Ensnared

by I N Foggarty

  “You only do nice when it’s beneficial to you, which returns me to my initial question. What do you want, Dylan.”

  Anna neither slowed her pace nor turned to acknowledge that the boy had hurried to catch up and draw level with her.

  “You know you were a lot nicer before you started hanging out with us,” he said grumpily under his breath.

  As the boy uttered his latest remark she turned to go up another street. The sound of a few hard footsteps echoed from behind her and Anna knew that she had caught him off guard and that he had subsequently needed to make a very sharp turn to try and keep up with her.

  “And I thought you were a lot smarter than you are before I started sitting at the same table as you at lunch,” she fired back

  “We never asked you to sit with us at lunch,” he spat

  “Again if by we, you mean you, then you are correct. Matt, on the other hand, did invite me to sit with his friends at lunch. Unfortunately, that group happens to include you.” Pausing, Anna sighed internally once more. This was becoming very irritating very quickly…. so much for meandering the rest of the way while enjoying her music.

  “Besides I seem to recall that… now let me see if I can remember your actual words…” She didn’t need to pause for she could recall his words perfectly. However, the recitation of such overblown pomp required such a recess in order to fully do it justice. “We can’t just have any old person sitting with us at lunch, Matt. There’s an entire social structure and protocol that must be observed. If we were to throw it out the window society as we know it would crumble.”

  Anna didn’t need to turn to see that Dylan’s jaw had once more hit the sidewalk. She had her impersonation of him nailed. Returning to her own tone she quickly got back to the initial point. “At the end of the day, you personally put it to a vote… and lost.”

  “That was never a fair vote!” Dylan exclaimed in almost outrage. “You somehow managed to bewitch Matt. Kitty rarely says anything anyway and when she does the word no doesn’t exist in her vocabulary. Mark didn’t care either way but voted to annoy me! And Nat, who herself couldn’t vote against it as she would have looked bad in front of Matt.”

  When Dylan finished a thin smile broke out across Anna’s lips yet she somehow managed to stifle her laughter. It was almost too easy to wind him up she thought yet she enjoyed it nevertheless.

  “Shall I tell you what your problem is, Dylan? Instead of just accepting that your best friend finally realised that doing what was in your best interest wasn’t always in his, you act like a child and throw your toys out of the baby carriage whenever you don’t get your own way. Which ironically puts your precious popularity at more risk than if you just accepted defeat with a smidgeon of grace.”

  Anna only managed to progress a few steps more before she found her path blocked. Apparently, Dylan could be light on his feet when the occasion called for it, though the loud noise of the traffic had aided him somewhat.

  “Why the hell do you have it out for me, Morgan? What I ever do to you?”

  Anna stopped dead. Slowly she raised her gaze to meet the boys, her facial expression making her look as though for her murder could quite easily be just a well-practised pastime.

  “If you call me by that name once more…,” she began, ignoring his question, all emotion completely drained from her voice. “…I’m going to ensure that everyone starts calling you by your childhood play name and that they know every single embarrassing story about you that exists.”

  “Y… You wouldn’t dare,” Dylan replied in a defiant yet terrified tone; all the colour in his face appearing to have been sucked out by her cold green eyes.

  “Oh…,” she allowed herself a small chuckle bereft of any humour. “Wouldn’t I?” Anna replied, her voice sounding cruel and slightly sadistic. “You just said so yourself I have it out for you remember.” A twisted smile formed on her face. “Now shall I tell you something else?”

  When Dylan failed to respond she continued.

  “While you drive to school in your little car every day I walk the route we are currently on.” As she spoke she pulled out her cell phone and glanced at its small screen. “It’s seven-fifty. Homeroom is at eight and it takes fifteen minutes to get to school from here at an average walking pace.”

  The look of horror on Dylan’s face intensified with each word she spoke. “Also If I remember correctly, which I am sure that I do, you’re on two strikes. One more and it's detention.” She waggled her right index finger in a tisk-tisk manner again.

  “Now didn’t I hear something about your father not being satisfied with your school work, and that if you got one more detention this year, then you faced spending your summer on a military academy program for no good layabouts?” Her smile widened. “Better RUN, Boy.”

  “You’re a cruel and sadistic bitch Anna,” Dylan managed to blurt out before he turned around and started to run in the direction of their school.

  “Later, Dilly,” Anna called out; her voice filled with amusement. With the distraction now running at breakneck speed away from her, Anna pulled her earbuds out from the neck of her t-shirt and then remembered.

  Her face fell, the moment of teasing had ended and she would pay for it by the death of her earphones. She pocketed the device and the useless wires and began a slow walk in the general direction in which Dylan had run off. The altercation with him had slowed her pace too much and so now she was late. Had she felt like it, she could have followed suit and ran the rest of the way but she didn’t.

  Once upon a time, had she chosen to do so, she could easily have outstripped the boy and made it with a few minutes to spare. Unfortunately, the loss of her breakfast had left her feeling both hungry and lethargic. Still, it was not a massive problem she mused as her stomach grumbled. Unlike Dylan, she only had a single strike at present and so could afford to be late.

  Turned a corner the smell of freshly made doughnuts engulfed her nostrils and her stomach hastened to remind her of its lost meal. She couldn’t really afford the treat she thought glumly. However, her brain had already added up to the $15 mark and her body switched to autopilot and moved her towards the sticky aroma. With a final glance in the direction that she ought to be travelling Anna stepped inside the shop. For now, at least school would have to wait.

  Dante and the Devil

  The cool breeze that drifted through the window was, for once, a welcome one to Dylan Rodgers. The morning weather forecast had made good on its promise of warmth from the glaring sun overhead. This celestial body made the outdoors look inviting and, unfortunately, caused the air temperature to rise to a point where any stuffy classroom paralleled the ninth circle of hell and made itself last place a teenage student wanted to be. The current subject was English and world literature, and given the fact that the classroom in which he sat could be likened to the old Greek Fields of Punishment, Dylan’s cool breeze was more a small mercy in a torture chamber rather than a nice addition to a productive learning environment.

  Typical for a school of its size Woodlake Academy had many English literature teachers and they came in the usual assortment of shapes, sizes, sexes and styles. Since the start of the previous year Dylan’s class had been stuck with the worst; Mr Stevens. Tall and wiry with a thin waistline and an equally thin pair of lips and twitchy moustache, the greying old Scotsman stalked the school like an overgrown weasel with a permanent sneer of disdain on his face for any student or staff alike who dared to cross his path. He spent any time out of his domain looking for any excuse to bully and berate unsuspecting students. In his classroom, he was even worse. Once a student crossed the threshold all semblance of fairness and equality vanished until the toll of the school bell released them, and even that had to be by his leave. “That bell is for me not for you. I dismiss you and don’t you forget it”

  While some teachers promoted discussion, Stevens maintained a blanket rule of silence unless spoken to, with any other impression of sound treated like an act
of disobedience and punished immediately. In fact, Dylan had once witnessed someone being sentenced to a detention just because their pencil scratched too loudly on their paper.

  Not just one to reprimand single offences Mr Stevens had a special place physically reserved for those students he hated the most; the row of desks nearest the windows. This served to do two things, one break the will of those students forced to sit there, as the view outside reminded them of an out of reach freedom and secondly subject the students to the elements. Come rain, hail or snow the windows to his classroom would remain open; it bordered on abuse. The last seat in a perfectly aligned row of four belonged to Dylan. In front of him sat his best friend, Matt, while the dreadlocked skater guy in the first row Dylan didn’t know too well other than his surname; “McLeod,” which Mr Stevens like to screech at him. The current empty chair behind him belonged to Anna.

  Today, like yesterday, tomorrow and every day past and future Mr Stevens stood clad in black trousers, a white shirt that had gone slightly beige in places and a tweed jacket. His lack of tie made him look rather untidy, dishevelled almost. Expertly the teacher sliced his way between the desks, reading out choice sections from one of the student’s literature reports. With each stride, his scratchy voice passed derisive commentary on sections Dylan knew were probably better than half of what the rest of the class had written.

  “…In an attempt to assert his authority and bring an end to the affair the Prince declares that those that were involved in it will be either disciplined or ….” Mr Stevens read in a mocking tone, his accent becoming even more pronounced, before stopping abruptly. “…Let off the hook.”

  The man’s words of sheer disapproval hung in the air like a deadly gas and Dylan sneaked a sideways glance. Two desks over he could see the left cheek of Alyx, the girl whose report Stevens was currently reading from, go crimson. To be fair it had been a schoolboy or in her case schoolgirl, error. Stevens had a particular dislike for anyone who, in his own words, ‘defiled the bard’. No sooner had he snapped his gaze back to the front of the room the looming figure of Stevens halted beside his desk.

  “I do believe the phrase you were so diligently searching for and neglected to satisfactorily find Miss Brooke is ‘Some shall be pardoned, and some punish’d’… Indeed nowhere I am sure did the Great Bard ever wax poetically about hooks or the chance that people should be let off them like common bait. This is Shakespeare Miss Brooke, this is masterful work of great prose, not fishing hour on the Life Time TV channel.”

  Dylan knew that tone all too well. It was the same one Stevens had berated Matt with when he too had ‘defiled The Bard’. A sharp bang recaptured his attention. Stevens had slammed Alyx’s report down in front of her; causing her to jump.

  “This drivel doesn’t deserve the ink it would take to write an F on it. You will rewrite this entire report and have it on my desk by the end of the week along with a 500-word mini-essay explaining why your use of colloquialisms and vulgar slang have no place in my classroom. Am I Clear?” Leaving the girl on the brink of tears Mr Stevens strode back to the front of the class and picked up the next report from the clinically stacked pile on his desk.

  “And the next one of you who dares to misquote Shakespeare will find themselves copying the relevant work, word for word, over the course of however many detentions it takes for you to get it right.” As the teacher swept off amongst the desks once more Dylan was sure he heard the sound of multiple people gulping.

  “Now, shall we all hear what Mr Hamilton has to say on the subject of the Divine Comedy?”

  When the student's name was called out Dylan glanced to his right at the boy in the seat beside him. Like always Mr Hamilton or Mark as he was better known, sat calmly; the perfect picture of cool. Unlike the rest of the now terrified prisoners, he seemed un-phased by the fact that his head now rested on the executioner's block, the shadow of the axe cast onto his neck. Why did nothing ever seem to bother him Dylan wondered? He had been friends with the other boy since middle school and in all their time together he had never once known Mark to be phased by anything. The chance to analyse his friend further quickly evaporated, Stevens deciding that it was once again his turn to speak. Dylan forced his gaze back to the front of the room.

  “Although commonly misnamed Dante’s Inferno, the Divine Comedy is in fact divided into three different sections of which the inferno is but the first.”

  A good opening line, Dylan thought. However…

  “No points for stating the obvious, Mr Hamilton, I would have expected an 8th grader to tell me that.”

  And there it came. The proverbial axe cleaving away at what undoubtedly the best opening line Stevens would find in the stack, save for his own of course. Dylan sniggered internally. He had made sure that Stevens would have to go to extraordinary lengths to find fault with his own work. Regardless, in this realm, it would be unlikely to net him anything more than a B+.

  “Although it has been argued that…”

  Dylan never got to find out what had been argued as the sound of footsteps towards the open door cut Mr Stevens off. Looking up from his desk he glanced at the doorway. In the frame, a girl with bright red hair wearing a black t-shirt and blue paint-splattered jeans wandered into the room, Anna.

  “And to what do we owe the pleasure of your company, Miss Richards, ten minutes into my lesson?” Mr Stevens declared in mock humbleness, making his way to the front of the room. “In fact no a better question. Tell me, what is your opinion on the Divine Comedy?”

  Dylan smiled to himself, Anna deserved this and much more. After she had proverbial kicked his ass, he had been forced to run like hell in order to get to school before the second homeroom bell rang. Even then he had only evaded detention by the good graces of the homeroom teacher. A detention that may, as Anna had proclaimed earlier, have gotten him shipped off to military school. A drunken incident last winter vacation had led his father to dangle that particular sword over his head, ready to drop should he land himself in any form of trouble at school or with the law.

  In front of him, he could see beads of sweat begin to form on Matt’s neck and knew the other boy was trying in vain to silently communicate to Anna not to antagonise Stevens further. He failed. Anna’s eyes had locked onto the teachers, her gaze unwavering. The man may have stood a good half-foot taller than her but Dylan knew that she would not be intimidated.

  “Personally the first circle of hell always annoyed me. The so-called virtuous pagans struck with grief from a lack of God’s presence. It seems exceptionally unfair for those souls to be trapped for eternity within that first circle simply because there were born before Christ and thus did not receive forgiveness for original sin in the crucifixion and resurrection. Hippocrates for example, one name out of many, gave the world medicine and healed the sick, surely that is worthy of at least some note. Also on the more obvious terms, it’s ironically named as there isn’t anything particularly comedic about Dante’s soul’s journey to find god. The stages of the epic are mankind’s metaphorical struggle to transcend the stages of limbo in the first circle and rise above it to paradise, Dante accomplishes this under Virgil’s guidance without whom he wouldn’t have gotten past Hell. In which case, there doesn’t seem to be much hope for the rest of us going it alone. ”

  The silence that hung in the air after Anna finished her piece was so deadpan that had someone decided to draw breath it would probably have been enough to merit one of Stevens’ infamous detentions.

  “Indeed,” Mr Stevens said with a contemptuous snort that did not quite cover his second of astonished silence or his slightly agape mouth. “Since you seem so keen to offer your intellectual insights up for evaluation, would you be so kind as to offer me your appraisal on another work of literature, Miss Richards.”

  Dylan watched the determined expression on Anna’s face go blank in confusion, allowing Mr Stevens the opportunity to reassert his control over the situation. A mocking smile spread from ear to ear “T
ut, tut, tut. Dear me we are not quick on the uptake today are we,” Stevens mocked, extended his hand towards her. “Your literature report if you please, Miss Richards.”

  “Oh shit!” Anna exclaimed, causing the entire class, including Dylan, to gasp. She was for it now.

  “Silence!” Mr Stevens Barked, snapping his head around to look at the class. “This will not do, Miss Richards. Now let me think,” He paused for a moment, feigning contemplation. “An hour’s detention for arriving late to my class. Followed by a second hour for not having your literature report and…,” he paused again for thought, “…and a third hour for the expletive I think. All of which you shall do this Friday night. Now I want that report on my desk by eight am tomorrow morning or you shall do a further three hours next weekend. Do you understand?”

  Dylan felt slightly dismayed when Anna held her tongue. He could not deny that he had enjoyed the spectacle and wished it could have continued. Not only did Anna deserve the teacher's derision, but it also meant that they did not have to do any work, win-win.

  “Furthermore if you ever swear in my class again it will be your own metaphorical struggle to transcend the stages of limbo, without Virgil’s guidance. Do I make myself clear? Now take your seat, Miss Richards.”

  That was the end of the matter.

  Eventually, after what felt like an age, the bell to signal morning break and thus an end to their torment rang. After scrutinising his wristwatch Stevens eventually decided they had served their sentence; for the time being at least. Rising from his chair Dylan stretched his arms before bending over to pack up his things. Having missed homeroom he had not had the chance to catch up with Matt since he had cajoled him into blowing Anna off on Saturday. Speaking of Anna, Dylan raised his head just in time to see her storm out of the room.

  Leaning forward, Dylan spoke into the ear of the boy in front, “whoa, dude, she didn’t even look at you.” Matt jumped slightly and turned to look at him. “You’re dead, dude. Plain and simple.”