Percy
Percy Scott leaned back in the hard wooden chair, balancing it on the rear two legs. Carefully, so he didn't tip over the chair, he placed his feet on the desk in front of him, feigning an air of casual nonchalance. In truth though, the chair was probably about to fall over, and he would likely look very stupid in a bit.
The doors slammed open, and two new teenagers walked in. Percy recognized both. The tall, African-American boy with broad shoulders was Ben Jackson, the wide receiver on the school football team. He wasn't in any of Percy's classes, but Shermer High's Stallions weren't lacking in support from their school. The pretty brunette was Janet Williams, a cheerleader and a member of Student Council. She was in Percy's history class.
The pair paused for a bit before taking seats next to each other at the desk directly in front of Percy. Unlike the others in the library, they talked quietly between themselves. Percy couldn't make out exactly what they were chatting about, but he heard something about Homecoming and immediately lost interest. Just typical stuff for their group of people.
Come to think of it though, what was Janet doing in detention? Percy knew Ben got in trouble a lot, news traveled quickly through the hallways of the school, but he couldn't recall a single time Janet had caught any heat from the school aside from maybe dress code violations. Percy pondered this for a while. What exactly did cheerleaders do to get detention?
Ben
Ben dropped his backpack next to the chair as he sank down in his usual seat, the very front desk. There were three others in detention besides him and Janet today; he vaguely recognized Kenneth Ford, the richest kid in school, sitting in the second row, but the other two were a guy and a girl he didn't know. It seemed that quite a few people had gotten in trouble this week, usually there was just one or two people in Saturday detention.
"Are you coming to Homecoming?" Janet asked as she sat down next to Ben.
"Probably not." Ben shrugged.
"Why not?" Janet pouted. "Student Council put a lot of work into it, you know."
"I just don't see the point in going." Ben sighed as he leaned back in his chair. "There's gonna be a party at Brandon's place that night anyway, might as go where the beer is, y'know?"
"Please, I know you don't drink beer." Janet scoffed. "Is it because you can't get a date?"
"Wha- I can get a date if I wanted." Ben gave the cheerleader a dry look. "I just don't want to go."
"Your loss." Janet rolled her eyes. She glanced at the clock. "Wait, why did we come so early to detention?"
"That clock's ten minutes slow." Ben had been in the library enough times to know. "Used to be twenty minutes fast, but Carl fixed it wrong."
"Who's Carl?" Janet looked at Ben with an odd expression.
"The janitor." Ben could feel Janet's judgement radiating from her. "He's a nice guy."
"You talk to the janitor?"
Ben sighed. "Forget it." He slumped onto the desk in front of him, resting his chin on his forearms. Almost immediately, the doors of the library slammed open again, and Richard Vernon, by far the most hated faculty member, strode in, followed by a girl with dark red hair wearing a black leather jacket and ripped jeans.
Shannon
"Sit down." Vernon barked at Shannon, who took the desk across the aisle from Ben Jackson's. "Now, I'll be level with you lot, I don't want to be here. I know you all don't want to be here, except perhaps for you, Mr. Jackson. Sadly, because you've all engaged in delinquent behavior, we're all wasting our Saturday here. Now, you will not talk. You will not fool around. You are not to do anything but sit here and write three hundred lines explaining what you did and why you are here. I sincerely doubt it, but maybe you might just learn that when you mess with the bull, you get the horns." Vernon made a halfhearted gesture with his hand that somewhat resembled a bull's horns before striding out of the library.
Shannon watched the Vice Principal fumble with the doors before giving up and letting them slam shut. She wasn't sure why he insisted on doing that, the library's doors didn't stay open. Shannon took a sheet of paper and a pencil, but not to write three hundred lines about writing music during math class. Vernon had given her the same assignment the last two times she'd had detention, and he'd never bothered to collect the papers anyway.
Shannon O'Connor had heard it said that only fools repeated history, but nevertheless, she decided to do the very thing that had landed her in detention anyway. It was far more interesting than sitting around or trying to sleep.