Voices in Detention (Angel)

[TATE BENTON]

"Charlotte Benton?"

The teacher peered at Tate over the top of her glasses.Tate nodded, her eyes wide and innocent. She was disappointed to be here. After all, she hadn't done anything wrong.

Hissss..

Tate drew her legs up in her chair, then folded her arms around them. Her forehead creased in worry as she watched a strange snake-like creature twist around on the floor next to her.

"Miss Benton, please put your feet on the floor. We are not fourth graders."

Tate looked up in fearful disbelief.

"But.. there's a.."

"Now, Miss Benton."

The teacher couldn't see the creature. Tate eyed it warily as she lowered her feet to the floor. It twisted up to her shoe and snarled.

A pink bird appeared at Tate's other side, along with a child that looked like she had been dunked in a lake.

"Hit her, Charlotte."

Startled, Tate glared at them.

"No! I won't."

"Miss Benton. Whomever are you talking to?"

Tate looked at her teacher, then back to the bird and girl, who were becoming increasingly demonic in appearance.

"..N-no one, ma'am."

Sighing, she curled her arms around herself and stared at the desk in front of her miserably.

It was going to be a long detention.



OUTFIT OF DETAINMENT

[ANGEL DIHANIE]

OUTFIT OF THAT NAUGHTY ANGEL

The detention slip was pink.

Not hot pink.

Not baby pink.

Peptobismo pink.

Miss O'Hue's hand writing was neatly scrawled, and Angel had to give her props for spelling Dihanie correctly. It would seem that the people charged with educating the youth of America, had an issue writing out a sucking last name. But, Miss O'Hue did alright, and Angel was a believer in giving credit where credit was due.

The slips said: 'Caused a disturbance.'

That was like calling her amazing day 'a ruckus'. It gave it no justice!

The disturbance so inadequately described on that pink piece of parchment, which sat in Angel's palm, catching sweat, was as follows. She had wanted to go fast. And when Angel Bahiya Dihanie got something in her head, it had to be done. Once, she had wanted chili. And she proceeded to pester the hell out of Jack-who-is-Wes for a week, before he brought her to a Wendy's and quenched her thirst. Or hunger. Whatever. The point was, that one dollar chili which was honestly half saltine crackers and sour cream before she ate it, had been necessary to get chili out of her head. And so, Angel would need to go fast in order to get that out of her head.

And in order to accomplish this she had used bottle rockets, duct tape, her skateboard, more duct tape, and the school corridor.

Needless to say, it ended AWESOME.

Unfortunately, the school felt differently.

Hence the being locked away in detention thing.

SHE WAS SO BORED.

And anyone who knew Angel knew she could not handle being bor-

"Charlotte Benton? Miss Benton, please put your feet on the floor. We are not fourth graders." Gads, what a cake face.

Charlotte? That was her spider's name! Angel's brown eyes searched for the owner of the name, who spoke in a quiet voice. "But.. there's a.." She looked... genuinely afraid of something, the girl across the conjoined desks did. Curiously, Angel looked under the desk, seeing nothing.

"Now, Miss Benton." What the Frank, Bob? What difference does it make if her feet are on the floor or on the chair? Still the girl complied.

Angel grabbed her notebook, and began to doodle in the margins. The scared, strange, red head spoke again. "No! I won't."

"Miss Benton. Whomever are you talking to?" Angel hated that. The over polite bull donk that teachers used when they thought you were too stupid to realize they were patronizing. Still, instead of glaring at the cake face, Angel looked at the floor again, tapping her pen on the table. Still nothing to her eye.

But she still knew the little red head was lying. "..N-no one, ma'am."

Raising her eyebrow at the girl, Angel's head cocked a little. She was strange. Strange meant interesting. And interesting meant not boring. Looking over at the teacher, she watched as that woman who is a rhyme of something you should do to a football looked back at her book. Quickly, Angel wrote on the top line of a piece of loose leaf.

[TATE BENTON]

Tate glanced sideways at the other girl in the room.

She didn't recognize her. She was tough looking and bored looking.

It was a big difference from Tate and her pink shirt and red-velvet-cupcake hair.

The girl slipped her a piece of slightly crumply paper.

Tate looked down at it, then smiled at the tough girl.

She believed her.

She knew that Tate wasn't messing around.

Never before had she had anyone actually think to ask her what she saw. No one understood, of course. They all thought that she was being funny or was just plain old insane. Was she? Maybe.

But she saw things that other people didn't see.

Now she had someone who actually took the time to ask her about it.

[ANGEL DIHANIE]

The smile that came from the girl was bright. Like, it let out a little light that the girl was keeping to herself. It was rather pleasant. As she set to work with little doodles of her own, Angel waited patiently, watching the teacher carefully. She was honestly use to detention. It happened to the young and wily Angel Dihanie quite often, actually. Most of her antics were deemed 'unseemly' by the school.

But alas, you can't please everyone.

Such a shame.

Angel was unconcerned, honestly, by what her teachers found appropriate. You see, Angel had given up caring long ago. Not because she didn't, deep deep deep deep deep down, for acceptance. Deeply buried beneath there, she did. But, Angel was also quite convinced that no adult was going to find her acceptable, and she came to this conclusion many a year ago. So, why bother. She'd do what she pleased, enjoy life.

Wes often got after her, that she one of her shenanigans were going to kill her.

But, that's sort of what she wanted.

Not that she was suicidal. Angel loved life, and all the delights it had to offer.

But she wanted to go out young, with her boots on. In fact, she couldn't fathom ever being old, or a mother, or a wife. She didn't want to be the lonely old cat lady. So, she'd have fun, and do her little stunts, and really live.

She'd live more in what she presumed was going to be a young life, than most did when they lasted til their natural expiration date.

Angel smiled as her new friend, Charlotte, passed the note back, pleased that the teacher's attention was occupied by her harlequin romance novel. Reading the note, Angel gave no indication of being surprised. Or even disbelieving. She did believe Little Lottie, actually. She had seen the fear in her eyes.

She saw some sort of serpent.

Or viper.

Maybe python.

It really didn't matter.

Nibbling the end of her pen, Angel thought over her reply, before scribbling it down in her almost child like hand writing.

[TATE BENTON]

Tate watched as the girl scrawled a reply.

The child beside her stared from behind her curtain of dark hair, only one sickly yellow iris visible. Tate swallowed and closed her eyes. This did little to help the situation, as the creatures followed her into the darkness.

She snapped her eyes open again, and wrapped her arms around herself.

The serpent beneath her hissed.

How she longed for the bunnies and kittens that followed her around some days.

The girl passed her the paper and she replied quickly, throwing a nervous glance at the drowned child beside her.



She gave her a small smile.

"I'm Tate."