Love Lessons - Chapter One

Chapter One

First Impressions

Mornings in the Webber household were loud. They were loud and they were chaotic, and they never ever seemed to change.

“My keys! Where are my keys? Has anyone seen my keys?”

“Mum, where are my sandwiches?”

“In the fridge Tim, like they always -- ”

“Where are my God damned keys?”

“I don’t know where your keys are, Greg. Where you last left them, maybe?”

“Funny. You should get into comedy with wit like that. Elliot, where the hell are you? Bring down my keys!”

“I don’t know where your flipping keys are, Dad!”

“Language!”

“I didn’t even say anything! God’s sake.”

“Tim, get in the car.”

“But what about your -- ?”

“Found them! Get in, Tim. Goodbye love, I’ll see you later. Elliot, we’re leaving now!”

And so it went, morning after morning, a rushed little family trying to get its way off into the working world on time. That particular morning, Elliot Webber trudged down the stairs just a little too late, her rucksack flung over one shoulder and her long, dark hair draped over the other. She was a pretty girl, but the constant scowl she wore often hid that fact from most who looked at her.

She hit the hallway just in time to watch the front door slam shut.

Staring for a second, she comprehended the fact that her dad and brother had just left without her. “Fucking typical!” she scoffed, when it had sunk in. Half past eight with a half hour cycle to school meant that she was going to be late. And on the first day back, too.

She smirked as she sauntered into the kitchen - let the world see how many flying pigs she gave.

Her mum was pottering about, cleaning the surfaces, making her second cup of morning tea. Her gaze barely registered her daughter - it was only the loud sigh that let on her dismay.

Elliot perused the cereal packets beneath the breakfast bar, trying her best to ignore the shuffling, twitching mess that pretended to be her mother. She hated this house, and everything that came with it. However, after a few long moments, the silence became simply suffocating. It worked its way down her throat, to her voice box, forcing out some choked words.

“They could have waited,” she sulked, pulling out a packet of Frosties.

“You could have got up earlier.” The reply was needled, intended to make Elliot feel guilty. It had no such effect. “You know how hard your dad and I work. If you’re not going to be helpful, you could at least try not make life more difficult for us.”

“Yeah. Slobbing about at home in dressing gown and slippers. That’s a real chore.”

Through a wearied sigh, “Give it a rest, Ellie. Go to school.”

Elliot spooned the cereal about in her bowl. “I’ll go when I’m ready, thanks.”

Mrs. Webber didn’t have much to say to her daughter most mornings. Neither of her parents did, and that was just the way she liked it. If she could avoid being yelled and jeered at, well, more was the better. Getting a lift with Dad to school meant she didn’t have to walk, sure, but it also meant she had to put up with his constant tirade of insults. Like how she wasn’t trying enough, how she wasn’t good enough, how by the time he was her age he was already top of his class and set for success. All she was set for, he would tell her, was the gutter. Thank God she was nearly out of this place.

Although, that was dependent on whether she passed her GCSEs which - if she kept being late and missing things - she was painfully aware was not going to happen.

In the Autumn, the trip to school wasn’t so bad. Sunlight filtered through the trees, the shadows of which dappled her skin and the road, like an artist trying to find the right colour from his palette. She could listen to her music as her legs worked expertly at the pedals, her mind somewhere else entirely. St. Anne’s was a good few miles out of the town though, and up a long, winding hill. By the time she reached the front entrance, a gravelled path with a border of moulting trees, she was quite out of breath.

Red-cheeked and blowing hair out of her face, she locked her bike up in the shed next to the car park and turned to face the edifice before her. St. Anne’s was a strange comprehensive school. Its buildings and grounds were smartly done, a red-brick foyer looking out across tree-strewn lawns like an old grandfather fondly observing his many grandchildren. The trees – oak, beech, willow and many others – cast long shapes across the outstretched lawns, the branches’ shadows reaching like fingers over the grass. A gravel path leading to the main road disappeared beneath a canopy of leaves some way off, but not before snaking around the school building, a pebble-filled moat. The building was very old, and had been converted into a school a long time ago at the request of a very rich gentleman in the area, who had no kin of his own on whom to bestow his life’s earnings. Now it was maintained through regular donations from the public and a surprisingly low tuition fee.

The damp air clung to Elliot’s forehead as she pushed her way into the school. Checking her watch, she saw it was already nearly a quarter past nine. Damn. She couldn’t usually give less of a fig about morning registration, but the first day of the new year was when she was handed her timetable, along with anything else she needed to know about the upcoming few terms. Still, her form tutor, Miss Ludlow, was always pretty lenient with her. Perhaps she wouldn’t mind too much if Ellie popped into her class to pick up her timetable.

The form tutors were also teachers of various departments around the school. Miss Ludlow, who was one of Elliot’s favourites (although she would never, ever, admit that out loud), was an English teacher, and damn good at it too. English was about the only lesson Elliot could actually bear to sit through. Everything else just felt like a total waste of time.

She made her way through the strangely silent building, eyeing the glass panels of the doors as she passed them. Each class held a number of thirty pupils or so, most of them listening diligently to the teacher at the front of the class. The groups were split into sets - top set for the higher achievers (teachers’ pets and swots galore) and bottom set for the lower achievers (dumb fucks and rowdy assholes). The lower sets tended to be more of a handful during class time, but mostly the staff managed to keep a handle on their more difficult students.

Ellie smiled to herself when she thought about that. She wasn’t in bottom set for anything, but her attitude wouldn’t have let on. The school could take its prim and proper ways and shove them up its…

She frowned as she reached her usual form room, one of the classrooms in the English department. Peering in through the glass she saw someone totally unfamiliar sitting at Miss Ludlow’s desk. Not only that, but all of her things seemed to be missing. The desk wasn’t cluttered with pictures, pens, home-made mugs or jewellery; the walls weren’t strewn with patronising phrases to do well in class. Instead the desk was bare, and the walls had art on them, and some quotes that Elliot half-recognised. Her frown deepened.

She pushed open the door without knocking, tucking some hair behind her ear. The teacher at the desk, who’d been in the middle of a sentence, stopped and looked towards her. The first impression Elliot got of him was that no way in hell could this guy actually be a teacher. No way. He must have been a student from somewhere, maybe covering in an emergency - he looked far too young for the job.

Eyes began to turn to the disruption. Elliot recognised the group as a sixth form class, standing out with their own clothes instead of the usual red and black uniform.

“It’s customary to knock when you’re interrupting,” the teacher said, his eyes drawn into a slight frown. “May I help you?”

Oh, God. Too young to teach and up himself. He was going to need taking down a peg or two.

“Where’s Miss?” Elliot demanded, purposefully making her voice rougher than it usually was.

“If you’re talking about Rachel Ludlow, she no longer works here, I’m sorry to say. Well, not that sorry.” He looked back to his class, grinning mischievously. “I did get a job out of it, after all.”

They gave him a pity chuckle, but there was some warmth there. It made Elliot’s blood boil.

“She can’t have gone. She works here,” she protested.

“And now she doesn’t. Can I get back to teaching my lesson now?”

Elliot came further inside the room, closing the door behind her. She shifted her rucksack higher onto her shoulder. She was not going to be outdone by anyone. “So who are you, then? Some novice come to pull at the carcass of her job? You’re like a bloody vulture.”

The young man’s eyebrows rose to his hairline, but other than that, he gave no reaction. Elliot’s fists balled at her sides. Usually she was quite good at finding teachers’ buttons when she wanted to, about pushing them so far it took absolutely everything inside of them not to slap her.

Then, suddenly, memories from last year flashed into her mind, about what could happen when you really did push someone too far. She felt her palms sweat. Perhaps pushing the new guy wasn’t such a good idea.

He’d got to his feet, and for the smallest of moments she thought he was going to frogmarch her out into the corridor to give her a piece of his mind. But, no, all he was doing was handing out textbooks to his sixth form class, chatting idly with them as he passed each of their desks. It was like she was invisible. Well, she wasn’t having that.

“Hey!” she called as he came near to her. He looked towards her, unperplexed. “I asked you a question.”

“Yes, you did. But until you start speaking to me like I’m the adult that I am, I’m afraid you won’t get an answer.” He paused, then stepped towards her. “I’m assuming you did want something, by coming here? You’re not just interrupting for the sake of it, I take it.”

Looking at his face made Elliot’s stomach quiver in anger. He had well grafted features, defined cheeks and jawline, light brown hair that was just this side of long and the smallest of dimples. But his steely grey eyes were mocking her, acting for all the world like she was something he’d stepped in that morning. She wanted to smack that growing smirk right off his face.

“Forget it,” she spat, breaking eye contact and turning away. “Just forget it.”

She’d just made it to the door when he casually mentioned, “If you’re from my form class, I have your timetable right here.”

Elliot turned slowly, her eyes shooting daggers. He was plucking at a sheet of paper on his desk. “Elliot Webber, I assume? You’d take care to actually attend morning registration.” His mouth kicked up at the corners. “Wouldn’t want you getting into trouble now, would we?”

Stalking up to the front of the room, Elliot ignored the few giggles and chuckles at her expense that came from the sixth form students. It took everything she had not to whirl around and start mouthing off to them, too. But having a go at the sixth form wouldn’t get her anywhere. She was painfully aware that she was already on thin ice at this school - anything she did to damage her already sullen reputation would probably not be for the better.

She forced out a toxic ‘thank you, sir’ as she took the paper that was offered her.

“You’re welcome.” The reply was laced with with sarcasm, and it took everything inside of her not to retort. She had just about escaped the classroom when he added a light, “Try to be on time from now on, please? I don’t want to have to start dishing out detentions in my first week, there’s a good girl.”

Elliot slammed the door behind her so hard the glass practically quaked in fear.

(Thank you for reading. You can find further chapters at my portfolio.)