Haze Bois

Chapter 8

Katie paused for a second before exiting her front porch, frowning at the sheets of water tumbling from the sky like a damn waterfall.

It is literally chucking it down.

Mum had warned her, but Katie had responded with her perfunctory shrug and claimed to like the rain. She did like a good downpour, just preferably not on the way to sixth form. Not when she had spent over an hour on hair and make-up.

All so the new guy with the stupidly blue eyes might notice me, Katie sighed to herself.

She ran, head down, to the house next door and entered without knocking. It was her Aunties house—her Aunt Mel who always borrowed the umbrellas but never remembered to pop them back.

“What’s up Cuz?” her cousin Caleb greeted. He stood in the hallway, stuffing his feet into expensive-looking trainers.

“Got an umbrella?” Katie asked.

“Take yer pick,” Cal said, pointing at pile by the door. She chose the one with the dachshund design because she knew her mother wanted it returned.

“Can I tag along with you?” Katie asked, hoping he wouldn’t pick up on the true reason for her visit.

He laughed, “Oh, you suddenly don’t mind being seen with me?”

Katie tutted but said nothing. In all honestly, she didn’t like being seen with Cal, but only because of his horrible reputation.

“Don’t be lame,” Katie said.

Cal shrugged. He grabbed an umbrella from the pile and led her through the shortcut to school. She had to lower her umbrella momentarily to slip though the bent metal bars. The short stint in the rain was enough to saturate both her coat and shirt with rainwater.

If she’d been alone, the long way round would have been her first choice, but she was desperate to arrive at the gates with her cousin.

“Yo, Cal,” a voice boomed as a group of lads gathered and circled. They bumped fists and greeted Caleb before turning to her, nodding at her and grunting, “A’ight?”

She muttered a response, scanning the group for Jamie. He wasn’t with them.

‘Damn it, he always meets them in the morning.’

“What’s up?” Caleb asked, probably picking up on her extreme disappointment.

“Nothing,” Katie lied. “I’m just soaked and late.” 

As she went to leave he shuffled over, looking to Cal for approval.

“Jamie,” Caleb nodded, and the boy’s eyes lit up.

He looked out of place among Caleb and his gang. Katie guessed it wouldn’t be long before he assimilated, a hoodie and Nike trainer wearing clone of Caleb. They teased him about his smart appearance, but in a nice way. He was one of them now. Caleb had given him the seal approval and he was in. None of the others would question it.

‘Well, not if I can steal him away.’

“Weren’t you leaving?” Caleb asked, smirking.

‘He knows I’m only here to perv on Jamie.’

“Hmm, yeah, I’ll pop round later,” Katie announced loudly enough for Jamie to overhear.

She resisted the urge to look over her shoulder during the sprint to her class. Her stomach knotted at the thought Caleb might tell Jamie how she felt about him, despite the fact it was deducible from the fact she’d tried to kiss him. The thought of them laughing about her schoolgirl crush brought colour to her cheeks. It seemed unlikely Jamie would tell the others about the ‘almost kiss’. He just didn’t seem the type to kiss and tell. His personality was shy and reserved.

‘Why is Caleb so desperate to get his claws into him?’ Katie wondered.

He rarely invited new members into his gang, and those he did were thugs and delinquents, with the exception of his best friend Kenny.

She glanced out of the classroom window, hoping to get another glace of Jamie and saw Kenny bending down to tie Caleb’s shoelace. It wasn’t an uncommon sight. Caleb was one of the few sixteen-year-olds who had never learned to tie laces. Which in itself was weird, but the fact he refused to wear anything except lace-up trainers was a total mystery.

‘He treats that poor boy like a slave.’ Katie sighed to herself.

One of the lads caught her eyes and ran over to her window, sticking out his tongue and banging on the glass. This attracted the teacher’s attention. 

“Friends of yours?” Mr. Simmons asked, peering over his reading glasses at the gang of youths.

“The tall one with white-blonde hair is my cousin,” Katie told him.

“Right, of course, Caleb Hayes,” the teacher nodded. “I see the family resemblance now you mention it.”

Not knowing what to say, Katie smiled. She liked Mr. Simmons. He was gentle and quiet but became so passionate when talking about psychology. 

“He’s causing quite the stir in the staffroom,” Mr. Simmons said. “A Student going from failing every class to having perfect scores within the space of a week… it’s unheard of.”

“He is?” Katie frowned. She knew Caleb wasn’t stupid. He just didn’t bother to study or pay any kind of attention in class. His mother, Katie’s Aunt Mel, was constantly hounding him to try harder. She would often overhear them arguing about it through the thin walls of their connected homes.

“Most interesting… from a psychological standpoint,” Mr. Simmons commented before pushing up his spectacles and leaving her to begin the lesson.

The topic of the lesson was double foot-in-the-door. This was the idea that asking for a couple of small, low-cost favours before leading up to asking for the high-cost favour. Details of an experiment were laid out on the worksheet, and while it made for pretty boring reading, the concept was an interesting one.

‘This is the sort of knowledge that could come in handy,’ Katie smiled to herself.

“Mr. Simmons, do you know what the dark triad is?” A girl called Jane interrupted the lesson. She was always doing this, but because she was one of the smarter students in the class, Mr. Simmons would always pander to her dumb questions.

“Well, you might find these online tests predicting ‘how evil you are’ using the dark triad personality traits,” Mr. Simmons chuckled. “It is basically the combination of Narcissism, Machiavellianism and Psychopathy.”

“So… if a person has those three traits it makes them evil?” another girl asked.

“It makes them socially exploitative,” Mr. Simmons corrected before continuing with the lesson. Katie did her best to concentrate, but her mind was elsewhere. She needed to find a way to get Jamie away from her cousin or to convince Caleb to stop warning his friends off her.

‘Maybe I can use this foot-in-the-door technique,’ Katie thought. ‘I knew there was a good reason I chose Psychology.’