How to Get Detention on Your First Day of School

Mavis was dreading evening when she would have to stay in the dormitory with Alana. From what Walter had said, she should, so nothing wrong with it.

But at least she’d have April with her, to deal with everything with her. After all, it’s much better to share a burden with others than alone.

Of course, Alana and April weren’t Mavis’ only roommates. She had another: Lauren, but she could hardly be counted as one. She was asleep most of the time, so Mavis didn’t speak to her often. And from what the other students told her, Lauren absolutely needed twelve hours of sleep (excluding time she spent yawning and dozing in class and the dining hall), and that meant she was asleep at 7:30 in the evening and awake at 7:30 in the morning, just in time for school, which started at eight.

At the moment, she was snoring gently on the bottom bunk of the bed she shared with Alana. Lauren was too lazy to climb to the top and Alana was happy taking the top bunk (she loved looking down at everyone).

April slept on the bottom bunk like Lauren. She was terrified of heights. Mavis, on the other hand, loved them. They always made her feel like she was flying. Even when she was little, she had dreams of soaring over the sun-kissed skies.

At the moment, even though the light was turned off, Alana refused to fall asleep, and so, she kept Mavis and April awake too.

She was talking about how rich her parents were or whatever. Mavis wasn’t paying much attention. She was feeling very irritable at the moment. She wanted to sleep, but Alana’s banter wouldn’t let her.

‘So, our house is just huge,’ Alana was saying. ‘It’s got this huge garden and this huge pool and this huge balcony.’

‘Uh-huh,’ mumbled April.

‘But this school is so tiny!’

‘Uh-huh,’ mumbled Mavis.

‘I mean, you call this a room?! Mummy never wanted me to come here. It was Daddy’s silly idea. He said, She must see the real world. Absurd, isn’t it?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘But everyone knows they can afford a better school. I wanted to go to Redstone. It’s got air conditioners and each student gets their own room.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘But no, my father forces me, against my wishes, to come here! He’s the worst father one could have!’

‘Uh-huh.’

This is what went on until midnight. Mavis was absolutely sure she was going to pass out with exhaustion. Finally, Alana fell asleep.

Good riddance, she thought, but now she couldn’t sleep.

‘Well, ain’t she a handful,’ she grunted to April.

‘Oh, definitely.’

There was a silence.

‘You awake?’ Mavis asked. But April didn’t answer, obviously asleep, leaving her sister to stare at the ceiling for an hour. It was then that Mavis managed to somehow force herself to sleep.

The next morning, she was shaken awake by Alana, who was completely dressed. Her hair was combed and her uniform was spotless. She was wearing her usual fake smile.

Mavis hadn’t thought she would wake up on time, after talking into the night, but she looked ready for school. ‘What time is it?’ she asked groggily.

‘7:50,’ Alana answered, smiling harder.

Mavis flung off the sheets and got off the bed. Unfortunately, she forgot she was on the top bunk, so she fell off, onto the ground.

She sat up and saw Lauren asleep on her bed, only she was fully dressed and ready.

‘Why didn’t you wake me up earlier?’ Mavis demanded.

Alana shrugged. ‘I dunno. Didn’t want to bother you.’

Mavis felt like throttling the girl. Obviously, Alana had made her sleep late and did not wake her up to see her shouted at by the teacher for a bit of fun.

‘Lauren, April and I are already ready,’ said Alana. ‘We had breakfast and everything. April left long before us, so I’d guess she’s probably in the classroom by now.’

Mavis inhaled and got to her feet. Alana wanted her yelled at on her first day. That was not going to happen.

She snatched her uniform from the suitcase she shared with April and put it on. Then she caught her reflection in the mirror and saw that it was caked with compost from the previous day.

Alana pinched her nose. ‘Ew, that stinks.’

‘Shut that fat mouth of yours, you pink giraffe with a sore throat in a tutu skirt, who likes eating raw squids dipped in blood mixed with oil.’

Alana blinked.

Mavis shook Lauren awake.

‘What time is it?’ the girl mumbled.

‘7:55.’

‘Oh. Okay.’ Lauren started to doze off.

‘No! Wait! Wake up!’

Lauren opened an eye. ‘Yeah?’

‘D’you have an extra school uniform?’

‘Yeah . . .’ She started to doze off again.

‘Snap out of it, Lauren! Where is it?’

‘In my suitcase . . .’

‘Okay, great. I’m going to need it, all right?’

‘All right . . .’ Lauren started to doze off again, but this time Mavis didn’t stop her because she was too busy rummaging through Lauren’s suitcase.

‘You’re going to wear her uniform?’ laughed Alana.

‘Shut up, you slime-sucking, slop-swallowing vampire crossbred with a million-legged snake with a tongue made of the tentacle of a jellyfish.’

This time Alana shut up.

Mavis put on Lauren’s uniform quickly, snatched Alana’s comb to comb her hair (before throwing it out the window in spite) and shook Lauren awake.

‘Ehh?’ Lauren mumbled.

‘It’s nearly time, come on,’ Mavis told her.

‘Ehh . . . okay. Thanks.’

Yawning and stretching, Lauren walked outside. Mavis followed her, then stopped at the door to face Alana.

‘You,’ she said, ‘are about to meet yer doom.’

And for the first time, Alana wasn’t smiling.

Mavis didn’t have time for dilly-dallying. She bolted down to the classroom, aware that she was missing the second meal in school (out of three); but she was pleased with herself for threatening Alana. She loved seeing that girl look so scared. But what she would never admit was that she had no idea what she was even going to do to get her revenge.

She’s not worth my time, she decided eventually. I have better things to do.

When she reached the classroom, she was delighted to find that the teacher wasn’t there yet. It looked like Alana’s plan didn’t work.

Mavis scanned the classroom for an empty seat. She found one next to Walter and hurriedly sat there.

‘Right on time,’ said Walter in surprise.

‘Alana gave me a bit of trouble,’ said Mavis.

Walter nodded understandably. ‘She’s pretty bothersome. But I’ve never had to be her roommate or anything, so I wouldn’t know.’

Their teacher entered the room just then. She had dark hair tied up in a bun and a look that told everyone she wouldn’t be handing out sweets any time soon.

‘Hello class,’ she said flatly. ‘I am Miss Williams and I will be your math teacher. Now turn to page twelve of your textbooks.’

‘She seems strict,’ Mavis muttered to Walter as she opened up her textbook.

He didn’t answer, but gave her an apologetic look as if to say he had a no-talking-during-class policy.

They heard running down the corridor and Alana’s head appeared in the doorway, panting hard. She looked relieved when she saw the teacher wasn’t there, then realised she was right there.

‘Oh. Um, hi.’

Miss Williams apparently did not entertain coming late to class, because she said, ‘I do not entertain coming late to class. What is your name?’

‘Alana,’ squeaked Alana like a frightened lamb.

‘Stay back after class, Alana. I would like to speak to you.’

Alana was not happy about this. As she walked over to an empty seat, she looked like she was going to complain to Mummy about this. But Mavis felt that no angry letter from Mummy could help Alana now that she was in the teacher’s bad books.

Suddenly, the girl shot Mavis an angry look like she would get back at her for this.

But all she received was a smile.

Mavis was annoyed.

Annoyed as she should be, she was sure. Why wouldn’t she be annoyed? The teachers had overloaded the class with so much homework though it was only the first day.

So naturally, she went down to the stables to do her homework (and complain to Star). She knew it would help; the smell of stables had always relaxed her.

Soon, she was sitting against Star’s stable box, writing with her pencil and chewing it at the same time. Star was nibbling at her hair above her, but she didn’t notice. Although, she did see a couple of girls giggling and watching her. Lunatics, she decided and didn’t think much about it.

Finally, she was done. She had the itching feeling she’d written it all wrong, but she could get Walter to correct it.

So she started to walk back to the school perfectly normally until she fell into a hole,

Well, not fell exactly. She threw herself backwards at the last minute, landing in mud and ruining Lauren’s uniform; but she decided she could wash it later. Right now, she was too busy staring at the hole in the ground.

It wasn’t small like a mole hole, but not big like a horse hole either. It was more like a dog hole: a little deep, but after jumping in, one could easily climb out without a rope.

Mavis scratched her head stupidly. Now, why on earth was there a hole in the school campus? The gardener couldn’t have dug it. He’d have filled it up. And anyway, there was no reason for him to dig so deep.

Mavis crouched beside the hole. There were footprints around it, but they seemed too big for a student. It had to be a teacher.

‘Oh, hello,’ she heard Walter say from behind her. He paused when he saw the hole. ‘Why are you digging a hole.’

Mavis frowned. ‘You think I’d just snatch a shovel from the gardener and start destroying the flower beds? It wasn’t me, silly.’

‘Right. So who was it?’

‘No idea.’

Walter crouched on the ground beside her and inspected the hole. ‘There are a couple of footprints here,’ he noted. ‘Too big for a student.’

‘I saw them too. It has to be a teacher.’

‘It could also be someone from outside.’

‘Oh, so someone was just like, I’m bored. Let’s sneak into that school and dig a hole.’

‘No. Maybe they were looking for something.’

‘Looking for something?’

‘Yeah, why not?’

‘Well, if you had something valuable, would you bury it in a school?’

‘Maybe it was buried before the school was built.’

What Walter said made sense. Of course, someone could have done that. But even though the school looked like a castle and all, Mavis wasn’t sure it had ever had enough pirates or kings or anything to be the hiding place of treasure.

It took everyone two whole hours to find the hole in the ground, which Mavis found stupid.

The teachers could only scratch their heads about what actually happened, but eventually declared it someone’s prank. The Headmistress ordered the student who had done it to come to her office and turn themselves in. Stupider still, Mavis thought. If a student had actually done it as a prank, why would he or she go to the Headmistress’ office?

Though the teachers pretended that this mysterious hole wasted precious time for everyone, the gardener was pretty happy about it. He got to plant a whole lotta things in the hole. But that of course meant that the hole was to be sealed up. It proved a bit of a disappointment to Mavis. After all, it was the only interesting that had happened so far in school. Even the detention Miss Williams had given Alana wasn’t so amazing. She’d given half the class detentions, after all.

Soon, the hole in the ground was forgotten and Mavis’ main worries were uniforms and homework.