Chapter 7

As soon as I finished explaining to my maths teacher, Miss Moss, why I'd been so late to class I headed straight towards Joshua and sat down next to him.

"What happened to you?" he asked. "You've got a great big bruise right here." He poked at my jaw and I winced.

"Oh, I didn't notice," I said. "But I guess bruises are just one of the consequences of getting into a bit of a fight with someone." I shrugged. "I came out the clear victor of the battle, in case you wanted to know."

Joshua jabbed at my bruise. "Quit joking around," he said. "What happened?"

"Fine," I sighed. "If you really, really must know. I punched Richard."

"Oh God," Joshua groaned and buried his head in his hands. "Please tell me this has nothing to do with Artemis. Please."

"Uh, this has nothing to do with Artemis...?"

Joshua looked up at me and raised an eyebrow.

"Stop judging me!" I said. "I had to. Richard hit Artemis. I had to do something."

"So you punched the dumb sod," Joshua said. "You didn't tell him to stop or hold him back or get a teacher or anything like that. "

"I didn't think of that at the time," I said. "Anyway, you're missing the point. Richard punched Artemis."

"I hope Artemis is going to dump him," Joshua said. "I may hate him but no one deserves to be in an abusive relationship."

"That's probably the only good part in all this mess," I told him. "They weren't dating in the first place."

"Are you obsessing over him again?" Joshua asked. "You are, aren't you."

"No, I'm not," I said. "I still like him. But I'm not obsessed. At least I was never anywhere near as bad as Richard."

Joshua looked at me for a full minute before, then nodded. "Alright," he said slowly. "But maybe you weren't that far off from Richard levels of creepy." He shrugged. "Just think about it. You pretty much forced yourself on him after he said no. Exactly what Richard did in English today. Seems like you were just one punch away from being just like Richard."

"I'm your mate, Callum," Joshua told me, "And I don't want to see you screwing things up. Lay off of Artemis, ok?"

Right then I pretty much felt like the worlds biggest creep.

"Alright," I said. "I'll back off."

"Good," Joshua said, patting me on the shoulder. "You can do better than him, anyway."

I'd recieved an angry text from my mum telling me to call her as soon as my classes had finished. So after my last class I immediately made my way over to detention. I always hated getting yelled at by mum. She had the amazing ability to make me feel like the worst person in the universe and I already felt bad enough after Joshua's little speech.

Detention was held in an ordinary, if slightly run down, classroom. Young hooligans were required to sit in there, be quiet and work on their homework for at least an hour while a teacher sat at the desk at the front of the room reading the newspaper, marking essays or doing other such things that teachers do in their spare time.

I sat down at a desk in the middle of the room and pulled out my maths homework. I was falling behind in class, again, and my grades were really, really bad. Worse than usual. I sat there staring at my homework for at least ten minutes.

"It's twenty four."

I jumped about a metre in the air and turned around to see Artemis sitting behind me.

"When did you get here?"

"A couple of minutes ago."

"What's twenty four?"

"A number," he smirked. "Obviously."

"Thanks," I said. "But why are you helping me?"

"You helped me earlier today. I'm just returning the favour," he said. "Besides, watching you sit there, scratching your head, trying to figure out such a simple question was downright painful."

He got up from his seat and moved so that he was sitting next to me.

"I've been looking for something to challenge me," he said. "Let's see if I can teach a buffoon how to do simple equations."

A/N - Sorry I haven't updated in about forever. This chapter was kind of hard to write. I'd already finished it, but then I decided I wasn't happy with it so I pretty much completely rewrote it about halfway through...