"You, boys and girls, are now a little past halfway through your sophomore year." the teacher spoke, his rasp echoing through the classroom. "Over your winter break, please take some time to reflect on how much you've grown. Along with doing your homework, of course."

With that said, the bell rung, and I was just getting up when someone yelled my name. I brushed my hair back, sighing, as I turned around. The person who had called me was, indeed, the teacher. I grabbed my bag and approached him as the class emptied itself other students. His arms were crossed sternly, staring me down until privacy finally came to us.

"What?" I muttered with wide, sarcastic eyes as I pulled my sleeves up to my elbows, individually.

"I see you got a new tattoo, on your forehead, of all places." he shook his head. "Did you get permission for that one?"

I shook my head, as well. It was the fact that what he had brought up was irrelevant to him, and that included everyone else outside of my own self. It was my life, and I was insistent on the fact that I was going to do what I, myself, wanted to do. If anything, I surely wasn't going to live by his rules.

"Really?" I nearly laughed. "Is that all you wanted? Get the fuck over yourself, you self-serving moron."

"Well, I was only going to talk to you about your grades, but it looks like you'll be going to detention, too."

I wasn't really surprised much in regards to the given detention. If anything at all, I had been lucky to only get that, as I could have easily gotten much worse. At this point in my life, I hadn't really cared one way or the other. Of course, I obviously had better things to do than sit in a desk for an hour doing absolutely nothing. Everybody does. That said, I didn't care, and I hadn't for quite a while.

My grades and personality had further drove that point home. I had long lost all of my ambitions and hopes for a future. I lived day to day, seeing where the wind took me. There had been a number of sittings with both of my parents and the school staff, but they had soon stopped. I can only guess they figured I was just a lost cause, not worth spending their valuable time on.

Ah, my dear stranger, you seemed to have caught that extra "s". Well, you see, during the same year as Kyle's passing, my mother had met a man who was not much older than her. Sparks flew, in her own words, and the next thing I knew, he had moved in. I, as one could assume, hated the idea of it. The idea of a jobless leech living off of her had angered me to no end. 

"...About your grades, Aiden." he referred to a mysterious piece of paper. "You aren't going to graduate this year, or even pass a class, for that matter."

"How worrying." I replied with an indifference that bordered on sarcasm. "So, 'bout that detention, am I going or not? I have shit to do. Unlike you, apparently."

"I've never seen a student so giddy for detention. Fine, go on. But if I hear that you don't show up, it's another meeting with your parents."

I sighed through my teeth, hoping he would shut his fat trap. "Yeah, yeah. Whatever floats your boat."

-

After making my way through the hallway, I finally reached my destination. The detention room, essentially, had been an unused classroom that sat just in front of the entrance to the cafeteria - which was the exact reason why it was an unused room. It smelt horrible, like a bowl of garlic and fresh dog crap had been mixed together. Rumor had it that couples used it for sex, typically of the 'scat' variety. That had been something I regretted Googling afterwards, and I still wouldn't recommend it to anyone else, either.

Though mostly to stop the rampantly spreading rumors, the school gave everyone an explanation - or a half-assed excuse, depending on the way one wants to look at it. Anyhow, there explanation had been that there was a broken pipe from the cafeteria kitchen and it had been leaking underneath the class. They would have to dig it up, rendering a little less than half of the school useless. Thus, it was decided that it was too expensive and unneeded.

The only use the room had was serving a malodorous punishment to the evildoers of the school. Those evildoers, of course, included me. 

Opening the door, I expected to see my typical crowd of delinquents mixed in with a couple of one-timers that were in for a small mistake. Regretfully, I was stupidly far off, as the rotten-smelling classroom lied empty. Outside of the teacher, of course - but even then, her presence was debatable, at best. Setting my eyes on the desk that rested directly in front of the teacher, I set my bag down and then sat down myself.

Immediately bored out of my mind, I leaned back and forth, causing the chair to creak repetitively - and quite annoyingly, if I do say so myself. I kept doing it in attempt to make the teacher blow her stack, or even just to make her look up. Her pokerface remained, however, completely ignoring me in the process.

Soon enough, and probably just as she expected, I gave up. I had gotten bored of trying to rid myself of my boredom, and I had quickly been shot down. I had a little over forty-five minutes left and absolutely nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, to with that time. That was, until a new face entered the room. A new face that was easy on the eyes, to say the least.

As soon as she had walked into the room, the teacher wrote something down and speedily left the room, as though it had contained the plague. Left to our own devices, the two of us looked at one another in an awkward silence. What I caught immediately, however, was the tattoos on her right and left arm. Her right arm, in particular, piqued my interest.

"This one?" she pointed at her right arm.

"No." I smirked. "The one on that cute little ass of yours."

Knowing how to take a joke, she sat next to me with a smile. "I don't why I got this done, honestly. I just kind of drew it up one night and decided to get it done." she lifted her left leg and grabbed the cheek of her backside with a grin. "I do have one on my ass, nice guess."

It was predictable. She either had an ex or some guy she pulled along for a ride as a tattoo artist. I could tell just by looking, however, that whoever had done them was a good artist with a lot of talent and experience. They were just as beautiful as she was, and the word beautiful itself was an understatement for her.

"War inside my head, huh?" she scooted her chair closer to me and took the chance to study my arm. "Jesus, were these done by Tinman? Those lines are God-like.

"It's a long story. You might hear it someday, assuming you stick around." I lifted her small hand off of my arm. "I could ask you the same thing, really. Who is your ex?"

"Ex?" she laughed, maybe a little too much.  "My mom did these. The whole reason we moved out here was so she could open her own shop."

The next fourty minutes flew by, and before I had realized it, it was time to leave. By far, that had been the fastest forty-five minutes of my life. I stood, picking up my bag as I watched her out of the corner of my eye. It wasn't that I had something to look at, I just simply could not look away. I could not look away from her.

Her smile, her portrayal of such a simple emotion, it was otherworldly - as radiant as the sun was bright. I brushed my fallen hair back over my head and stepped past her. Stopping in front of her, I waited for her to pick her bag up. I had no answers for myself, I had no clue why I had stopped for her.

Lifting her head, she continued on with her luminescent smile as her hair fell over her eye. She looked at me, staring even, as she stood all the way up. With a single stride, she was in front of me, only inches away. I was frozen in the face of her toothy smile, a smile that would shine like a flashlight on the blackest of nights. Her eyes, shaped as though they were a pair of crescent moons, were piercing me in every way, at every angle.

"What?" she asked.

"Oh, nothing really." I returned a smile. "I was just wondering if you have a name or not."

She skipped ahead of me, heading towards the door and then spun, stopping on the spot. "You first."

"Fine." I replied. "My name is Aiden Jacobson, or Cyrus."

"I like Aiden, it's cute." she pressed her finger against her lower lip, as though she had been contemplating something. Using that same hand, she reached outward with an an open, angled palm.

"Ava," her smile reappeared. "Ava Bourdain."