Janet

At first she didn't notice the shrill screeching noise from the back of the room, but gradually, Janet grew more and more irritated. She stared at the clock. So far, it had only been thirty-four minutes. She turned to remark on this to Ben, but the football player was sound asleep, leaving Janet alone in her misery.

Gritting her teeth, she wrote out her lines as neatly and quickly as she could manage: I will not skip school. I will not skip school. I will not skip school. I will not skip school. I will-

"Will you stop that?!" Janet snapped, turning around to glare at the messy-haired boy behind her, who was leaning back in his chair and whistling nonchalantly. Just great, the slacker had to sit behind her. "Shouldn't you be working on your lines?"

"Finished 'em." The boy pointed at the papers sitting on the desk in front of him. To Janet's astonishment, the sheets of paper were covered back to front with the sentence 'I will not pull stupid pranks on the the vice principal'. The writing was nearly illegible, but somehow, he'd had managed to finish three hundred lines in less than the time it took Janet to do maybe sixty.

"How'd you finish so fast?" The boy sitting across the aisle from him, Kenneth Ford, leaned over. Janet knew him as one of the quieter members of the Student Council and one of the members of the tennis team. Despite being from a wealthy enough family to associate with Shermer's elites, he didn't necessarily move in the same circles as Janet did. She was relieved to see that Kenneth too hadn't gotten very far with his lines.

"Stuck some pencils to each other." The boy looked about for a moment before reaching down to the floor and picking up an odd tool. True to his word, he'd taped together five pencils, which he'd evidently used to write his lines so quickly. Janet had little patience for cheaters and rule-breakers, but she had to admit, it was a smart idea, and she wondered how a slacker like him could think up something like that.

"Isn't that cheating?" She frowned.

"Only if you get caught." He smirked, which only irritated Janet more.

"Mind if I borrow that?" Kenneth asked.

"Sure, but it'll turn your handwriting into shit." The boy's smirk grew wider, and he tossed the taped-together pencils to Kenneth without breaking off eye contact with Janet.

"You know, Vernon doesn't bother looking at these, right?" To Janet's surprise, Ben, who'd apparently woken up without anyone noticing, interjected quietly.

Alice

"Well, why didn't you tell us that earlier, Einstein?"

Alice looked up from her lines at the angry outburst. She'd been absentmindedly doodling on the paper that she had barely noticed that several of the people in front of her had been talking. Now however, one of them, a boy with messy black hair and aviators, was arguing with one of the football players.

"I figured you already knew." The football player, a tall black kid, rumbled quietly.

"Why would I know that?" The first boy shot back. "I don't spend most of my weekends in here."

"Well, you do pull a lot of pranks." The brunette sitting next to the football player was the only one whose name Alice knew. Janet Williams was one of those popular girls who was known throughout the school for being a part of everything cool.

"Yeah, but the difference between me and this musclehead is that I'm not dumb enough to get caught. I'm only here cause someone ratted me out!"

"You trying to start something, jackass?" Football player growled.

"Bring it on, jockstrap." The other boy sneered.

"Guys! Stop it!" Janet pleaded. "You're going to get in even more trouble."

Alice shot a quick look at the other two students in the room. The girl sitting two desks in front of her seemed to be ignoring everyone, while the boy between them was watching the scene unfolding with the same look of horror that Alice was sure was on her face. The whole thing was like watching a train wreck happen, fascinating to watch and unable to do anything about it.

To her surprise, the boy sitting in front of Alice cleared his throat. "Uh, Percy, does it really matter? I mean, you're done with your lines already."

"Yeah, don't fight over something so trivial." Janet agreed.

Percy snorted. "Hey, I'm not gonna start the fight, but if he throws the first punch, I can't promise what'll happen."

"You ain't worth the trouble." The football player scowled as he turned around to face forward.

The room lapsed into an awkward silence after that, as Janet and the other boy returned to doing their lines, while the football player began playing paper football with the sheets of paper he was supposed to do lines on. Percy got up after a minute and wandered off to the shelves behind them. The girl in the front hadn't moved at all throughout the whole thing.

Alice looked up at the clock. It had only been half an hour since detention had begun. It was going to be a long day.