It was the eyes which killed them. They could deal with the endless speech - the empty threats of dire punishment - even the shaking of her head and the occasional wagging of her finger, which, in all honesty, made her look more like a cartoon or a caricature than a head of year. But when her eyes fixated themselves on theirs, and they were compelled to look into them, all they could feel was the overwhelming pool of disappointment which they saw reflected in her face. They could deal with everything else, just- just not the eyes.

“I honestly don’t expect this sort of behaviour from someone like you, Jey. You’ve always been a good student…” At some point, their ears began to automatically tune out the bullshit. Their grades were average at best; their attendance patchy and their behaviour just plain unnoticed. They weren’t ‘good’, by any stretch of the imagination - but they knew how to fly under the radar, and usually cared enough to do so. “I’m on the verge of contacting your parents-”

“Please don’t.” Their eyes flew up from where they’d previously been inspecting the crappy crimson carpet, seeking refuge from her disappointed glare, and found something akin to muted sympathy in her mud-brown irises. “Miss- please don’t.”

“All this fuss over a pair of earphones - I doubt they’ll treat you that harshly.” And there was the most idiotic part - the apparent reason they were standing centimetres away from her, with various promised punishments floating in the musty air between them. The tiny office seemed to have never had a breath of fresh air since it was built, the gurgling radiator churning out the same old lukewarm gas minute upon minute. “Why couldn’t you have just kept them in your bag?”

“Weren’t mine to keep.” That much was true - the fiver stashed in their pocket attested to as much. “Miss.”

“And after all that complaining Mr Chancer was doing about you - to think that I didn’t believe him, and defended your character against him!”

“Mr Chancer?”

Even in the stuffy, cramped office, their blood ran cold. Shifting their weight from one scuffed school-shoe-covered foot to another, they pushed their hands further into their overly large blazer pockets, their left fingers brushing over the familiar structure of their lighter - but even its comfort couldn’t console them at this point.

Time seemed to slow, just for a moment. The flimsy-looking white clock on the wall behind them ticked more and more gradually, until it was barely ticking at all, and then it wasn’t. Their breaths became longer but not deeper - her blinks were few, but she seemed to become a sleeping doll throughout them, if dolls were created with prominent stresslines and the occasional acne scar. Her next words were quiet but deliberative, almost contemplative; as if she wasn’t just regurgitating the same speech she gave to every student who stepped out of line and got caught.

“Yes, Mr Chancer. He’s had more than a few stories to tell about you, Jey, more than a few.”