"And here, the negative root of x is equivalent to the squared quadratic power of two, making it equal to y to the power of negative five..." Mr Fieldson's droning voice drilled like a jackhammer through my brain, his words bouncing around the inside of my skull like drunken moths. I stared at the board without seeing the list of questions that had been scribbled there, trying not to let my head fall onto the desk in uninterested exhaustion.

Looking at the steel clock that hung tauntingly on the wall for what seemed like the billionth time in five minutes, I saw that there was still what would feel like an eternity of Maths left to endure. I nearly groaned out loud.

It was bad enough that this was the last lesson on the Friday before the Christmas holidays, when we should be hanging up fairy lights or watching stereotypically jovial films. Or perhaps baking a chocolate Yule log while gazing out of a heat-steamed kitchen window at the falling snow (while, in my case, trying not to burn the house down in the process). Not sitting in a freezing, dimly-lit classroom with a teacher that seems to hate you for merely existing.

Like most teenagers, I didn't particularly enjoy school at the best of times, but Maths was the worst of the worst. At one point I'd even carried out a number of boisterous protests with some of my friends. Dylan and I would never forget the most recent one we'd organised, which had ended with Dylan standing on a table in the staff room, shouting about the unfairness of education while we cheered her on from below.

But, despite our greatest efforts, they'd all come to an end with bitter, two-hour-long detentions, and after the countless number of minutes sat in a stuffy, abandoned classroom staring at the wood grains in the table-top or doodling idly in an old notepad , we'd been forced to admit that maybe our protests often ended up causing more bad than good. And a few days after that last detention, the whole school had been called into the hall for an 'emergency assembly', where the head teacher announced that any students that continued to protest against the school curriculum would be expelled.

Outrageous.

The whole affair had, for a while, boosted our ranks in the school hierarchy, transforming us from awkward Potterheads into infamous-but-kind-of-awesome rebel activists. The reactions from the students had been a mixed bag. A year seven girl who couldn't have been taller than 3 foot 9 had plucked up the courage to shuffle up to us and squeak that we 'were, like, really cool', and a pompous boy in our year had offered to help us 'make our future protests more authentic' so that 'more people would actually listen'.

We'd politely declined the offer, smiling through our teeth while grimacing at each other in annoyance. But, after a week or so of recognition, we had all retreated back into our shells and reclaimed our 'awkward nerd' labels. After all, there was only so much social attention we could take.

Blinking to try and dispel the memory, I glanced at my best friend Dylan sitting across the room, and she formed a gun with her fingers, placed it to her temple and rolled her eyes. So at least I knew that someone other than me was feeling the same way. I smiled at her and did the same and she grinned at me, the freckles on her nose and cheeks scrunching together into a brown blob.

As I turned away from her to look at the endless sea of meaningless numbers and letters on the board, a small concertina of paper landed on my desk. Casting a wary look at Mr Fieldson who was still engrossed in negative powers, I unfolded the note under the table.

Are we still dyeing our hair and having that meeting after school today?

What with all the pressure still hanging over us from the end-of-term exams, I'd forgotten about our plans for the Christmas holidays. We'd been talking about them all through our previous lessons in excited whispers only a few days ago (earning ourselves a few near-missed detentions, I might add), but I was famous within my group of friends for not only being clumsy enough to trip over my feet no less than fifteen times while walking to school (Dylan was getting so annoyed at me that she had started counting whenever we walked together), but for having a memory worse than a goldfish with amnesia.

A smile crept across my face as I wrote a reply to Dylan's note. Of course. Can't wait! We're going to look awesome! I quickly passed it to the boy sitting next to me and told him to get it to Dylan. We had come up with the idea of dyeing our hair a few weeks prior, deciding on an unnatural and vibrant colour of our choice just as the Christmas holidays started. I was changing my light brown locks to a dark turquoise, and Dylan had chosen a lilac shade that I knew would look brilliant on her.

We were confident that the colours we'd chosen wouldn't look utterly terrible because we had tested out the dye last week on a lone strand of my light brown hair, and a single dark blonde curl of Dylan's. We always came up with crazy ideas like this, although they didn't always end well. They were a lot of fun and almost always resulted in at least one of us gaining something from it, be it a weird fact (Dylan had once told me that a clam named Ming had lived to be 507 years old), a shared anecdote or a book to borrow, along with rules, of course.

I had always been intensely protective over my vast and continuously-growing collection of novels (which at my last count had amassed to no less than three-hundred and twelve books; I was very proud of myself for managing to obtain so many), and - with Dylan's help, of course - had scribbled out a list of Book Borrowing Rules, and I gave anyone who wanted me to lend them one of my precious stories a photocopy of the list, usually to their utmost annoyance and confusion. The small collection of rules read as follows:

Formal rules for borrowing Eve Palmer's books: A list compiled by Eve Palmer and Dylan Holmes, aged 13.

1. Always use bookmarks to keep your place.

2. Do not, I repeat, DO NOT fold over the corners of the pages. PLEASE. Only the worst of the worst would willingly fold the corners of novel pages. Like Voldemort, for example. Or on second thoughts, he probably just destroys the book completely, which is even worse. If Voldemort or any of his faithful followers happen to be reading this, DOBBY DESERVED TO LIVE!

3. No reading the borrowed book in the bath in case you drop it.

4. In fact, no reading the borrowed book near any liquids that could cause potential damage to the book.

5. No annotations, highlighting or any similar practice.

6. No crumbs in the middle of pages, no smears of any kind of food/paint/mud, etc. Also no cracking/bending the spine or the covers (front and back).

7. Although fangirling/fanboying/ whatever gender plot-related excitement is DEFINITELY allowed. In fact, it is actively encouraged.

8. NO RIPPING OUT/RIPPING THE PAGES OR COVERS, ON PAIN OF DEATH.

Now that I had read over the spare copy that I kept in the front pocket of my bag again, it did seem kind of weird and excessive. No wonder my charming fellow students often shouted 'Loony Lovegood' at me when I was in the hallways on my way to class, or , more often than not, the library. It had started off as an affectionate nickname solely reserved for my friends, but one of the 'popular girls' (or 'Airheads', as we liked to call them) overheard Dylan calling me it after school, and it had spread like wildfire. Although it had bothered me at the time, I didn't particularly mind now. Luna had always been one of my favourite Harry Potter characters, although they were all too stupid to realise that, of course.

Just as I turned my attention back to the seemingly-nonsensical questions on the board, I felt a slight vibration in my pocket. I knew what was happening a split second before I heard my Star Wars ringtone blare out from inside the fabric of my blazer. Oh shit. I felt twenty nine people's icy gazes crackling through the air and burrowing into my spine, making me shiver slightly as Mr Fieldson strode towards me, a blatantly pleasurable grin on his face.

I've already mentioned that I'm the wildly unlucky student that he hates for some unfathomable reason, and he picks on me and only me. It's ridiculous! If anyone steps a toe out of line, I get blamed for it, no matter what they do. If someone is talking three rows behind me and I'm scribbling away quietly in my exercise book, he'll write my name on the whiteboard in the 'punishments' section, and the person that got away with it will either mime 'he's crazy' at me, or look at me smugly because I involuntarily took their punishment for them.

So far I have had eight detentions from him, and they are all either from forgetting to bring in homework (which you're supposed to give a second chance for), talking while I'm doing the work (and he manages to pick me out of TWENTY NINE OTHER PEOPLE WHO ARE ALSO TALKING,MOST OF THEM EVEN LOUDER THAN ME) or talking back, which I've only done twice when the punishment I got was particularly unfair. And to think it's only December.  

The mere memory of the most recent one made my blood boil, as I had been comforting a girl named Ash while she was having one of her panic attacks, which was unfortunately triggered during the lesson, and doubly unfortunate due to the fact that it had occurred just as Mr Fieldson was engrossed in another one of his lectures about us being the 'worst class I've had in forty years'.

Rolling my eyes, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and slapped it onto his outstretched palm. Now, before you start thinking that I'm some kind of juvenile delinquent who gives teachers the finger and skips detentions, I'm not (well, I was a bit, ahem, loud when I was protesting, but that didn't count. That was for a good cause.). It's just that I don't see the point of behaving well in maths because stupid Mr Fieldson is just going to tell me off anyway.

"Miss Palmer," snarled Mr Fieldson, his cracked lips still grinning like the Joker at the possible prospect of having an excuse to issue me a detention on the last day of term. I closed my eyes momentarily."Yes?" 

As I spoke, I flicked my earlobes. Once right, twice left. I tapped my knees with my index fingers under the table, ten times on each kneecap. My heart thumped dangerously. Hands shaking, I finished my ritual by rubbing three circles on the inside of each wrist with my thumbs, one circle above the other. My heart slowed. I could breathe again.

"Don't answer back, you imbecilic girl! Obviously I can't confiscate your phone because, as a result of the inconveniently-timed Christmas holidays, it is prohibited for me to do so which, in my humble opinion, is most unfortunate. However-"

He sneered at me unnecessarily before continuing. "-I will have it first thing after the break." With a poisonous scowl twisting his features, he slammed it back on the desk, and I couldn't resist rolling my eyes at his petty attempt to annoy me. "Careful ,sir!" I exclaimed theatrically, evoking more sniggering and earning me yet another murderous look from the teacher. Thankfully, though, he didn't say anything this time, as I thought he might.

After examining the screen for cracks, I slipped it back into my blazer triumphantly. Ava, the unusually tall girl who sat on my left and my close friend of two years, nudged me and whispered, "You're pretty used to this aren't you?" I wasn't quite sure what I was supposed to say to that, so I just raised my right eyebrow and said nothing. Suddenly I heard a shrill blaring just outside the classroom, and conveniently so.

Saved by the bell. I rushed out of the classroom before Mr Fieldson could change his mind (or dismiss the rest of the class, for that matter), Dylan close at my heels and both of us snickering at the delinquent-esque stunt I'd pulled as we ran down the corridor.