Fortunately for me, the end of the lesson came a lot faster than I thought it would and as the bell went I hurriedly packed my bag and made it to the door before any of my peers.  First to class, first to break, I thought.  I was suddenly surprised to find that Spencer was right in front of me.  She just smiled and held the door open for me to walk through before her.  So much for chivalry being dead, I laughed to myself, and quickly made my way towards the music block.

I crossed the quad and heaved my way through the heavy double doors that marked the entrance to the department I was looking for.  The corridor was thick with people making their way outside towards the sun for their break of sitting with friends in the quad, and I pushed against the tide, down a set of stairs and through yet more doors until I was where I wanted to be.  ‘Music Team’ was grafitied in bold colours on the white wall, and paintings of instruments from all over the world adorned every space that hadn’t been filled by band posters and concert notices.  Music at King had become huge, all because the new head of department had gone along and reinvented the way it was all managed.  The only thing that held it all back was the school’s misguided fascination with all things basketball, thus being that big games got more funding and precedence than the promotion of gigs and the purchasing of new equipment.  We had to fit our schedule around the basketball season, which pissed me off to no end.

I rounded a corner and walked straight into the music office, throwing my bag down on an empty desk before looking around to see where everyone was.   The place seemed deserted, all the desks were devoid of teachers and I assumed they must have all quickly rushed to the staff canteen to get their chow before the rest of the teaching body had eaten it all.  I waited impatiently for the arrival of anyone, drumming my fingers on my lap as I sat with my feet up on a table.  Life seemed to be so much slower in the music department than in the rest of King High – the staff were all so chilled out, the technicians pretty much ran the place and the whole atmosphere had an air of ‘we’ll do everything at our own pace’ about it.  That’s why I spent most of my time there – my teachers were more like my friends than authoritative figures.  I hated authority.