Thanks for the reviews and follows so far. Brief cameo from an old favourite today. This is a bit of a scene setting chapter as opposed to anything more dynamic.


A guilty grin spread across John's face as he entered into the school office and Mrs McKenzie raised her eyebrows at him.

'This must be a new record, Mr Bender. Only the second week of school and already tardy.' She pulled out a late slip from her drawer. 'And what shall we say is the excuse this time?'

John leaned companionably over the desk. 'Dog ate my homework?'

'That would involve you having done the homework in the first place.' The secretary uncapped her pen and began filling in the slip with the sort of efficiency which smacked of years' worth of practice. John noticed she didn't even need to check which homeroom he was in any more, such was his high number of tardies in the past three years at Shermer High. So far, senior year seemed to be going much the same way as the others.

Time to turn on the charm. 'Mrs McKenzie. Barbara – can I call you Barbara?' He didn't wait for a response – when embarking on a charm offensive, it was best not to allow the victim a chance to reply. 'Barbara, is it at all possible that that tardy slip could perhaps be… lost? Misplaced?'

Mrs McKenzie raised her eyebrows again. Then she turned back to the slip. 'I'll write down you slept through your alarm. I'm sure you know your way to detention by now? Three o'clock sharp.'

John pocketed the slip of paper with a nod in her direction and tried to muster up some shame for having landed himself in this situation yet again. He'd been back at school for less than a week and whilst it may not have been obvious to anybody else, he had half-decided, half-hoped that maybe this year would be better. He should feel disappointed in himself. Yet all he could think was that a detention at least gave him somewhere to go this afternoon which wasn't home.

As he walked down the hallway to his second period history class, he partially wished he had told Mrs McKenzie the truth about his late arrival this morning. It was the sort of move he never made and he wondered what her reaction would have been to a casual mention of how his father had gotten drunk the night before and the fight he had had with John's mother had made sleep an impossibility until gone three in the morning. In terms of the Bender household, it was a mild night in, but for somebody like Mrs McKenzie, it would likely be an eye-opener. John imagined that Mrs McKenzie's life was a bed of roses, otherwise there was no way she'd care as much about the odd child's tardiness.

Reaching the classroom door, he set aside those thoughts. He'd learnt long ago that if he was to maintain the front he'd found worked for him, he couldn't bring any thoughts of home with him into school. Time to be the John Bender everybody knew. Pushing the door so hard it ricocheted off of the wall, he entered the room.

Everybody's heads jerked up at the rude interruption to Mrs Dunstan's explanation of the Boer War. Some people looked as though it had been more of an interruption to their sleep than to anything else, and John wondered why being tardy was frowned upon so much more than actually dozing off in classes: surely it all amounted to the same lack of knowledge? Whatever, he felt a small kick of pleasure as everybody's eyes landed on him, albeit with mixed reactions ranging from irritation to mild amusement. At least they were paying him attention.

Mrs Dunstan took several seconds to regain her train of thought and she gestured vaguely towards the back of the room as she tried to find it again. It was probably a bad sign that they were only seven days into the semester and she'd already given up on trying to control John Bender. Something in John rose up, the thing which always got him in more trouble than he strictly needed to be in, and he found his mouth opening with what would surely not sound anywhere near as clever once it was out in the open.

'I hope I didn't miss anything important, Mrs Dunstan,' he said, just as she opened her mouth to begin her lecture again. Yep, nothing clever or witty about that statement, but he saw a wave of irritation sweep over her and a few of the keener students in the front row, which gave him some validation. He wasn't invisible just yet.

Semi-satisfied, he turned towards the empty seat in the back row of the room. The fact nobody else had attempted to claim this prime spot for people watching in his absence spoke volumes about his reputation at the school; it was as though it was accepted that John Bender sat on the back row where all participation in the lesson could be kept on his terms. From here, he could survey everybody else in the class, every interaction, every passed note and raised eyebrow. He wondered if anybody at Shermer High realised just how much he knew about them.

Now he settled back into his seat, deciding a pen wouldn't be needed on this occasion. Mrs Dunstan's historical lectures were Shermer legend, especially this particular Boer War spiel. It was common knowledge that the Boer War never appeared on the mid-term, although the amount of people frantically scribbling around him suggested that it wasn't such common knowledge as he'd always thought. With a small smirk, he reflected that, sometimes, it really wasn't what you knew, but who you knew that got you through. Where these kids had got through high school by taking copious notes and completing assigned reading well before the lesson, he'd survived by trading information for smokes with last year's cohort. So far, it was working well for him.

Having decided the subject matter was a bust, he allowed his attention to wander. Despite his personal rules, he briefly dwelled upon the fight his parents had had last night. It was strange how disconnected it felt to the whole situation. Long ago, he may have taken his mom's side, as his father had launched accusations and threats like missiles. He knew it was probably what any upstanding guy would do: defend their mom from the attacks that John Bender Senior was more than capable of dishing out. For John Bender Junior, however, any desire to protect his mom had vanished longer ago than he could really remember, because surely, any real mother would think it was her duty to protect her only child from the sort punishments which came his way with alarming regularity?

Picking over his family's failings wasn't going to help though, and so he forced himself to think about something different, like the blonde who sat in front of him. She had one of those names which was also a place, Paris or London or Arizona, or something equally as strange. He'd feel worse about not knowing her name if it wasn't for the fact that she never spoke. He'd spent last semester looking at the back of her head in math and he was pretty certain he hadn't heard her speak once beyond confirming her attendance. You couldn't really expect to be remembered if you never did anything memorable. Yet remember her he had, much to his own surprise. It was the hair, he reasoned now, as he took in the mass of brassy curls. There was a confidence about it, a sort of two-fingered gesture to the grey walls of Shermer High that was at complete odds with the girl herself. It made him smile as not many things did these days, and for that reason, he was sort of grateful she was sat in front of him again this semester.

Mrs Dunstan broke off momentarily to turn to the blackboard and write down what she considered some key facts. People shifted in their seats now they were out from underneath her gaze. They took the opportunity to exchange rolled eyes and mouth comments at each other. One uptight girl in the second row followed up her death glare with a physical reprimand for her neighbour who had been drumming on the desk for the past ten minutes. John winced as the ruler made contact with denim.

A hand slapped down on his desk and vanished again just as quickly, leaving behind a small folded piece of paper. People didn't ordinarily involve John in their note-passing. Surprised, he glanced sideways at the boy who sat next to him, a nondescript skater-type who merely shrugged and gestured along the row.

He opened the note slowly, unconsciously aware that this might not happen again. There was something almost exciting about it which embarrassed him; this was not how John Bender was supposed to behave. In some ways, the message itself was a disappointment: Hey stranger.

Then he leaned forward around Skater Boy, and saw her.

Nancy Kennedy's eyes were fixed ahead of her, as though she was really interested in what Mrs Dunstan was writing on the board. Like the best of the back row, though, her desk was empty and whatever she'd used to scrawl her note to John (he suspected some form of eyeliner) was now long gone. In the harsh light of the classroom, he was struck again by how young she looked and how pretty she was, but also how her huge dark eyes were so sad. He didn't remember that from that night in the summer.

The sadness vanished as she stole a look at him along the row and to be honest, he pushed that thought to one side. Because she looked hot too and, after the morning he'd had, hot was a big thing. When she gave him a lazy smile, he felt the corners of his own mouth turning up. He wasn't used to this.

For one moment, he allowed himself a small fantasy. It was a very small one, because anything else was beyond him; he'd seen from experience that wishing for much beyond his own existence was just asking for trouble. His very small fantasy involved arriving to a party, even just one of Diego's small gatherings, with a girl like Nancy Kennedy. Not meeting her there or stumbling across her in the smoky gloom: actually arriving with her as a real date.

Being sentimental wasn't his thing though, and as the bell rang for the end of the period, he stood up. Making his escape was easy; he travelled light and was out of the door before most people had even opened up their bag to receive the pens, pencils and folders that they'd littered their desk with. A different guy would have returned the greeting, hung around and made small talk with Nancy. He wasn't that guy, and so he left without another word.