FINALLY A BORING DAY! (So why am I not happy?)

Today I had an absolutely boring day at school. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. I mean, wasn't this what I wanted? I've been wanting a completely undramatic day since school started, and now I got my wish.

I got to school at the usual time, sat at my usual seat in homeroom. Read the new copy of Readers Digest which I had "borrowed" from my mum.

My dad always took in the mail and left them in a neat pile on the hallway counter. And I would always intercept the Readers Digest. I liked to read it back to front, and usually, all the jokes first. I'll leave it on the kitchen counter when I get home for Savy to have a turn.

And then mum will find it eventually... Somewhere in Savy's room. Don't worry. Mum always knew where to look. We had a system.

Nobody interrupted my reading. The cool girls came and copied homework. Jasmine also copied homework. She called dibs and claimed first rights since she sat next to me and was my "best friend in class."

I didn't contradict her and Krystal didn't look happy about that, but she was well aware that Liam was watching us, so she only tossed her head and took whatever homework Jasmine hadn't needed.

Classes happened one after the other. Marcus took the role of collecting all my worksheets to hand in and making sure none of the pages were missing. My stapler did run out of bullets, but Marcus had a whole box of bullets in his ginormous pencil case and even helped me reload it. I did briefly wonder how I would cope now should Marcus ever take a sick day off.

Troy grabbed the box of staples and helped himself to a stack of them. He broke them apart, then twisted them into tiny spiked pairs. He put a handful on Jasmine's chair when she left for the washroom with the girls, and then spread the rest out between Arlene's seat and the teacher's chair.

While he was busy making a big show of this, I carefully picked up the spikes from Jasmine's chair and dropped them back into his seat. Liam noticed and threw me a lazy smile and a wink. I'm getting used to Liam now, so I didn't feel like punching his face when he made stupid faces like that anymore.

Troy returned with a triumphant smirk which was wiped off by an unceremonious yelp when he sat down on his chair. Jasmine returned just at the same time and sat down safely in her chair. Troy glared at Jasmine who returned an innocent look.

Then he glared at me, but I was "reading" and I don't look up from my book.

His confusion was interrupted by a scream. Arlene and Elena had returned from wherever they had left to go while the teacher was away.

"Who did that?" One of those two girls shouted. The other boys didn't need any further prompting to point Troy out.

Troy yelled back, "What?"

"She cut her finger! There's blood! Blood!"

It was a scratch.

But those two girls sitting behind Arlene and Elena started a shouting match with Troy, who I had to give credit for not losing out in either volume or pitch.

I could hear Henry and Marcus growling lowly in displeasure at the noise behind me. I continued to stare at my book. The teacher was soon in the class and the shouting stopped.

"Oh my! What's this?" Mrs Henderson was studying the little metal spikes on her chair, "How did these get here?"

"Troy did it!" The class had no qualms in ratting Troy out.

"Please come up and clean this up." Mrs Henderson said, disapproval clear in her voice. Troy tried to look rebellious about it, but he just looked like a sulky kid.

He tried to pick up the pieces with his hands, "Ow!" He yelled when he pricked himself.

You needed to handle these with care. I would know. Back at my pack, we used to play with these a lot. Dean usually hurt himself a lot on them, even though he was the one who taught me how to make them. You had to hold them very gently so they didn't break into your skin.

We used to make a lot of them, and then pour them across the study group room floor so no one could walk in until we found a broom to sweep them up, effectively delaying the lesson by 20 minutes easily. Come to think of it, I'm not sure why no one had ever called us out or complained to my mum and dad. We always got away with all our pranks.

Liam seemed to have some experience too. He walked up, picked up the chair, and tilted the whole chair over so the little spikes rolled into wastepaper basket in the corner. Then he returned the chair to the teacher's table.

"My hero." Mrs Henderson beamed. She checked the table top and under the table before seating herself down. I see Mrs Henderson was also experienced with these things.

And that was all. Mrs Henderson failed to call Troy out for his misdeed too. Perhaps she felt enough time was wasted and we went straight to the textbook.

I think that was the most notable thing that happened today.

I escaped to my own quiet space at lunch time to my own sandwiches and a can of coke. Today I felt adventurous enough to try diet coke, but I didn't like the taste. The sandwiches were bacon and cucumber though, which more than made up for the weird taste in my coke.

Maria met me in the library, we walked, I scanned the school as usual, nothing out of the ordinary. Even our washroom was fixed and usable again.

We passed Dino's class. I could sense Maria's happiness from the way her dark aura flicked about like a cold flame. We don't talk at all. She said nothing to me about my "boyfriend" or fight cages. I assumed it did not concern or interest her much.

Back in class, lessons went as scheduled. Even the history teacher decided to make an appearance. He smelled sickly though.

After school I dashed out, racing to reach the train station first to avoid the crowd and made it in time. Only Jules, Bra, and Matt were there before me. I wondered how they did that every time.

They bantered the usual way guys do, guffawing and punching each other on the arm. I didn't really pay attention. I think Matt or Bra has gotten a girlfriend.

Why get a girlfriend when you are 17? In a year you will find out she isn't your mate, then what?

I did ask, nicely of course, and Bra laughed, "It won't last that long. Five bucks say they break up in a week."

"10 bucks." Jules laughed.

They looked at me, "I don't bet." I shrugged.

"That's not fun." Jules protested, but his tone was gentle.

"I like to keep my money in my pocket."

"A full month." Matt boasted, "I'll make it last a full month."

"That'll be your longest fling yet." Jules laughed.

"Matt is a player." Bra told me, as if I hadn't figured it out by now.

"Takes one to know one." Matt told him, "Bye!" And he alighted at his usual stop.

I laughed at the parting shot.

"Don't fall in love with us Sam." Bra warned me, wriggling his eyebrows.

I laughed at that, "Don't worry, I don't fall in love."

Jules and Bra stopped, "Like seriously? Not at all?"

"Yeah," I put on the false bravado that I've often seen guys wear when they were lying through their teeth, "Usually, it's the guys who fall at my feet."

Jules smiled at that, "We better be careful of this one."

Bra laughed easily, "Yeah, we better guard our hearts."

I said, "Just make sure your shoelaces are tied."

We all laughed and the conversation moved on to homework, and a bit about Matt and the girl I didn't know, except now I know it's a girl in our school and in his pack.

It was pretty fun, going home with with boys. But I never got any homework done on the train, and with all that's going on back at the pack, I did find it a little bit of frivolous time drain.

Maybe tomorrow, I'll try to miss the first train with them so that I would have the next train ride home to study again.

And there you have it, my uneventful day. Now that I'm writing it, I realized it wasn't completely boring, but I think I thought it was because I've gotten used to school days like these.

I guess it's true, young people had a knack of adapting to new environments.