Hahaha I have finished my Shakespeare essay: go me!
Err yeah, so here's the next chapter, I'm not too sure what I think of it.
Chapter 8: Conversations
The next day, I was on my way to my locker before lunch, when I ran into Gunn. Literally.
"Oh shit, sorry!" I was absolutely mortified, but he seemed to find it amusing.
"It's ok." He smiled. "But out of curiosity, where were you off to in such a hurry?"
"Oh, I was just going to put my stuff in my locker before lunch," I told him.
"You must be really hungry," he observed.
"Well no,"
"So why the rush?"
"I um…" I looked at the floor as I mumbled: "I wanted to get a slice of cheesecake before it was all gone,"
Gunn laughed. "That really was the last answer I was expecting," he told me. "But I'll tell you what; you go put your stuff in your locker, and I'll get the slice of cheesecake for you… on one condition,"
"Condition?" I repeated sceptically.
"You have to sit with me today at lunch."
I broke into a smile. "Deal!"
Gunn gave a satisfied nod, before passing me to continue his way down the corridor. "Oh, and Rain?" he said over his shoulder a few seconds later. "Smile more. You look gorgeous."
I was still grinning when I got to my locker a few minutes later. But after shoving my stuff in and shutting it, when I returned the way I came, I heard familiar voices.
"…have to stop," Layla was saying. Peering round the corner, I saw that Layla was standing with her arms folded, speaking to Warren, who was leaning against the lockers in that sexy way of his… shut up brain! Will was there two, his arm loosely around Layla's waist.
"I'm not doing anything," Warren said.
"Yes you are, you just don't realise it," Layla said. "You're using her to help you get over Brittany without realising. And you're hurting her without realising."
"How? There's nothing…" Warren's voice trailed of as he realised exactly what Layla was talking about. I saw him shake his head.
"I've spoken to her already about it." Layla told him. "Please Warren; I don't want her to get hurt again,"
There was a pause
"Oh man, I've been a total dickhead," Warren groaned. "It's just because of…" he trailed off, not wanting to admit that Brittany was getting to him. But he didn't need to say it out loud, Layla and Will understood.
I remembered at that point that it would probably be a good idea to tell them that I wasn't going to be sitting with them at lunch, so stepped out from around the corner and strode confidently towards them, still smiling from Gunn's comment.
"You look happy," Will observed. "Any particular reason?"
I shrugged. "Maybe…"
Layla raised her eyebrow at me.
"I was just wondering if it was ok if I don't sit with you guys today?" I winced realising how that sounded. "I mean… Gunn asked me to sit with him, and I agreed so…"
Layla's face split into a grin. "That's great Rain,"
"You don't have to ask our permission to sit somewhere else," Warren said to me.
Will nodded in agreement, and I smiled at them gratefully.
"Thanks guys… oh, by the way, here," I said, removing Warren's glove from my hand and giving it to him. "You might want this back."
Still smiling, I turned and walked down the corridor in the direction of the lunch hall.
15 minutes later I was seated at a table with Gunn and his friends, (which included Brittany) halfway through my slice of lemon cheesecake. I felt a little nervous, because this was one of the more 'popular' groups in school, and I didn't really know many of the people there. But I needn't have worried- they weren't like the popular clique in my old school; they seemed to be genuinely nice, making an effort to include me in the conversation. Brittany, Warren's ex, turned out to actually be a really nice person.
After a while, the conversation turned to the school trip.
"How many of you are going?" I asked, and most of them shook their heads and said 'not me' or something similar, except Brittany and a really pretty oriental looking girl, whose name I didn't know.
"Apparently, there are only a few activities a day, so we're going to have loads of time to do whatever we want," Brittany told me.
"Cool," I commented. "We can have a party." I had actually been joking, but the oriental girl smiled enthusiastically.
"Yeah, we can have an outdoor one, with a huge bonfire and everything!"
"Are we even allowed to have large bonfires there?" I asked. "Isn't it like in the middle of the woods or something?"
Brittany nodded. "Yeah, but we're staying in these little huts on a sort of estate," she said. "So we probably will have some-where to have a bonfire."
We spent the rest of lunch talking about the school trip and who was going, what kinds of things we would be doing, at whether the sleeping arrangements would involve guys and girls in the same room.
As soon as lunch was over, Gunn walked me to me locker before heading to his own, and I continued to mad sciences – biology, where Layla grilled me about the details of what happened at lunch with Gunn whilst we wrestled with some sort of mutated Venus fly trap plant that was attempting to eat us as we tried to harvest its seeds. Layla did really well; her plant wasn't trying to tear her face off, it just nipped her hand if she touched any of the huge yellow petals that framed its mouth, whereas mine was pretty much trying to kill me if I went within a metre of it. After that lesson, it was save the citizen again.
"When we come back from the trip to Europe, the signup for the tournament starts."
"You have to sign up?"
"Yeah, but you don't get to pick who you're paired with. Coach Boomer picks random names out of a hat, and you have to play together."
"That's crap."
"I know."
"Is Boomer coming on the trip with us?" I asked
"No,"
"Do you know which teachers are?"
"Er…" Layla thought for a moment. "Principle Powers is, and so is our PSHE teacher… I'm not sure about any others though."
I shrugged. "I guess we'll find out."
And a few days later, we did. Arriving at school particularly early on Monday morning, we were told that the journey to wherever it was that we were going would take about 5 hours.
"The bus goes faster than your average aeroplane," Principle Powers said, gesturing at the sleek blue and chrome winged vehicle parked next to the school bus. "But Europe is still a long way away!"
"Where exactly are we going?" asked one of the 50 students gathered around Powers.
"We're going to a little place in the country about mile from the village Orla. It's in western Poland, almost right on the Russian border."
"Poland? How the hell are we going to talk to anyone there?" some-one else in the crowd said, lots of people nodding in agreement. Including me.
"You won't have to; the training ground you're going too is extremely secluded." Powers said. "You won't meet anyone except the staff there."
I shrugged "sounds ok…"
Layla handed me a sheet of paper. "You me and Maj are sharing a room," she said. "A hut actually."
I checked the piece of paper.
"Where'd you get this?" I asked.
"Some student just gave it to me," Layla shrugged. "We're in house 12."
"House?"
"Yeah, we're staying in these little hut things."
"Boys and girls? Together?" It was a shame Gunn wasn't coming… but Warren will be there, said a tiny voice in my brain. I purposefully ignored that voice.
We filed into the silver bus plane thingy, which was actually quite nice, nothing like the school bus we came to school in. there were three seats either side of the aisle, which was at least twice as wide as the one on the school bus, and at the back of the plane there were two toilets and one of those dispenser machine thingies, with sweets and drinks and stuff.
The boys were in the seats in front of us. Ethan wasn't coming because he was at home, ill with the mumps.
An hour later, after all the luggage had been stored, attendance checked, last minute phone calls and the removal of one student from the trip after she broke down in tears, everyone had made themselves comfortable and the plane was ready for take off.
The journey took ages, but it wasn't that bad. About 4 hours into the flight, we decided to play 21 dares. I landed the first dare, so I ended up going up to a random guy and saying "excuse me, do you have any condoms? It's kind of an emergency…" the guy shook his head, so I asked his friend, who also said no. "Impotent fools!" I said scornfully, turning away. A few seats away, Layla and the others were in stitches. So were most of the people who had heard our exchange. I don't think it was that funny though. Magenta could have picked something more imaginative for me to say.
Next, Layla had to go up to some girls at the back of the plane and tell them that she was in fact utterly infatuated with one of them. The looks on those girls faces nearly made me wet myself.
Half an hour later, the dares were getting boring, so Magenta came up the great idea (sarcasm there people!) to play spin the bottle with a magnetic spinner thingy that she'd gotten free with a lip-gloss she's bought. (The perfect opportunity to test out the new colour protect formula!) I had to kiss Zach, Magenta ended up kissing Zach and Layla, Layla ended up kissing Will, then Warren. They were all just a quick touch of the lips, (the guys had a spaz attack when Layla and Maj kissed) although Maj and Zach's kiss lasted a little longer, and Layla and Will didn't come up for air for two minutes. Then, after much convincing, Warren finally agreed to spin the spinner. It ended up pointing to me. We looked at each other in surprise and unease. See, we basically had this unspoken agreement about Warren and me; we were going to keep our distance, pretending that nothing had happened. To not kiss would be breaking that rule we had made, the one about pretending nothing happened. But the kiss itself could have far worse consequences…
At that moment, we were all pulled back into our seats by the automatic straps as the plane began its decent towards the ground. I didn't know whether to be annoyed or relieved…
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