Her world-weary brown eyes stretched over the desolately monotonous landscape, mental delusions of grandeur fading slowly into the deep recesses of her cortex as.. as what exactly happened next, Bella wasn’t sure- because at that exact moment the bell rang and she instinctually snatched up her bag and made a sprint for the math class door.

“Homework is questions 32 to-” Mr. Vermes’s voice, drowned out by the sudden cacophony of twenty students stuck in a bottleneck at the door, seemed insignificant. Friday! The sanctuary of the week, the 3:00 that always took forever to get here, each passing second that drew it closer seemed longer. But enough reminiscing, the student body had survived another week.

Winding her way through the gridlock that reliably appeared around all exit points, save a few upper story windows, Bella beat her way through the initial freshman stampede with ease but encountered more difficulty with the decidedly immovable football team. Their wall of muscled flesh sent the chess club flying, along with any unlucky freshman who has strayed from the herd. The frosh’s pitiful bleats slowly quieted into the general melee as the lunch aids promptly appeared to shoo stragglers out into the cruel, cloud covered afternoon.  

Another Friday afternoon, another Friday afternoon of being grounded, another afternoon of math revision- it was hardly Bella’s fault she’d failed math last quarter- it was obviously her father’s ineptitude with numbers that he’d passed on when he decided (sadly.) to procreate. Bella couldn’t have gotten her mother’s whiz kid/prom queen status. Looking down at her faded black Pink Floyd shirt and skinny jeans, Bella shook her head. Prom queen was not an option.