Sometimes, he thought he was cool.

 

Mostly, he thought he was lame.

 

Usually, he didn’t even care.

 

And as he walked down the hallway, sneakers too dirty to even leave a mark on the just-waxed floor, Ben Connelly sort of fell into all three categories. The cigarette made him cool, the hair made him lame, and, well… usually, he didn’t even care.

 

He was a creature of habit. It’d take a lot to shock him out of ‘usually.’

 

Ben rounded the corner slowly, the off-key melody of a Kinks song muffled by his lips as he hummed, dorkishly bobbing his head to the horrible sing-along in his head. He trailed his fingernails against the cold stones on the wall, apparently not in any rush to get anywhere.

 

It was just detention, after all. If he was late, all they could do was give him another one. Hardly an effective threat.

 

Finally he meandered up to the room, the room which seemed to… vomit clouds of misery and a hellish eternity.

 

For some, at least. Seven years had, Ben would proudly admit, made him immune to that air of sucky-ness.

 

With a charming “up yours” gesture to the proctor in greeting, Ben collapsed into the chair that had become his over the years- his enthralling personality and sunny demeanor only adding to that hope-filled vomit cloud seeping out all over the hallway floor.