Fillipa

Stay

All us kids scrabble out the door like there was a fire. But Mrs. Day won’t let us go straight away. Damn it! She stands there for a few seconds and glares at us, then says, “do you really think I would let those who wasted my time by spending most of their time outside the line have most of their recess outside? I think not!” oh come on, we are not in primary school anymore! “I have a list of those who chose not to participate.....” she grabs her IPad out of nowhere once again, and reads our names off. “Ashley, Fillipa, Abby, Ada, Gabriella.... every one else, you can go.” Sigh. Life sucks. I look at Ashley and he gives me a confused look and whispers, “her eyes aren’t usually that sharp. Every other time she is one her phone playing subway surfers or watching YouTube. Need I say more?” I shake my head. I think I will remember that.
The six of us sit down on the stage together and we all give each other confused looks. We all sit down in silence looking at the walls, the ceiling, the windows, and then the floor I keep staring at Ashley’s pointy elbow. I notice that there is a dark freckle on it and why am I staring at his elbow? WHY??? Well at least I have something to stare at to pass the time away. But still? Staring at his elbow? But at the moment he is staring at the high up ceiling and it is kind of funny how I can see him swallowing his saliva. I try to hold back a giggle attack, how incredibly me to do that. Instead, I yawn, really loudly. A few people giggle and Mrs. Day just rolls her beady brown eyes at me. Well, it is really hard to keep in a yawn, and the more you keep it in, the more you want to yawn.

“Okay kids. You all can go now.....” the teacher finally says and glares at me, possibly for the yawning part. I realize that I am hungry. All that yawing and staring must have been hard work and made me hungry. Mrs. Day obviously didn’t think so. As we all went out to the change rooms to get our bags, I am the first to enter the girls change rooms, I am so Damn hungry, DAMN THAT TEACHER FOR KEEPING ME IN!!! I grab my bag of its hook, and then run strait out of the girls change room and to the farthest corner of the football oval under some weeping willow trees that have a lot of shade. I may be new, but I am learning fast.

I sit there for about a minute, and Ashley comes and sits next to me. “Who said you could follow me here?” I say with a sarcastic tone with a piece of cheese in my hand. Ashley looks a little hurt. “....ummmm I...I asked Ada if she knew were you ran off to and she pointed over here...” he says, and eats a salt and vinegar chip and I can smell them over here. “You don’t seem to talk much,” I say bluntly without any hesitation. He looks me in the eye and just blinks at me. He huffs, and says, “Well that's ‘cos everyone dislikes me and I dislike them... but you were brave enough to go out of your comfort zone. In homeroom, the way you kept looking around, I could tell,” he sighs. Well, that makes a ton of sense, and I can feel myself turning a shade of pink. Just awesome.  “Well I don’t like you and I don’t hate you,” I say, continuing to turn pink, and it is not getting any better. He gives me a small grin then frowns again. While he thinks that I am not looking, he is trying to steal a piece of MY cheese. So before he is about to touch it, i look at him and slap his hand.  “Oow!” he fake-whimpers and we both giggle. Ashley is starting to become a tad less shy. “AND ALSO, who said you could steel MY cheese? Huh?” I say and raise one of my eyebrows.  He just grins at me. “I did,” he says, and pulls at a strand of my hair, which makes my scalp itchy. “Please don’t,” I say to Ashley as I scratch my head. A grab a limb on the weeping willow tree and pull it off, and tickle Ashley with it. He throws his excess salt and vinegar chips at me as I continue tickle him. He grabs the limb, and it turns into more of a tug-of-war.