Diamond S Ranch

31-Under Pressure

After the chaos of the morning Jake made sure to keep everyone busy, especially those involved, basically he was trying to keep them occupied and hopefully from causing any more problems. Elle had no idea where Gage and Garrett ended up but she didn't even see them during lunch. After lunch she and Lillie were in her room and she was trying to work on writing her five hundred sentences. She knew she was supposed to do this kind of thing in the Study but no one was really around right now and this way Lillie could paint her finger nails while she worked on those stupid sentences. 

She was sitting on her bed writing as Lillie sat on the floor next to her painting her nails a canary yellow color. Elle flopped back on her pillow.

"Ugh! This sucks!" 

"What number are you one now?" Lillie asked as she started blowing on her left hand trying to dry her nails on that hand first.

Elle let out a dramatic sigh, "Seventy three...at this rate I am never going to finish these."

"Want me to help?" She asked as she held out her hand admiring her nail painting skills, not bad she thought to herself.

Elle laid there staring up at the ceiling thinking about it. If she didn't get Lillie to help soon, she would be leaving before long then she would be stuck doing these all herself. 

"Let's try it and see if you can make it look like mine." Elle said as she sat up and grabbed a sheet of paper. 

Lillie climbed up on the bed, sat down and started writing out the sentence Jake was making Elle write.

I will never show disrespect to any police officer again and will obey all orders they give me.

Lillie tried to mimic Elle's writing which wasn't really to hard to do. They both wrote very similar anyway except for maybe a few letters. Elle had her write it ten times before she compared them. After much talk Lillie said she was going to do it anyway and she could use them if she wanted to or not. Elle smiled at her friend as she handed her some more paper and together as they listened to some Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran and other favorites as they wrote as fast as they could.  Elle was ready to finish the last of her punishments from the whole school cigarette drama. Well, almost the last.

They both knew that they would be returning to school tomorrow, first day back from their suspension and that also meant seeing Mr. Strickland first thing in the morning. 

"Do you think he forgot about it?" Lillie asked as she continued writing.

"Fat chance." Elle answered.

"Does it hurt?" Lillie asked. She had never been paddled before. 

Elle shrugged her shoulders. "Yeah, but it's over fast." She felt her face flame. It was embarrassing even talking with Lillie about it. She wondered if Strickland would make them all be in there at the same time or one at a time tomorrow morning.  Either way didn't really matter, it  was going to happen, that she was sure about. 

They spent the next two hours scribbling out  the sentences and finishing up their nails. By then Lillie's mom had called to say Lillie needed to come on back home now.  Jake let Elle ride with her on her bike to the cut through in the woods but then she had to come right back.  He also gave Lillie instructions that he would pick her up in the morning since he had to take Elle to school in the morning. Another reminder that they weren't going to get out of that paddling.

Before she went with Lillie she dropped off her five hundred sentences and put them on Jake's desk.  She prayed he wouldn't notice.  As far as she could tell, they looked pretty good, she just hoped he wouldn't be able to notice the differences.