A/N: I do not own any characters from Outnumbered. I only own those of my own creation
Ellie sat down at her desk, pulling the sleeves of her overly large cardigan so that the sleeves covered her hands and you could only see her pale digits peeking out from the grey fabric. It was a habit she had, something she did when she was feeling low, and just wanted to cover up and hide from the world. Although, saying that she was feeling "low" was a ridiculous understatement. She felt like someone had purposefully stomped on her, then set her on fire for good measure. She had spent most of the morning coming down off of a bad trip, spending half an hour splashing cold water on her face to try and wake up from the nightmare in her head. She avoided coffee at all costs, the stuff just made the hallucinations worse and made the shaking in her hands more prominent, something that she definitely didn't need. She rubbed her temples, closing her eyes for a couple of seconds before the thundering of feet sounded outside of the door, causing an explosion of noise to go off as the other twenty-something kids showed up for form room. Ellie sighed, giving up on trying to get rid of her head ache, she'd take some paracetamol later, it was too risky to try right now. Instead, she rested her fingers on the edge of her desk and inspected her chipped nail polish, waiting for registration to finish.
Jake walked into form room with his mates, chatting some shit about who was better at pulling girls or something, when he noticed that Ellie was sat on her own in the classroom again. This was nothing new, the dark haired girl was small and made for an easy target for the bullies, but considering he had a bit of a thing for her, he felt like he should at least grow some balls and defend her, or at least give her some company. But instead, he sat on the other side of the room with his mates, keeping an eye on her from afar. She was doing that thing with her jumper again, pulling the sleeves down, like she was nervous about something. Or cold. Jake didn't really look into it as his mates were doing something stupid with some rulers they had found and was given the duty of helping them take a picture of a rather crude shape they had made with it. His mates knew that he fancied Ellie, a lot of guys did. She was gorgeous. But she kept to herself a lot, not wanting to really get close to anyone and avoiding social contact as much as possible. Now that he thought about it, Jake didn't think she'd ever had a boyfriend. Or friends for that matter. No she did have mates up until year ten, when she just cut herself off from everyone. Well, she was a challenge to say the least. And Jake liked a challenge.
The bell rang, dismissing everyone from the form room and everyone dispersed into the corridor. Ellie just tried to stay on her feet as much as she possibly could, letting the flow of people guide her to where she needed to be next. Where that was, she had no idea. The girl could just about remember what day it was, never mind what she had to do during them. She continued to shuffle along, surrounded by morons and arsey gits who think they can get in her pants. She might have been in English, but she probably wouldn't find out as she was stopped in her tracks when an arm shot out and blocked her path. She looked up to see Jonah Mitchell, a pizza faced boy from her year, with a sickening smirk on his face.
"Where do you think you're going?" He asked tauntingly. The petite girl just shugged in response, which was quite an honest answer. Unfortunately Jonah didn't see it that way, his brows furrowed slightly, he leaned towards Ellie in a threatening manner, looming over her.
"Not in the mood to talk today? I thought you enjoyed our chats." He teased, causing all of his pasty brained mates to snicker pitifully. When the smaller girl didn't respond he shoved her, and she had to put some effort in to keeping herself upright. This didn't go unnoticed by Jonah and he shoved her again, harder this time, so that she fell backwards. Although, instead of ending up horizontal on the floor like she expected to, she fell into something rather solid. And tall. She glanced up behind her and saw Jake Brockman, some kid who lived down the road from her, standing there. He gripped onto her shoulders gently, looking down at her with a concerned expression before his gaze flickered up to the worlds largest moron in front of her.
"What's going on?" He asked suspiciously, subtly pulling Ellie away from Jonah.
"I was just helpin' 'er with directions. She gets a bit lost sometimes." The acne ridden giant said forcefully, taking a step towards Jake, who stepped in front of her to face up to the idiot threatening her.
"Well, I'm in english with her now," The tall brunette started casually, "I'll take her there, y'know, give you some space." He finished, shrugging with a smirk on his face, as if he was doing Jonah a massive favor. The two stared each other out for a few seconds, before Jonah nodded and stepped back, giving Ellie and Jake the chance to get past him. The petite brunette's defender turned and smiled down at her softy, resting a hand on her back and pushing her gently along. The collective clan of knob'eds sneered at them as they walked past and that gave Ellie chills, although, that could have just been her fucked up internal thermometer. The two walked in silence and after turning a few corners, the smaller girl stopped. She looked up at Jake with a confused look in her eyes and her brows furrowed and asked as she swayed slightly,
"Are we really in english now?"
