Rebellion is not always the right thing. Following the rules is not always the right thing. You have to think for yourself and identify the things that do not work for you.

Yorgos Lanthimos

Things were quiet as everyone finished getting comfortable for what was sure to be one of the longest days of their lives. Suddenly, loud snapping overtook the silence of the room and everyone turned towards Allison, who was biting her nails.

"You keep eating your hand and you're not gonna be hungry for lunch." In retaliation Allison spat one of her nails at Bender.

"I've seen you before, you know," Bender pointed at Allison before turning around to face Georgia, "and you."

Georgia gave him what she hoped was a look of disinterest, "Good for you." She really hoped that by pretending to be unbothered he'd leave her alone. It worked with her other tormentors so perhaps he'd respond similarly.

Sure enough his attention turned to Brian who was muttering to himself. Georgia started drowning them out in favor of doodling on her essay paper.

A few minutes of blissful silence ensued till Bender started trying to get a rise out of Andrew and Claire. First he tried throwing his essay paper at them but they ignored it. Then he began humming what sounded like Sunshine Of Your Love.

'Not a bad choice at least.'

"I can't believe this is really happening to me." Georgia scoffed which made Claire shoot a glare her way. Bender then decided to grab everyone's attention again, "Oh, shit! What're we supposed to do if we have to take a piss?"

Georgia rolled her eyes, "Oh please." He knew exactly what to do, he served enough detentions to know. She braced herself for what was going to be the start of a very long and tedious day.

Bender was undeterred despite most occupants in the room doing their best to ignore him, "If you gotta go, you gotta go!" The sound of his fly coming undone made her eyes widen. She was fairly certain he wouldn't actually go through with it.

Probably.

Claire looked understandably horrified, quickly whipping her head back to the front, "Oh my god!"

"Hey, you're not urinating in here man!"

Encouraged by Andrew's outburst, Bender carried on with his charade, "Don't talk! Don't talk! It makes it crawl back up!"

"You whip it out and you're dead before the first drop hits the floor!"

Bender gasped, "You're pretty sexy when you get angry." He made a low growl before zipping his pants back up. Georgia breathed a sigh of relief only to have it shattered when Bender decided he wasn't done yet.

"Hey homeboy," Brian looked over at Bender while gesturing to himself with his pen. "Why don't you go close that door. We'll get the prom queen and dollface impregnated!" Georgia felt the blood drain from her face, even though he was only saying it to get a reaction out of them, the thought of it made her stomach turn regardless. She dropped her face to her essay paper, now even more determined to ignore everyone in the room.

Claire turned around to glare at him while Andrew shouted out his protest. When Bender ignored him Andrew tried again, "Hey!"

"What?"

"If I lose my temper, you're totalled man!"

"Totally?"

"Totally!"

'Not exactly witty is he?'

Claire finally decided to put in her two cents, "Why don't you just shut up! Nobody here is interested!"

Andrew echoed her sentiment before turning back around and muttering the word 'buttface' to Claire which wasn't exactly the strongest retort but Georgia kept silent. They really just needed to stop engaging and eventually Bender would lose interest.

Maybe.

"Well hey Sporto! What'd you do to get in here? Forget to wash your jock?"

Brian, ever the peacekeeper, tried to defuse the situation, "Uh, excuse me, fellas? I think we should just write our papers." He was unsurprisingly ignored.

Andrew turned back around to face Bender, "Look, just because you live in here doesn't give you the right to be a pain in the ass, so knock it off!"

Bender shrugged, "It's a free country."

Against her better judgment Georgia addressed the preps while looking back down at her paper, "You know he's just doing it to get a rise out of you. Ignore him." A gloved hand gripped her jaw, surprisingly firm and gentle, and lifted her head up so that her honey colored eyes met with Bender's chocolate brown ones.

"Sweets, you couldn't ignore me if you tried." His voice was low, almost whisper-like, and Georgia could feel her face burning as she pulled herself from his grip, "Watch me."

He smirked, the absolute jerk, "With pleasure." She scoffed and looked away from him, willing herself to stop blushing. She absolutely did not need this. Especially from him. There was no question he played the field when it came to girls, his bad-boy aesthetic and devil-may-care attitude drew them in like moths to a flame. Georgia wasn't blind, he was most certainly attractive which only made him more dangerous. She refused to become just another notch in his belt.

Thankfully he seemed to decide torturing the preps was more fun than seeing just how close her face could get to resembling a tomato. Small mercies she supposed.

"So…"

'Ignore him, just ignore him.'

"So! Are you guys like boyfriend/girlfriend?" Georgia wanted to pat the two of them on the back for not reacting so far. "Steady dates? Lovers?"

'That's right, keep ignoring him, he'll get bored. Just keep ignoring him.'

"Come on Sporto, level with me." Bender leaned in a little, "Do you slip her the hot...beef…injection?"

Claire and Andrew immediately turned back, a combination of fury, embarrassment and disgust dominating their features.

"Go to hell!"

"Enough!"

'Well played Bender, well played.' While she loathed to admit it, the guy really knew which buttons to press. She heard Vernon yelling from his office but, much to her disappointment, didn't come in to investigate.

When her focus went back to the trio in front of her Bender had moved from his desk to sit on the railing. "What do you say we close that door. We can't have any kind of party with Vernon checking us out every few seconds."

Brian, bless him, once again tried to keep order, "Well, you know the door's supposed to stay open-"

"So?"

Andrew decided to interrupt, "So why don't you just shut up! There's five other people in here you know."

Bender looked more than eager to start a fight with the jock, "God, you can count. See! I knew you had to be smart to be a wrestler."

'Here we go.'

"Who the hell are you to judge anybody anyway?" To be fair that statement could be thrown both ways. Actually it could be directed at anybody really but Georgia was not about to get in the middle of the pissing match these two were about to have.

"You know, Bender," She could practically see the sneer on Andrew's face through the back of his head, "you don't even count. I mean, if you disappeared forever it wouldn't make any difference. You may as well not even exist at this school."

A brief glimpse of pain flashed through Bender's eyes as he turned his head away from them and on any other day Georgia would've been impressed by his ability to hide it so quickly. How could someone not be hurt by a comment like that? Georgia certainly knew what it felt like. Similar comments had been tossed in her direction many times, without a second thought as to the damage they did.

It was the story of her life really. She had gone from being surrounded by a group of friends to walking the halls alone and having to endure those former friends sneering at her everywhere she went. They treated her like she had never laughed with them, shared secrets with them, been friends with them. An outcast, always on the fringes and while she had become comfortable with it, embraced it even, the loneliness never quite went away.

Humans were social creatures after all.

Maybe that's why she felt a pull to stand up for Bender. She knew what it felt like to have those kinds of thoughts running through your mind and have it only made worse when someone decided to throw out an offhanded comment your way.

"I'd say you're the more forgettable one." Bender's eyes snapped to her, bewildered but intrigued and it made her feel a little more confident in her choice. Claire only frowned in indignance as Andrew rotated to face her, his own expression showing a similar annoyance, "What?"

Georgia kept her face impassive, "Think about it. Who are you if you're not a wrestler?" Tilting her head, Georgia narrowed her eyes as if she was pondering one of life's greatest questions, "I mean, there's ten guys just like you who would line up to take your place in a heartbeat." She saw Bender's face shift into amusement, probably glad that her distraction gave him a second to compose himself and that someone other than him seemed willing to ruffle the preps' feathers.

"So when it really comes down to it, it wouldn't really make a difference if you disappeared either. In fact, I think you'd be forgotten a lot quicker than him." She squashed down the guilt she felt. It was a mean thing to say but she wanted him to realize the power words had, to think before he started throwing them around just because he wanted to look cool.

Andrew had the decency to look embarrassed, whether it was because she made her point or because he couldn't come up with anything else to say she wasn't sure. However, Bender reclaimed their attention before anything else could be said, "Well, I'll just run right out and join the wrestling team." The preps looked at each other and laughed while Bender carried on, "Maybe the prep club too. Student council."

Andrew scoffed, "Nah, they wouldn't take you."

"I'm hurt."

Claire, who had been a silent observer up until this point, seemed to decide it was finally time to chime in, "You know why guys like you knock everything."

Bender rolled his eyes towards Georgia, "Oh, this should be stunning." She hummed in response.

"It's 'cause you're afraid."

Georgia snorted and Bender gasped mockingly, "Oh, God! You ritchies are so smart, that's exactly why I'm not heavy in activities."

"You're a big coward." Georgia's eyes were going to roll out of her head by the end of the day if Claire kept this up.

"I'm in the math club." Brian's voice drifted into the conversation but Georgia was the only one who sent a glance his way. When he met her eyes she gave him a sympathetic smile before Claire drew her attention back to the trio in front of her.

"See you're afraid that they won't take you. You don't belong so you just have to dump all over it."

"Well, it wouldn't have anything to do with you activities people being assholes, now would it?" Georgia let out an amused huff. He wasn't exactly wrong about that.

"Well you wouldn't know. You don't even know any of us." Georgia had to swallow down a scoff. 'What a hypocrite!' It was moments like this that made her glad she was no longer a part of that crowd.

Bender seemed to share her annoyance, "Well, I don't know any lepers either, but I'm not gonna run out and join one of their fucking clubs."

"Hey let's watch the mouth, huh?" She wondered if Andrew actually had something against swearing or if it was just a knee jerk reaction to 'do the right thing' with the added bonus of trying to impress Claire.

Once again, Brian's voice drifted into the conversation, "I'm in the physics club too." This time however, Bender decided to address him, "S'cuse me a sec." Georgia almost laughed at the politeness of it. "What are you babbling about?"

"Well, what I said was...I'm in the math club, the Latin club and the physics club." If Georgia wasn't currently experiencing second hand embarrassment as Brian began to fumble over his words due to everyone staring at him, then she would have raised her eyebrows at all the clubs he was a part of.

'Did he just like keeping busy? When did he get a second to breathe?'

Bender turned back towards Claire, "Hey...Cherry...do you belong to the physics club?"

Claire grimaced, "That's an academic club."

"So?"

Georgia could practically hear Claire rolling her eyes, "So academic clubs aren't the same as other kinds of clubs."

"Oh, but to dorks like him they are." Georgia shifted in her seat and cast a worried look Brian's way as Bender addressed him once more, "What do you guys do in your club?"

Visibly uncomfortable, Brian cleared his throat, "In physics, um, we ah, we talk about physics...about properties of physics."

"So it's sorta social," Bender confirmed, "demented and sad, but social. Right?"

It really wasn't an invitation to continue but Brian ran with it and once again Georgia couldn't decide whether to be impressed or not. "Yeah, well, I guess you could consider it a social situation. I mean there are other children in my club and uh, at the end of the year we have, um, you know, a big banquet, at the, uh, at the Hilton."

'Please Brian, save yourself and stop talking.'

Bender nodded, "You load up, you party."

"Well, no, we get dressed up...I mean, but, we don't...we don't get high."

Claire interrupted Brian's fumbling to address Bender, "Only burners like you get high."

'Wow, great comment.'

Seemingly unaware that he should stop talking or perhaps he felt compelled to keep going in an attempt to ease his own sense of awkwardness Brian carried on, "And, uh, I didn't have any shoes. So I had to borrow my dad's. It was kinda weird 'cause my mom doesn't like me wearing other people's shoes." If she had been blessed with any amount of hand-eye coordination Georgia would've thrown something at him. Anything to make him stop. "And, uh, my cousin Kent...my cousin Kendall from, uh, Indiana."

Georgia saw Allison make a finger gun gesture at him as she chewed on her pen. "He got high once and you know, he started eating really weird foods. And uh, and then he just felt like he didn't belong anywhere. You know, kinda like, you know "Twilight Zone" kinda."

Seizing the opportunity Claire mockingly addressed Bender, "Sounds like you."

At this point Andrew seemed to have reached the end of his rope, "Look, you guys keep up your talking and Vernon's gonna come right in here. I got a meet this Saturday and I'm not gonna miss it on account of you boneheads."

Bender mockingly pouted at him, "Oh and wouldn't that be a bite. Missing a whole wrestling meet."

"Well you wouldn't know anything about it, faggot!" Georgia frowned her eyes, she really hated that word. "You never competed in your whole life!"

Bender took in stride, playing up the part of the injured party, "Oh, I know...I feel all empty inside because of it. I have such a deep admiration for guys that roll around on the floor with other guys."

Andrew sneered, "Ahhh...you'd never miss it. You don't have any goals."

"Oh, but I do!"

"Yeah?"

"I wanna be just-like-you! I figure all I need's a lobotomy and some tights!"

Georgia snickered to herself as Brian asked, "You wear tights?"

Andrew whipped around to face Brian, eyes blazing and defensive, "No I don't wear tights, I wear the required uniform."

"Tights." Both Georgia and Brian chimed in unison.

"Shut up!"

Noise from the hall drew everyone's attention. Seeing that it was Vernon, Bender speedily moved from the railing to sit between Claire and Andrew, much to their dismay. When Vernon went back into his office Bender let out something between a whoop and a laugh before heading towards the library doors.

'Welp, so much for trying to get through this day peacefully.'

Thank you for reading!