𝐂𝐋𝐀𝐑𝐈𝐓𝐘||𝐌𝐈𝐊𝐄 𝐌𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐆𝐎𝐌𝐄𝐑𝐘

𝟗. 𝐒𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐬, 𝐛𝐫𝐨𝐤𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐡

✧

    BROOKE WAS SERIOUSLY CONSIDERING upping and moving to Australia. First of all, with it being half way across the planet, nobody would have even heard about Alison Dilaurentis and thus wouldn't be able to associate her with the blonde, second of all, it would get her as far away from A as physically possible, but most importantly, because they did not have S.A.T exams in that country and thus, instead of graving away over text books and flash cards, she could be sunbathing on a sandy beach under the hot uv rays of the sun.

     But as much as she wished she was in the land down under, she was instead sat at the Hastings kitchen table, with stale and left over take out in the middle of the table, surrounded by words that she either didn't understand or that she had seen so many times she wished she didn't.

     Her forehead lay on the textbook in front of her, a loud groan emitting from her lips while the three girls also around the table, laughed at her reaction to the dreaded exams. Spencer, Aria and Brooke had spent the last six hours cramming as much information into their heads as possible. It had been a long two weeks since Alison's memorial and now the pressure was on for a different reason.

     Brooke had tried to replace the boy stuck in her head with a million words, but nothing seemed to stick as much as him and the fact that they had hardly spoken since the night that him and Arias parents left, aside from him giving her a whole two answers in the history lessons where Mr Stein was being particularly harsh.

     She knew she shouldn't be thinking about him, not when she was trying to cram for exams, she knew that he probably wasn't thinking about her right now while he was revising for his own, but the thought of him was starting to drive her crazy. It was interfering with her sleep, her lessons (particularly History) and her general train of thought.

     "This is insane. How many words do they expect you to learn in one night?" She complained lifting her head from on top of the text book and rubbing the red mark it left, flipping through the text books and flash cards that she had been loaned by Spencer who had of course been revising since September last year.

     Aria rolled her eyes at the girl with a smile. "Stringent." She read out to Spencer who was stressfully writing things down in a notebook, not that she needed to know much girl. She was already a walking dictionary. Brooke breathily laughed at the girl before turning back to her notebook.

     Shaking her hands as she thought, she scrunched her eyes closed trying to rack her brain for the answer amidst the many many more she knew. "Uh, tough. Inflexible." She defined once the thought had hit her and Aria nodded, dropping it down into the pile of cards she had got correct which was quickly growing in size, compared to the pile that she didn't know which consisted of a single card that Spencer didn't count for herself because she could only remember one other word to describe it. Brooke didn't even know one.

     "It's not like you're going to actually use them." Hannah agreed with Brooke, carelessly flipping through the answer page of a textbook even though she hadn't actually answered the questions.

     "Meretricious." Aria recited, ignoring Hannah and Brooke's passing comments. It wasn't that the girls didn't want to revise, but Brooke was completely burnt out. She wished that she could be like Spencer, that she could absorb everything like a sponge but she couldn't. Everything she learnt went in one ear and out the other. So if she failed it wasn't for a lack of trying.