Love At The Coral Reefs

Chapter 5

Monday came rolling in and Eleanor who was nervous for the presentation decided to calm herself down in the toilet. Since Beatrice was practicing for her own presentation, she decided to go alone and it was the worst decision she ever made.

After calming herself down in the toilet, she turned around to walk out but was immediately pushed by Jenny, the ringleader of the haughty group of girls. "You think you can seduce Thorn, he most probably is disgusted that he has to work with you. My poor man..."

"Don't compare me to you Jenny, move out of my way!" Eleanor coldly replied, she was tired of these girls who continuously bullied Beatrice, who decided to do nothing at all.

She was shoved harder by another girl, Susanne, "How can you talk to Jenny like that, you poor piece of scum."

"Are you talking about yourself, Susanne and what is wrong with me being poor? You don't pay for my school fees anyway!" She retorted, she was barely holding onto her anger, she was never going to let them have the satisfaction of seeing her cry or back down in fear because of them.

Someone else kicked her in her legs and she fell, her ankle hurting even worser. "Let's leave this trash to sort herself out, lock the toilet door, let's see how she can seduce any of the boys anymore."

Eleanor glared up at Liz who looked at her with a sneer. Her heart started beating wildly against her chest as the six of them left the toilet switching off all the lights and locking the door.

She tried to stand up but she could not as her ankle seemed to get even worse. She tried banging against the toilet door hoping someone would hear her but to no avail. She knew she was going to get into a panic attack as she could feel the walls caving in on her.

She desperately reached for the phones in her pocket, fumbling to unlock it. Hoping that the person she was going to

call was on the phone at the moment.

~~~~~

"Hi, Beatrice, do you know where Cupcake is?" Thorn who just arrived in school asked, he saw Beatrice and Marshall going over their presentations but the former seemed to be out of sorts.

"My goodness, Thorn, El went to the toilet but...I don't know why she is taking so long. I wanted to look for her but Mr Stone said it was the time for the tow of us to present first in the class." The fear and worry in her voice made him feel uneasy.

Just then, laughs could be heard as six girls sashayed into the class. Thorn narrowed his eyes at them, feeling that there was something weird going on when he felt his phone buzzed.

"I...am...so scared..." Eleanor voiced weakly as she saw the call went through.

"Where are you? What's wrong!" Thorn's worried voice rang through the whole toilet as she turned her speaker on.

"Toilet...locked...I am scared..." Trying not to cry was impossible when she could feel that the ceiling was sinking down on her, the lack of light pushed her into a worse frenzy.

"Hey, I will be there ok, don't worry, can you close your eyes for me and imagine you are at a wide open field, can you do that for me?" Trying to push his own anxious heart down, he rushed out of the classroom, Marshall and Beatrice staring after him in alarm.

Beatrice tried to follow after Thorn when Mr Stone called behind her, "Alright, Marshall and Beatrice begin..." Huffing angrily at the bad timing of the teacher, she instead follow after Marshall towards the front of the class, her heart beating wildly due to the fear of something happening to her best friend.

~~~~~

"Hey...are you there?" Thorn continued speaking to Eleanor as he ran across the hallway to the nearest girls' toilet.

The strangled reply assured him slightly that she at least did not pass out.

Reaching the girls' toilet, he saw it was shut and locked after he tried pushing it.

Luckily for both of them, the cleaner's trolley was there and the keys to the toilet was there. Grabbing the keys, he called out, "I need you to move away from the toilet door, can you do that?"

"Yes..." the replied almost broke his heart at how small her voice had become. Unlocking the door, he pushed it gently open, and switched on the lights looking down, his heart broke further as she saw her sitting on the floor her face tightly hidden behind her thighs.

"Cupcake..." That was all it took for Eleanor to look up and upon seeing the familiar man, she let her tears flow down, the feeling of immense fear relieving through her. Thorn who saw her outburst, ran into the toilet without caring that it was the girls' toilet and wrapped his arms around her. "You had me worried, but its ok, you are going to be fine now."

Crying harder at his words, Eleanor pushed herself into the hug, suddenly in need of comfort. After a few moments, she regained her composure and asked, "Is it our turn now to present."

"Let's get back to class, if you want to present today we can, but if you feel like you are not ready, I can go talk to Mr Stone." He replied as he pulled her up from the floor and they made their way outside the toilet.

"Nah, I want to finish it today, you put in so much effort for this, I will be fine." Wiping away her tears and composing herself once again. She smiled bravely at him.

"Who was it?" He questioned, she decided to not say anything because she did not want him to get into trouble. "The six girls, right? Was it because of me?" Looking up at the pissed expression on his face, she did not know what else to say so she just nodded.

Thorn knew it was the six girls since they stepped into class, their abnormal behaviors and how Jenny who normally tried to flirt with him did not even dare to look into his eyes that morning.

"Please don't do anything, if they think I was going to stop talking to you because they did this to me. They are wrong, I am going to keep talking to you." She tried to lighten the atmosphere and the prominent frown on his face dissolved into a small smile. "Promise me first that you won't get angry at them when we get back to class..."

Eleanor did not know when she started to move Thorn from her dislikes to her likes. Maybe it was because of last Saturday when he held her hand, telling her it was going to be alright. Maybe it was the way he cared about his friends like his younger brothers. Maybe it was the way he rushed to her when she called for help. but what she knew now was that she likes having him around.

Thorn chuckled at Eleanor who was waiting for him to pinky promise with her. He complied to her request. Locking his pinky with hers. He did not know when he started to yield to her every request. Maybe it was on the first day of school when she talked back to him. Maybe it was on the day of barbeque when she cursed at him. Maybe it was last Saturday, when he felt immense worry when he saw her fear. Maybe it was today, when his heart almost broke into pieces at the thought of her hurting. But what he knew now was that he likes having her around.

Walking back towards the classroom, she gave a pointed look towards him, who just begrudgingly nodded. Just then a highly anxious Beatrice came barelling out of the door, with Marshall, Simon, Carson, Terrius and Louis rushing after her.

Upon seeing Eleanor, Beatrice ran and hugged her, "My God, El are you alright? What happened? Mr Stone would not let me leave? Telling us to stupidly present first...Gosh i was never going to let myself off if anything happened to you!"

Eleanor could feel Beatrice trembling against her and she hugged her crying friend patting her on the back. Her reaction was normal as they were closer than sisters, she could still freshly remember that day 8 years ago in her mind. That was the day when she found out that six girls were bullying a quiet girl, so she could not take it and reported them to the teachers and this also made her the victim of the bullying. But Eleanor always made sure to protect Beatrice and herself, until the six girls stopped the bullying, that was until today. She knew that Beatrice always felt like she owed her too much, because she saved her from the bullies.

"Is alright, Thorn came for me, I didn't call you because I saw that your name was first to present on the list, don't worry ok?" Patting her gently, Eleanor tried to make Beatrice stop shaking. "So sorry that all of you had to rush out as well, did the presentations go well?" She continued feeling awful that the other guys had to do presentations while worrying about her and Thorn.

The rest of the guys smiled understandingly at her, with Louis going, "Don't worry about it, the presentations were fine, anyways it is about to be both of your turns."

"Dan, what happened?" Terrius asked worriedly when he saw that Thorn was looking really pissed.

"Six girls thought it was fun to lock her up in the girls' toilet!" His voice held restrained anger and the other boys knew who it was directed at.

Carson displayed a disgusted look on his face, "They are really getting worse every single day. Thorn, what are you...nah we going to do?"

"We are going to leave it in Eleanor's hands, but we can teach their parents a lesson on how not to take bribes as law enforcers!" He replied, his jaw clenching.

"Thorn, you want to expose them, now?" Simon asked.

Thorn shook his head, "Nah, Si, you know we only hit back when we have enough evidence." Turning back to face Eleanor, he continued, smirking, "Let's make the best presentation that Mr Stone would not forget."

~~~~~

"Eleanor and Thorn meet me outside." Mr Stone pointed to the door of the classroom as his lessons ended.

Both of them made their way to the door ignoring the furtive glances of their friends as well as the other students.

"WHY WERE THE TWO OF YOU SO LATE FOR CLASS? ELEANOR I EXPECTED BETTER BEHAVIOUR FROM YOU. NOT PICK UP HIS USELESS BEHAVIOUR!" Mr Stone hollered, as far as both of them know, the Science teacher hates Thorn to the core because of the fight last Wednesday, as his son was in the group of eight that the boys taught a lesson.

"I also expected a much calmer behaviour from you Mr Stone. But we don't always get what we want, do we?" Thorn replied sarcastically, his eyes looking bored , they could almost see smoke pouring out of Mr Stone's ears.

Before things could escalate any worser that what was happening at that point. Eleanor went in between the two that was glaring at each other. "I apologize Mr Stone, I was locked in the toilet..."

"WHAT HAS THAT GOT TO DO WITH ANYTHING? Did he went into the girls' restroom too!?" Again Mr Stone shouted and Thorn almost moved to grab his collar but he did not have the heart to push away the girl in front of him.

"Mr Stone, you need to listen to me, I was locked in the girls' toilet but the cleaner unlocked it for me. As I stumbled out, Thorn found me in the hallways walking with a limp, so he decided to help me walk. That was why we were late." Eleanor crossed her fingers behind her back because she told a lie, well it was half the truth. She could not reveal the fact that Thorn went into the girls' toilet, when Mr Stone looked like he wanted to use that fact to get him in trouble.

"IT BETTER NOT HAPPEN NEXT TIME, ONCE MY BELL RINGS, YOU BOTH BETTER BE IN CLASS!" Shouting at them one last time, Mr Stone stomped down the hallway with a huge scowl on his face.

"You should have let me talk to that i***t!" Thorn swiped his hair back with his tongue in the cheek when Eleanor turned towards him.

"And let you get into trouble with him? Don't be rude, even if he is not the nicest, he is still our teacher." No matter how angry she was at Mr Stone, she always believed that the best revenge is to show him that they are doing so well even though he keep trying to pick on them. Not getting into more trouble so that he would have more trouble so that he would have more reason to get them punished.

"Did you hear the tone he was using. That idi- Mr Stone was accusing us of doing something in the toilet. If it was his own son, he would have turned a blind eye to it!" He was even more pissed, but she smiled a little as she realized how he changed the way of addressing that dreaded man.

"You and I know that we both didn't do anything, he cannot accuse us of anything we didn't do." Eleanor softly said, trying to calm Thorn down.

"Of course I know that, but I don't want your reputation to be ruined...what if you don't want to be my friend anymore?" His sudden pleading fox eyes and the low whine made her surprised.

"What did I tell you a few moments ago?"

"That you are going to keep talking to me no matter what happens."

"Mmmmmmmmm, and do you think I would go back on my word?"

"I hope not." Thorn replied his eyes sparkling in the light.

"I won't, my goodness! Anyways, you know he is picking on you because of that clash with his son's group last Wednesday, right?" Eleanor now felt like she was talking to a kid about what he did wrong.

"You saw that fight?" His eyes were now wide opened, the lazy look disappearing.

"Not what I asked, but yes I did see it." Eleanor was thinking that Thorn would give some reason to defend himself but was stunned when he just calmly nodded.

"Are you not going to defend you actions?" She knew the cause of the fight, a boy was getting bullied and physically assualted by the 8 boys. Then Thorn and his friends stepped in to help the boy and then the fight ensued.

"There is nothing to defend, I know why I did it and its enough."

"I also know why you did it. I know it is not up to me to decide and tell you what to do. But don't put yourself in the place of wrong, just to right the wrongs." She smiled when he nodded his head like an obedient kid. She knew she cannot change his mind instantly and she was not going to tell him that everything he was doing was wrong, Because it was not, just the way he approached it was not recommended.

"If our marks are lowered because of this, I apologize."

"There is no need for that, I should apologize to you instead. Now come one let's get back to class. I need the lessons!" Eleanor hobbled quickly into the class with Thorn following after her with a light chuckle.