𝐆𝐋𝐔𝐄𝐃 𝐓𝐎𝐆𝐄𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑 || #𝟏

Chapter 32

Her whole table follows after her. Mrs Child looks mortified, and retreats back to the kitchen. Later, she comes out with a pile of detention slips and hurls it at Alexis' table.

"I swear," Aubrey simpers, "this school is crazy."

-- ------ --

Ms Smith calls out for Lilac and I to present our science project. I walk up anxiously, pulling out my laptop and getting the powerpoint up. Lilac strides carelessly, assuming that I had done everything, which I did. I saw she had gone on the document to make sure that all the work had been done.

"For our science fair project, we decided to focus on how hurricanes affect the surface temperature of oceans." I start off confidently, while Lilac trails off to the side reading the information on the screen. I start by explaining my hypothesis, go through the method as to how we conducted the experiment - and then Lilac started explaining the results.

Once she had finished doing the conclusion, Ms Smith announced our grade to the class.

"You both get an A," she boredly says, painting a coat of blue nail polish on. I feel relieved, and move to go sit back in my seat, but Lorelei stands up.

"Ms Smith," Lorelei says, "if I may... Lilac didn't do any of the work, it had all been Jasmine. She did everything."

Lilac looks betrayed, and mad at Lorelei. Ms Smith frowns at Lorelei, asks to borrow my laptop and starts searching through our project. Finally, she closes the lid and hands it back to me.

"Yeah, I can see that," she says.

Lilac looks shocked, and sputters - "how do you know that? You have no evidence."

"Uh, it's pretty obvious," Ms Smith said monotonously. As if she didn't want to be here, "on the google doc with all of the information and planning it shows that you didn't edit anything. I can show you, if you want."

Ms Smith motions for me to hand back my laptop to her. She opens it again, and turns it around for the whole class to see. The whole document is typed with words in green, all tagged that I had written it. There had been no sign of Lilac editing.

"And furthermore," Ms Smith added. "The powerpoint isn't shared with you."

"That could just mean that Jasmine didn't want to collaborate with her though," Alexis reasons, butting into the conversation. Ms Smith narrows her eyes, and sighs.

"Why didn't Lilac ask her for access in the presentation then? If she really did want to do her part in the work, she would've done that, don't you think?

Lilac glares at me, and stomps back to her seat. Lorelei sits down, and smugly smiles at me. Ms Smith hands back my open laptop, and I retreat back to sitting at the back of the class. Lilac decides to shoot me one last venomous glare, followed by the rest of her new friend group.

I sink back into my chair, watching Lorelei and Emily present their project on how different conditions affect how plants grow. Emily had brought in five different pots with plants. One of them was noticeably bigger than the others, and one of them was covered in mold. As it turned out, Lorelei was allergic to mold and was sneezing during the whole presentation, and at one point had to leave for the nurse office to get an epipen. Emily finished the presentation, and when Lorelei came back into the class - it was to get her bag to go to the hospital.

Lorelei is fine, if you are wondering. After being administered the epipen she had to go to the hospital because it's routine for that to happen. I could explain specifically why, but I'm sure that none of you really want to read about medical related issues in this book.

"Our project was on how different fertilisers affect how plants grow," Alexis presented. Angel brought out three pots, none of them showing any signs of life. "And as it turned out, none of them actually grew."

Ms Smith smacks her hand on her forehead, motioning for them to give her the pot plant. She examines it, and seems annoyed. "Maybe they didn't grow because you didn't give them any water."

"I thought that fertilisers were meant to basically be their source of water," Alexis reasons.

"See? I told you we were meant to give them water, but you refused!" Angel complains. Alexis glares at her, and looks back at the teacher.

"Well, they all didn't grow!" Alexis snaps, "and we wrote down our method and our summary and everything! It shouldn't matter what the results of the experiment were, we just did the work!"

Ms Smith furthermore examines the pot. "Hey Alexis, are you sure these are seeds that you planted because it looks a lot like a spider egg- AHHHH!"

She drops the pot plant on the desk. Suddenly, brown starts to cover the white pot, and everybody stands up. Baby spiders crawl all over the pot, and most of the class starts screaming. Mrs G, who was teaching an English class next door bursts in the room and sees what's happening. She cries out, and runs down the hall telling us to evacuate. We all clear out of the classroom, watching intently from the window the spiders slowly take over our classroom.

Out of nowhere, there is suddenly a huge tarantula emerging from another pot that Alexis had brought in. Alexis gasps.

"What's my sister's pet tarantula doing there?" She squeals, "is that why it disappeared? We were looking for him for the longest time!"

"How'd he get there in the first place!?" Elena shrieks, "and without you noticing?"

"I think he must've crawled underneath the pot, and then I took it! Dang, that's also probably his eggs!"

"I think they are her eggs," Max corrects. "Male spiders don't lay eggs, female's do."

"So we've misgendered my sister's spider the whole time?" Alexis cries, "I hate spiders as well! I just want to crawl into a ball and smash that thing to death!"

Meanwhile, Emily looks quite intrigued by the huge creature. She thinks with herself for a moment, and then turns to smile brightly at me: "I really want to go pat the spider! It looks so cute!" I grimace, and this catches her attention. "What's so wrong about wanting to be close to a spider? It's really cool!"

"Emily, you are a strange person," Alice mutters. "And also, thank god for this distraction because I wasn't ready to present."

"Everyone," Ms Smith calls out. "We'll do our presentations in the spare classroom next door."

"Fuck," Alice swears.