Paige dashed in from the cafeteria to see Emma waiting outside the history room, with her backpack, drooping from the incredulous weight of her textbooks, slung on one shoulder. Assuming she was late as usual, Paige was careless about her motions and nearly crashed into Emma’s backpack.
“Goodness gracious Emma! Your backpack is lethal. How have you not dislocated your shoulder?”
“It’s wretched isn’t it? I think my teachers are conspiring against me, giving me as many unnecessarily heavy textbooks as possible in order to ruin my body and quash my dreams of being a world-famous athlete!”
“That is wretched! But since when have you been into sports?”
“Um, oh hey look! Here comes Mr. Hayes; we actually beat him to class for once.”
Mr. Hayes strolled up to the classroom door, and stopped when he saw Emma and Paige standing in front of him.
“What do you two want?”
“Nothing! Just waiting to fill our brains with learning!”
“Sure.”
About to unlock the door, Mr. Hayes looked over at his shoulder, turning his head back slowly.
The bell rang, after which the rest of the class started pouring into the room. As Mr. Hayes waited for the room to settle down, Paige sat in her usual desk, right beside Emma.
Paige eyed Emma’s bulging backpack, which sat underneath the desk.
Mr. Hayes cleared his throat.
“If you recall, last class you wrote a test.”
The class groaned.
“And, look! Here they are, already marked.”
Mr. Hayes made his way around the room, handing each student her test back.
“Psst! Emma!”
Emma looked up.
“Kick your bag towards me.”
“ What? Why?”
“Just do it!”
Emma sighed and slowly pushed her bag with her feet to the aisle that separated her and Paige.
“Paige,”
Mr. Hayes handed Paige her test, looking at her mark, he said,
“Good job.”
“Thanks.”
Mr. Hayes grabbed the next test in his pile, which read “Jennifer”, who was seated behind Emma. He made his way to her desk before being stopped in his tracks by some sort of heavy object. He looked down at his feet to see what was stopping him from moving forward and saw Emma’s backpack full of textbooks.
“Emma, please try not to obstruct the aisles. It makes it a lot harder for me to make my way around the room, as I have to make sure I don’t trip over something like your unnecessarily large backpack.”
“Sorry, Mr. Hayes.”
Emma flashed Paige a glare as she moved her bag back under her desk. Paige responded with a sheepish grin.
After class, Emma heaved her backpack from the floor, and ran after Paige, who had quickly left the room and had already made her way well into the rest of the school.
“Paige, what was that for! You totally got me in trouble.”
“Oh please, he wasn’t mad at you for a moment.”
“Still, I don’t appreciate you stringing me along on all your schemes!”
“I’m not stringing you along! You’re my partner in crime, Emma,”
“But you always throw me under the bus!”
Paige stopped in the middle of the hallway.
“Is this about the grapefruit?”
“No. Well yes, that too. I just feel this is a very one-side deal.”
“Fair,”
Paige stuck out her hand.
“Emma, I promise to keep you in the loop on every trick I pull from here on in.”
Emma took Paige’s hand and shook it.
“Accepted!”
“Great, I’m glad that’s settled. Now, I’m actually done for the day, so I’m going home now. I’ll see you tomorrow!”
“See you!”
Paige put her textbook away in her locker and seeing the sun shining through the window, skipped down the hallway. She whistled to herself as she signed out at the school office and smiled at the receptionist, who smiled back.
“Have a good day Paige!”
“You too!”
As Paige walked up the stairs out from the office, Mr. Hayes was walking the opposite way, with his coat and bag on.
“You heading out?” Paige asked.
“Yeah, I’m done for today,”
“Me too!”
And with that Paige missed the last step of the staircase and fell forward, nearly hitting the ground before Mr. Hayes grabbed her arm with spider-like reflexes and pulled her up.
“Whoa there, easy now.”
Paige quickly stood up straight.
“Are you alright?” the receptionist, who had seen the pathetic fall and was standing up in concern, said.
“No.” Paige said, as she avoided looking at what must have been an evil smile stretched across Mr. Hayes’s face.
“Oh, just a bit of bruised pride, I’m sure.” Mr. Hayes said with a laugh.
“Well, I’ve got to be on my way now.” Paige said, and with that dashed out the school, her eyes starting to water with tears of embarrassment.
"What is this." Tanya said.
