SchoolBook Stories - Chapter One

Prologue

“Hey Louise! Great legs - what time do they open?”
She rolled her eyes, and turned around to face the boy who had jeered. She fixed him with her best flirty stare, and smiled.
“For you, Thomas?” she asked, batting her eyelids as she advanced towards him and fingered the collar of his t-shirt. Without warning she made the switch, grabbing him by the shirt and contorting her face into a snarling fury. “How about we say ten past never on the twelfth of in your dreams, huh pretty boy?! Keep it in your pants, Johnson; or I will castrate you.”
With that she pushed him away and continued on her way to class, her stilettos click-click-clicking with every step on the tiled hallway. The cheers and whistles of her classmates brought a smile to her face as she tried to keep her cool.
Thomas Johnson, on the other hand, was left red-faced and wrinkled as he pulled himself upright from the lockers she’d just thrown him against. He stared after her as she walked away, the legs in question carrying her so quickly out of sight.
“Man, she really showed you!” his friend Jason was still laughing, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes. “Don’t sweat it, Tommy, there’s plenty of others – ”
Thomas stopped him with a raise of his hand. He continued to stare at the spot where she’d disappeared around the corner as he smoothed out his shirt, replying in an icy tone,
“There will be no others, Jason. Louise Summers will be mine. I just clearly have to be a little smarter in my approach.” He turned to face his friend, giving him an evil smirk. “She won’t even realise what’s happening to her until it’s too late.”
“What exactly are you going to do, Tommy?” Jason asked, now more than a little uncomfortable with the turn of the conversation.
“Oh don’t worry, Jason. I’ll make sure you don’t miss it.” He said, patting his friend on the back as he turned to head to his own class. “She’s not going to know what’s hit her.”


“He said what?!” Chloe exclaimed when Louise caught up with her at lunch. Tucked away at their usual table in the corner, they were joined by their friend Jo a moment later.
“OK, what did I miss? Chloe looks like she’s just swallowed a bee.” She said, noticing the red swell on Chloe’s neck and recognising it as a warning sign of her temper.
“I was just telling her about my run in with Thomas Johnson this morning.” Louise explained, placing her own hand over Chloe’s. “It’s OK Chloe, you don’t need to go all ‘Modern Ninja’ on him – I took care of it.”
She proceeded to tell them exactly how she ‘took care of it’, when Thomas himself walked into the cafeteria, his brotherhood of team mates beside him.
“Look at him, walking in like he owns the place.” Louise scowled, turning away from him.
Chloe, however, continued to stare, her frown deepening. “I just don’t understand how someone that beautiful can be such a bastard.”
Jo snorted into her water bottle. “That’s exactly why he’s a bastard, Chlo – his bleached white teeth and tan have gotten him anything he’s wanted for his whole life. And on the rare occasion those weren’t enough, he always had Daddy for back – up.”
Darren Johnson was a very powerful, very infamous lawyer. He was one of the best, with a one hundred percent success rate – if he took your case, you won. Problem was, he was also well know (albeit rumoured) for the route he took to winning his cases. Dirty dealings, dodgy money – he had defended some of the country’s most notorious criminals, and had them released from prison. He had favours outstanding from some very unsavoury people, and wasn’t above using them to get his son into and out of trouble.
“God, he’s such a pig.” Louise said, keeping her eyes firmly on her salad. “Stop looking at him, he’ll burn your eyes. Let’s just talk about something else.”
“Ok, we’ll stop.” Chloe grinned, ready to launch into the story of her morning and the girl who fainted in their biology dissection. “My morning wasn’t as eventful as yours, Lou, but I did – ”
“I completely forgot to tell you!” Jo cut across her, gasping at her own forgetfulness. “I saw Mickey today!”
“Mickey?” Louise repeated, raising an eyebrow at her. “As in mouse?”
“Did you inhale chemical fumes in science again?” Chloe added. “Are we supposed to know who Mickey is?”
Jo sighed, rolling her eyes in a ‘my friends are morons’ kind of way. “Michael Smith?”
“The guy you dated last year, that moved to Italy?” Chloe asked, an image of him flickering in her mind. She remembered him. He and Jo had been inseparable for months until one day he told her his parents were moving to Milan, and he had no choice but to go with them. They were both devastated, and tried desperately to find a way around it. Her parents even offered him their spare room, to see out the end of the school year. But his parents wouldn't agree. The day he left, Jo had holed up in her room and refused to come out. She didn’t, for almost a week.
One glance at Louise told her she was thinking the same thing.
“That's lovely, but we don’t want you getting hurt by him again, Jo.” She said, lowering her voice as a group of girls passed by them. “What’s he doing back here anyway? Did he say?”
“His Dad’s restaurant didn’t do as well as they thought it would, it closed down last month. So he packed them all up again and moved back home. Apparently he’s been offered the head chef job at Ilario in town.” She replied, avoiding their eyes as she took a bite of her sandwich. “He’s glad he gets to finish school here.”
“I’m sure he is.” Chloe said, her expression stern as she looked at her over the top of her glasses. “Just don’t get involved with him again, Jo. You’re only just back to rights after watching him leave.”
Louise meanwhile, was staring at Jo with an amused smirk on her face, and when she could hold it in no longer she simply cracked out laughing.
“I'm sorry!" She spluttered when the others shot her a look. "It's just - you used to call him Mickey?!”