Silver sat and stared as the clock. Seconds had become minutes now and minutes now were hours. The blank faced clock ticked time by with thudding clunks instead of its usually cheerful clicks. A loud cough at the other end of the room draws her eye. That joke for a teacher watched her whilst he sat and pretended to mark. What a joke his modern studies classes were to Silver, he could barely teach. He knew it, she knew it, the whole damn school knew it.

She shouldn’t have said that though, no, not to his face. She could have been home an hour ago. But no, she couldn’t keep her mouth shut and now she had lines, and an hour and a half of detention. “My opinion’s not for sharing,” a hundred times. She’d written that in ten minutes.

“He must think I haven’t learned to write yet.” she thought as she scowled at him then look down and began to doddle. God she was bored. “Just cause I don’t write for you, doesn’t mean that I can’t. Not my fault you can’t teach.”  

She sat back in her chair and fidgeted around. The cough from the front sounds off again. Her eyebrow rose in a gesture of “whatever” before she slumped further back in her seat. Ten more minutes of detention, that was all that was left, then she could go home. Just ten more minutes, if the seconds would only stop being minutes and the minute hours.     

(c) Nikki McLean