ficlet #4

Title: School Angst

Prompt: some angsty nonromantic GoGo stuff

Requested by: Our Mismatched Socks

Set: before film

GoGo hated school.

She hated the fact that she knew more about certain things than the other kids, and knew less about the things she wasn't interested in than the teachers wanted her to know.

All she really wanted to do each day was go home and work on her bike.

Well, she was sixteen for crying out loud! School for her was about to be over anyway. There was no need to learn stupid maths problems, or the ratio of white paint to pink if you wanted to paint a freaking telescope or whatever...

She kicked a stone as she neared her house. Well, not technically her house either, it belonged to her foster parents, and they were a lost cause sometimes too.

To be honest, she was just not in the mood today for much other than playing with her engineering skills.

Slipping through the front door, she headed up the stairs as quietly as she could, pausing every so often to hear if she had been detected in the house. Most of the time she prefered to be left alone.

GoGo sighed with relief when she got to her room undetected.

Heading over to her window, she glanced around before quickly and easily slipping out of the window and onto a tree just outside it. She slid down the trunk and sprinted the last few yards to the old run-down shed in the field.

Once in her 'workplace' as she had deemed it two years ago, she took a moment to lean against the metal and sighed again, this time in weariness.

Turning to the far end, she walked towards the bike she had been working on for a while now. Rollerskates, skateboards and various other contraptions she had tried to make go faster were spread around the smallish shed.

She ran a hand along the bike thoughtfully, then, suddenly tired, dropped to sitting beside the bike and reached out to take the wheel down.

While she worked on sanding the tyre to give it less friction grip and hopefully more speed, GoGo thought tiredly about the day at school. She had failed on a test in science, couldn't understand the new concept they had been learning in maths, and, to top it off, there had been no after-school engineering club.

Pretty much that was the only thing that she actually went to that damn school now, too.

All in all, she was feeling pretty annoyed and resigned. She let her head fall back against the metal of the shed wall, and leant against it with yet another sigh, staring at the metal ceiling.

To be honest, she hated growing up too. She knew that she had been grumpy recently, and that bothered her as well. She had been snapping at her friends, like she had to Honey Lemon today, recently, and they didn't deserve it.

Biting her lip as guilt set in a little, she looked back down at her sanded tyre and suddenly threw it from her in a perfect curve.

She was about to look away when she saw that the wheel was going pretty fast, and before she could react, it slammed into the door, not opening it but causing a very loud racket that made GoGo freeze.

After a moment, nothing happened and GoGo got up cautiously and went over to retrieve the wheel, looking at it closely.

Realising that this what was she had been trying to get to get to for the last week - or even month - GoGo felt the first smile of the day spread over her tired expression. She walked back to the bike and began work.

The whole day didn't have to be bad because school was. There was now engineering to do.