In Dr Roshan, Button and I fancied a kindred spirit some half a century thence. And seeing the disappointment in her eyes every time we were sent down to her offi ce was worse than whatever was meted out as the actual punishment. More often than not, it was just detention, but—and this is the second reason—sometimes parents were given a call and told to come in the next day to discuss the terrible human being that their child was obviously developing into. This didn’t matter much to me, since my parents were usually out of town on work, inadvertently giving me a free pass (a very strongly worded note that I would forge a signature on). But Button’s parents were a whole different story. Well, mostly just her mum, who would ground her till the next year if she spoke to one of these infuriated teachers. Considering that Button lived in a state of semi-grounding anyway—no unsupervised television, phone privileges or going out after school hours—this was, to say the least, very, very undesirable. We already spent half our time trying to lie our way around the semi-grounding. A high-alert, airtight grounding scenario would be nigh insurmountable.

This time, The Raccoon fortunately chose to ignore the heaving figure of Button behind Shittles’s book. Though I think that was probably just because she was twenty minutes late for class—effectively having prompted me herself, really, to crawl next door in boredom and in search of food—and didn’t want to waste any more time.

I took this show of leniency as a sign to continue disregarding the ongoing lecture and continued to write to Button in the Bitching Book.

Cookie said she heard Riddhi's going to make a poster with Kage's name on it and take it to Shamiana with her!

Dude, are you serious? I’m actually embarrassed for her. Which is saying something, considering how despo she always is.

Flossy said he walked super late into some class last week and said it was because a monkey tried to attack him on the way. Apparently it was a substitute teacher and she was so freaked out that she actually left the class and went down to the off ce to sound an alarm.

Well, that's kind of funny, I guess. But he really, really likes to be the centre of attention, doesn't he?

Yeah, obviously. He’s the only one who does all those theatrics at Shamiana.

Should make for a good show, though.

Yeah, hopefully. He better not ruin any Bon Jovi songs.

Can you imagine if we pulled the monkey stunt in Ugly Bitch's class? Should we?

Yeah, and have her call our mums in again. Fool.

Fine, fine. What time should I pick you up?