Well Played

Zayn Malik was incredibly bored as he sat in his English classroom, tuning out whatever shit his teacher was spewing about the themes and symbols in 1984. To him, the book was just a boring waste of time. Not to mention the fact that the class was way behind him in the reading; in his low-level class, the other students seemed to be as intelligent as the piece of lint clinging to the white t-shirt he was wearing.

Although Zayn was a smart kid and could easily keep up with the kids in the honors classes, all his past teachers refused to move him up, insisting that his life would be far easier if he stuck with his own kind, the greasers. After all, the honors classes were mostly composed of the Socs, stuck up rich kids who figured they were better than everyone who made less than a hundred thousand dollars a year.

Taking in a deep breath and sighing, Zayn started to tap his fingers on his desk, sneaking a peek at the generic-looking clock on the wall. Only a minute and a half had passed from the last time he checked.

Putting his head down on his desk, he closed his eyes, hoping to fall asleep so he could escape the nightmare of a class.

“Zayn!” he vaguely heard a voice call. And although he recognized the name as his own, something in his body refused to answer the yelling.

It wasn’t until a hand slapped against his desk that he sat up to attention, rubbing his eye.

His teacher, Mrs. Wordsworth, was standing over him, looking pretty pissed. “Is my class not interesting enough for you?” she snapped.

Zayn struggled to hold back his yawn as he shrugged. “Not really.”

He had expected for her to get lose it completely, like most teachers did when he told the truth, but she just sighed and got this twinkle in her eye. “See me after class, okay?”

He was about to answer that there was no way in hell he was going to stay at the school longer than humanly necessary, but she turned around and started to talk about the book again before he could say anything.

So instead, he sank down in his seat, crossing his arms over his chest, and waited for the final bell to ring so he could rush out and show her just how much he wasn’t going to put up with her crap.

Another grueling twenty-five minutes later, the final bell sounded through the classroom, the saving grace to any child held within the bounds of Tulsa High School.

Zayn yanked his jacket off the back of his chair, draped it over his arm, grabbed his backpack off the floor, and made a mad dash for the door. He was in front of all the other kids, most of whom were greasers, and he figured he was home free.

That was, until Mrs. Wordsworth shrieked, “ZAYN, get back here!”

Normally, he would have pretended not to hear her and ran down the hallway to meet up with his friends outside of the school, but there was something in her voice that made him think that she was actually pissed at the fact he’d tried to sleep in her class.

He slinked back into class, pulling the comb out of his back pocket and dragging it through his hair, making sure that it was still slicked back with the grease like he liked. As far as he was concerned, if his hair didn’t look perfect, he wasn’t representing the greasers in the proper way. They were poor, not sloppy.

“Zayn,” Mrs. Wordsworth sighed as he neared her desk, “tell me the truth about something, would you?”

He shoved his hands into the pockets of his high-water jeans as he nodded. What did he have to lose for telling the truth?

“This class is too easy for you, isn’t it?”

That took him by surprise. He had expected her to scold him or something, but she had a kind look in her eyes. She was actually concerned about him being in her class when he was so unchallenged.

His shock delayed his answer, but he hoped there wasn’t too long of a pause before he said, “Yeah, it is.”

“That’s what I figured.” With that, she turned her dark eyes to her desk and started searching through the top drawer, retrieving a pad of paper and a pen after a few seconds of searching. “I’m going to give you a note to bring to the office tomorrow, okay? And I want you to switch into the honors class.”

“Wait, seriously?” Zayn questioned, his eyebrows furrowing in confusion.

“Seriously,” she responded as she signed the note and ripped the piece of paper out, folding it and handing it over to him. “I can tell that this class isn’t teaching you anything. Maybe the honors class will.”

He couldn’t help but smile at him. “Hey, thanks, Mrs. Wordsworth.”

“My pleasure,” she responded genuinely before he turned around and walked out of the room, feeling a sense of accomplishment.

As Zayn exited the building, he looked down at the note in his hand, almost in shock that a teacher would ever have any kind of confidence in him. Hell, even his parents didn’t have any faith in him.

The only people that ever believed that he was any smarter than a brick were his friends. Sometimes, he’d state a fact or correct their grammar, and they’d snicker and look at him with awed eyes, saying things like, “And that’s why you’re gonna end up president, man.”

Zayn folded the note a couple more times and stuck the yellow piece of paper into the back pocket of his jeans, flipping up the collar of his leather jacket as he stepped out into the sunshine of Tulsa.

“Zayn!” Two-Bit Mathews called, waving. He was flanked on either side by Ponyboy Curtis and Steve Randle. “What took ya so long, man?”

“None of your business,” Zayn snickered as he neared the group of boys.

Steve put an arm around Zayn and punched him in the stomach in greeting, which Zayn quickly reciprocated. Ponyboy was too far off in his own world, looking over something in a beaten-up notebook, and could only spare a nod.

“So what are we gonna do now?” Zayn questioned as he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, fishing around for his cigarettes. Once he retrieved one, he lit it up and took a deep puff.

“Mind if I have one?” Ponyboy asked in a soft voice.

Zayn nodded and handed one over, even though Ponyboy got on his nerves. He was younger than the rest of the guys, significantly younger, and Zayn knew the only reason he was allowed to hang out with the other boys was that his brother was Zayn and Steve’s best friend. Otherwise, Ponyboy would have been a friendless loser.

Although Zayn never shared his sentiments of dislike toward Ponyboy with anyone, he knew from the way Steve acted that he felt the same.

“Why don’t we head over to the DX and pick up a couple snacks?” Steve suggested. “And I have to tell Sodapop a story, anyway.”

Zayn smirked and said, “Are you gonna share this story with us?”

Steve turned and shook his head. “Nah, man, it has nothing to do with you.”

Zayn understood immediately, knowing the news must have been about Sandy, an ex-girlfriend of Soda’s that had fled to Florida the year before, telling Sodapop in a letter that she’d gotten pregnant with some other guy’s baby. Ever since Soda received the letter, Steve had been trying to get to the bottom of the scandal, just to give his friend a little piece of mind.

“So, Zayn, are you ever going to tell us why you kept us waiting?” Two-Bit questioned, turning his head to look at the darker boy, his tone sounding much like a parent scolding a child.

“Nah, man, it has nothing to do with you,” Zayn snickered, copying what Steve had said.

“A wise guy!” Two-Bit groaned, shaking his head. “I thought that was my job.”

“Nope,” Zayn protested. “It’s no one’s job. It has to do with talent.”

Two-Bit rolled his eyes and flipped off a Soc car that was driving by. No one really knew what exactly started the ongoing feud between the greasers and the Socs, but it was a part of tradition that couldn’t be broken.

Ponyboy tried, with all his preaching about how the Socs weren’t so different from the greasers, but Zayn thought that was a load of shit. There were no similarities between greasers and Socs, so far as he could see. He wasn’t even sure the Socs were human.