Threat Level: Teacup

The first day back after the summer holidays was always the most hectic. Even though I'd literally seen her two days’ prior, my best friend (Amber) always insisted on jumping on me, squealing as if she hadn't seen me since December. Today was no different.

Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t very big, so Amber’s gangly frame knocked me into a wall without great difficulty, her wiry arms clinging to my shoulders as if they’d disappear if she let go. “I’ve got so much to tell you!”
“It’s only been two days,” I groaned, prising my best friend’s fingers from my back. Despite being unhealthily slim, in a strangely athletic sort of way, Amber was a lot stronger than she looked, whereas I was about as pathetic as you’d expect a 5 foot fifteen-year-old girl to be. “A lot can happen in two days!” Amber screeched, holding me at arm’s length but still allowing her literal talons to dig into my shoulders; I’d have little claw marks there until the end of the day, at this rate. “Like what? It’s not like anything interesting ever happens here.” Despite being a pretty large city, often mistaken for Australia’s capital, Sydney was actually the most boring place I’d ever been. I always complained about visiting my aunts in Alice Springs, dubbing that the most boring place in Australia, but that was only because Amber and Jackson weren’t there – Sydney had it beat by thirty-seven and a half kilometres in a rank of boringness. “That’s completely false,” Amber complained, altering the length of the straps on her backpack. I never understood how she could carry that thing around with her all day, especially with both straps secured over her shoulders (wasn’t it a well-known fact that only losers used both of the straps?). I’d always found massive discomfort in backpacks, so stuck with my little leather satchels, despite their fashion clash with my entire wardrobe. My closet was at war.

“He’s back,” Amber sighed, softly laying her head on the metal surface of the murky green locker next to mine. Since the very start of high school, I’d been exiled to the dreaded floor lockers, even though I knew for a fact the locker above mine had never even been claimed, so Amber and I had made a habit of sitting on the floor between classes. Three years of begging for a swap had gotten me absolutely nowhere. “Voldemort?” I dramatically gasped, satire dripping from my voice, rummaging through old work books that we were advised to keep but that I’d never look through again. Amber rolled her eyes, clearly a sign that it was far too early in the morning to make jokes about a series she’d never read or watched in her life. “Who’s back, A?”
“Clifford.”
“The big red dog?” I raised my eyebrows, rummaging around for a pen.
“Michael Clifford!”
“I don’t even know who that is,” I told her, watching her face drop and her eyes spark with fury. ‘What do you mean you don’t know who he is?’ her eyes raged. Amber had a habit, which bordered on creepiness, of knowing everything about everyone. She sighed, casting her eyes to her fingers as if she planned to reprimand me. “The one who got pulled out last year because he kept getting into trouble. He was nearly expelled!” She exclaimed, as if I should have known this already. “Rumour has it they had to take him back in here because he threatened to knife one of his teachers.”
“I highly doubt they’d take him back if he tried to knife one of his teacher,” I said, rolling my eyes and slamming my locker shut. When Amber didn’t respond, I assumed she was in a bad mood with me, so I clasped my bag shut and straightened my collar before standing, only to be met with the sharp coldness of a locker door.

Falling back down onto my knees had probably been the most embarrassing thing that had happened to me (right next to getting white acrylic paint all over my uniform in year 9 and getting laughed at until I left the room, crying – my dad had to bring me a clean skirt) since I’d started here. “I am so sorry,” An unfamiliar voice droned from above me. Why was Amber still so silent? “I hadn’t expected you to stand up so quick. Are you alright?” A boy I’d never seen before crouched beside me, offering his hand and a soft smile, full of remorse. What had just happened? My first thought was to check my skirt to make sure my underwear was still covered before realising that I had bigger problems than strangers getting a flash of yellow underwear; I had an unattractive bump forming on my head in front of a moderately attractive stranger. “I- yeah, I’m fine.” I said, sitting up too fast, trying to straighten my bruised legs, but only managing to kick the poor boy in the ankle, forcing him to topple over from his crouched position with a chuckle and a light thud. “I suppose I deserved that, didn’t I? I’m Michael.” For some reason, my puny human brain wasn’t capable of putting two and two together, so I simply smiled at his introduction and straightened my skirt against my legs. He seemed nice enough, in all honesty. “I’m Molly. Are you new?” It hadn’t occurred to me that we were having a chat on the floor of a high school hallway until Amber grabbed my arm, far too tightly for my liking, and yanking me to me feet. I felt like I’d stolen a biscuit from the jar dad always kept under the sink and I’d been caught. “We’d best get to registration.” Amber ground out, tersely. What was her problem?

“I can’t believe you told him your name!” Amber hissed, forcefully pushing me through the door of our English Literature classroom ahead of her. I was surprised her immaculately filed finger nails hadn’t drawn blood from my upper arm yet. “His locker is right above mine. He’d have gotten my name eventually.”
“You can’t be friends with him!”
“Since when did you get to dictate that?”
“Since Michael Clifford hit you in the face with his locker.”

Michael Clifford – alleged criminal – had hit me in the face with his locker. The throbbing in my head and the constant whining from Amber would never let me forget it. In my defence, Michael was a common name; he could have been anyone! Two new boys named Michael in one day? Unlikely. I groaned and took my place at the back of the classroom, tugging on my collar. Thankfully, our English teacher was uppity enough to give us designated seats and Amber’s was miles away from mine. There was an uneven number of kids so, with every new seating plan emerged a loner at the back of the classroom of paired desks; I was this term’s loner.

Until the impossible happened.

“Take a seat near the back with Molly.” The teacher smiled at the tall blond haired boy, gesturing to the only empty seat in the room. I rolled my eyes: total romance novel cliché. I could practically see the steam erupting from Amber’s ears as her cheeks turned red. Her neck must have been hurting from the angle she had to turn at to glare at me. It hadn’t been my fault the only spare seat in the room was at my desk. “Your friend doesn’t like me much,” Michael whispered with a small grin as he pulled out the chair next to mine. I rolled my eyes and removed my pencil case from my bag, trying not to look too intently at the boy next to me. His hair was insane; it was difficult not to stare at him. “It’s okay,” I told him- “she doesn’t like me much, either.”

Unfortunately, I found that to later be true. “We can’t hang out here anymore,” Amber huffed, purposely banging her head against the locker behind her, refusing to sit beside me as I exchange my English books for physics and pretended that my head wasn’t about to implode. “Where else do you want us to go? Jackson’s locker?” As much as I hated the positioning of my locker (even more so, now that it had landed me a purple bruise on my forehead, in perfect sight), Jackson deserved all of the sympathy I was capable of mustering. While convenient for some, Jackson had no use for a locker right next to the disabled toilets in the West Block; literally no one in the school used the disabled toilets, except horny soccer players and cheerleaders whose only aspiration was to get expelled for having a quicky on the sink. All the way across the other side of the school, we had no time to save Jackson until lunch, so we remained on the floor by my locker every single day. I had a feeling that that was about to change.

“Do you really expect me to stand here near… near a criminal?” Michael was standing literally right next to us at this point, a grimace folding over his eyebrows. There was no way he hadn’t heard Amber bitching. “Do you really expect Jackson to stand there near… near quicky central?” I gasped, in response. “Do you really expect me to stand near… near such a judgemental bitch?” I could have called her any number of things, including dense, but I thought ‘judgemental’ was best fitting. Poor Michael’s mouth twitched, positively, and his scrunched up features relaxed some. “Excuse me?!”
“Rumour has it; Amber Avery believes everything she hears!” I stood, suddenly, wanting to leave. Jackson would agree with me, wouldn’t he? Had I overreacted? I groaned, once again falling to my knees and kicking my locker shut. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Michael said, smiling uncertainly, as if he wasn’t sure whether or not he was allowed to talk to me. I definitely wasn’t going to object after getting a quick glimpse of his eyes; an interesting green colour, flecked with panic, that shone grey in the right light. “I agree,” I groaned, rubbing my head. My brother was going to love this.