hunch that a fire was not among one of her top worries, but rather losing the electronic device she coveted with her very life.

      Piper and Piper’s pink phone never went far from one another. They loved each other, and though Piper would never admit it (or maybe she would?), she preferred her phone to every single boyfriend that she had ever encountered. Her phone and she were closer than Siamese twins. Really.

      “I’m sorry, Piper, but you can’t leave the room or have your phone on you at any time. It’s just how this works,” Harry apologized.

      “But—but that’s not fair!” she complained.

      “Phones,” Harry sighed, opening up his hand for each of our metal objects of interaction. Luke was first to fish his phone out, and then there was a torn Piper Kent. The pink brick was in her hand, and she was about to drop it into Harry’s possession, but seemed to be having some internal conflicts about it.

      “I can’t do it!” my best friend cried out, holding the phone to her chest as if it was a child that she wasn’t about to put into custody of another.

      “Then I will,” I said easily, snatching it from her, and giving it to Harry.

      “Livy!” Piper screamed, a small droplet of water legitimately forming from the corner of her eye. I wasn’t even kidding. The seventeen year old girl was actually about to start crying over her phone. Unbelievable.

      “Uh, Olivia, where’s yours?” Harry inquired cautiously.

      “Oh, I got it taken away for the next week because I invited Luke over to my house for dinner without Elle and Nick knowing,” I explained straightforwardly.

      “Okay,” he seemed to be fine with my reason for not having the device that I barely touched, anyways.

      “Sorry about that, by the way,” Luke apologized, scratching the back of his neck uneasily. I just nodded, accepting what he had said to be true.

      “I’ll see you all in an hour,” Harry announced, walking straight out of the room and closing the door securely behind him. And then there were three. The rich slutty girl I called my best friend, the wannabe-bad boy, and me. Though it sounded like the beginning of a bad joke, there was nothing even remotely amusing about getting trapped in a room with a distraught Piper and Luke Daniels. Nothing. At. All.

      “I told you that there’d be a murderer, Liv!” Piper whispered to me, forgetting one of the key aspects of whispering that was the whole being “quiet” thing.

      Because one of Piper’s strong suits wasn’t softness, Luke obviously heard, and had formulated something in response to what she had said. “Contrary to popular belief, I haven’t actually murdered anyone, nor can I say that anyone I know has.”

      “That’s what they all say,” Piper mumbled, getting back into the fetal position that she had stretched out of for Harry’s benefit. She was back to her swaying, and looked more scared than a lost puppy.

      “And how many murderers have you met and spoken to, Pipes?” I questioned, aware of the answer.

      “Well, none…but on all of the TV shows—” she began a rant of illegitimacy.

      “Exactly,” I said, my point being proven.

      “Um, not to be, like, mean or anything, but, like, what do you guys tend to do in here?” Piper asked, immediately dropping her previous argument and replacing it with something else.

      “Sleep,” was how I elected to answer, demonstrating the sweet action by placing my head against the desk before me, burying it in my hands. My hair sprawled out everywhere, ultimately shielding the majority of my arms and leaving darkness to drain into my vision, with the exception of periodical bursts of light that still shone through.

      “Or we talk, depending on who’s stuck here,” Luke also added another option—one I generally avoided at all costs.

      “So, talking or sleeping?” Piper listed off the two options we had given her.

      “Yeah, we just said that,” I groaned, my voice muffled by the barrier of how I was positioned.

      “Well, I’m not tired, so let’s talk,” Piper boldly determined.

      “Okay,” Luke said as I imagined him shrugging along. “Why are you two in here today?”

      “We skipped gym class today,” Piper shared with a sigh of disapproval.

      “That’s it?” Luke laughed.

      “Yeah,” she defensively returned, “why? What did you do?”

      “I told some chick to F-off during class, she complained, the teacher sent me out of class, then Harry saw me roaming the halls and told me I had detention for not being in class,” he said, his misconduct in the same realm as ours. It was THE Academy. Though there were the occasional stoners who sold pricey drugs to others just so that they could rebel against their parents, nothing much happened. Small offenses like not going to class were blown way out of proportion because they had nothing else better to do than chastise. It was such a ridiculous school.

      “That’s not that bad,” I reflected, rolling my eyes, though no one could see.

      Instead of responding to me like I was another individual in the room, Piper just kept talking to Luke, like they were the very best of friends and she hadn’t accused him of being a killer minutes prior. “So, uh, Luke, are you and Olivia going out yet, or, like, what?”

      “Are we dating?” The smugness was unavoidable in his tone as he spoke.

      “Yeah,” Piper confirmed her inquiry.

      “No, we’re not,” I said evenly just as Luke gave some cryptic, B.S. response, “Well, I don’t think so…”

      “So, is that, like, a yes or a no?” Piper pressed the matter.

      “It’s a no,” I said firmly, still not at my full volume level.

      “For now,” I heard Luke add suggestively.

      Not having the energy to fight back, I didn’t say anything, and hoped that Piper’s extensive knowledge on one Olivia Ross would aid her in acquiring the reality. My heavy eyelids began to droop, and I didn’t fight that, either. I allowed total darkness to consume me, the soft hum of Luke and Piper’s voices serving as a mere soundtrack to falling asleep. Luke’s voice was a low, husky noise, and it sounded distorted as I began to pay less and less attention to what he was saying, while Piper was a contradictory high tone filled with cotton candy and bubble gum. It was an odd mix to hear, but strangely soothing, too.

      “Livy,” someone properly whispered into my ear, something physically weighing down on my shoulders. At the sound that was in such close proximity, I immediately jolted up, disoriented, and confused. I had no clue as to where I was, who was touching me, or what was going on. All I knew was that I didn’t like it. Not. One. Bit.

      “Please get away from me,” I mumbled, gradually becoming aware that I had been sleeping, the rationalization washing over me like a sudden wave of cognizance.

      “Oh, Liv! Really? Why in the world would you want me to do that?” the voice questioned, their arms encircling around me further—trapping me in the most awkward of hugs.

      “Because you’re annoying me and I don’t like when people touch me,” I muttered with a yawn, the word “annoying” being unnecessarily elongated.

      “Right, forgot about that,” the male said, doing the exact opposite of what one in my position would want, and kissing me sloppily on the cheek, their lips colliding with the side of my face.

      “Get off!” I whined.

      “Geez, Liv,” the person remarked, “girls usually have a better response to my kisses than that…”

      “Well, you’re being a buttface, so get away,” I huffed, having a pretty good intuition as to who it was.

      Out of all the people on the planet who felt comfortable talking to me in such a manner, there were only about three in existence. Piper wasn’t one for kissing girls, and made that exceptionally clear through her many public displays of affection with males. I was pretty sure, also, that Luke had yet to feel okay enough touching me in such a way—though he did lick me the other day, so anything was possible. Out of all my options, Preston Kent was the most likely, because, well, he just was. Additionally, out of the three of us in the room, when I had fallen asleep, no one seemed to be profusely sweating, and all I could think about now was the perspiration from Preston that was leaking onto me.

      “Well, this ‘buttface’ happens to be your ride home, so get up and call me ‘hot,’ because it helps with my self confidence,” Preston demanded as I slowly edged my way up into a standing position. He had released me, so I was free to move how I pleased, but was too tired to really do anything that required a large range of motion, at the moment.

      “Why lie with such a prestigious witness as THE?” I laughed, finding my marginally philosophical words entertaining.

      “C’mon, Liv, you know I’m hot. Just admit it. Just once! That’s all it’ll take!”

      “When have you even known me to tell anything but the truth?” I leaned down to retrieve my backpack, and swung it over a shoulder, a smile forming on my face as I continued to argue with Preston.

      “Like, all the time,” he snorted, not even asking as he removed my backpack from my hold to carry it himself, instead. I didn’t bother mentioning anything about equal rights for all genders, because Preston wasn’t trying to act macho—there was no one significant around to impress. No, Preston wanted to carry my backpack for two simple reasons: pride and sincerity.

      Preston was the type of guy who had big muscles, and happened to be overly aware of it. He also enjoyed making sure that everyone was overly aware of his big muscles. Thus, picking up something as trivial as my backpack was only natural to him, for it displayed the abilities of his muscles and his strength. The other reason for hauling my stuff to his car for me was because he was just a nice guy. It was in his nature to do the right thing, so in his mind not allowing me to transport a heavy backpack filled with nothing just made sense. Regardless, as my record of skipping gym class so blatantly showed, I wasn’t complaining. Nope. Not me.

      “Name one time!” I scoffed, sure that I was an honest person.

      “Remember when we were eight and you were the one who stole the cookies that my mom had baked from the cookie jar?” I shook my head, not directly recalling the memory. “Well, you did, and then when asked if you were the one who stole the cookies from the damn cookie jar, you said that it wasn’t you—”

      “Preston, that’s a kid’s song,” I interrupted, catching on that he was the one lying in the situation and that he was completely making up crap.

      “The coach’s eight year old daughter was singing it during practice, and it was the only thing that I could think of,” he sighed. “I had you there for a second, though, didn’t I?”

      “Nope,” I denied, doing the action that we were debating and disproving my point simultaneously.

      “Whatever, Liv. But, yeah, you’ve lied and stuff and we have to go.”

      “Where’s Piper?” I dared myself to ask, not really wanting to know the answer. She had been in the room for about an hour with a sleeping Olivia Ross and Luke Daniels. There couldn’t have been that much trouble for her to get into.

      “Right here!” the missing party called chirpily, not sounding as if she had just woken up, as I did.

      “And I’m guessing that Luke left already?” I evaluated.

      “Nope,” the mentioned name said. “I’m right here!” And there he was. Luke Daniels. He looked the exact same as before I had drifted off.

      “Great,” Preston said with absolutely no emotion whatsoever in his tone. “Can we go now?”

      “Yeah, totally!” Piper grinned, something about her seeming different but still the same. It was as if while I had been trying to literally recharge, she had jacked up to an outlet in the wall and plugged herself in. There was this newfound energy about her that was challenging to explain. She walked over to where Luke was standing, his inky curls a floppy mess as usual, and then surprised everyone in the room, except for the party involved, by kissing him. Unlike with Preston and me, though, it wasn’t just a friendly kiss, but a kiss kiss. “Bye, babe!”

      “Bye,” Luke winked at her.

      I looked over to Preston in a flash and he was as floored as I, if not more. “Uh, was there something I missed?” I gulped.

      “Well, as a matter of fact, you did miss quite a lot when you were sleeping,” Luke smirked.

      Preston shook his head profusely, repeating the same word over and over again: “No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No!”

      “Uh, Piper?” I turned to my best friend.

      She took a deep breath, preparing herself for the shocking words that would soon exit. Preston and I were both staring at her intently, sifting through all the different viable possibilities. With a shaky smile pumped with some form of guilt, Piper finally spoke. “Luke and I—we’re, uh, dating! Surprise!” I stared at her, absolute speechless. Surprise, indeed.