limerence | COMPLETED

06

"IT'S NICE TO SEE YOU ON TIME TODAY," LAYLA'S HOMEROOM TEACHER CASUALLY REMARKS AS Layla walks past her desk the next morning.

Suppressing the urge to throw the woman a dark look, Layla simply nods and continues on her way to her seat, receiving amused glances from Mercy and Savannah once she lowers down into the uncomfortable plastic. She shoots them a sarcastic look.

"She really doesn't like you, does she?" Savannah says, trying not to laugh.

"It's because I haven't told her what I'm doing with my university application," Layla mutters darkly.

"Still unsure what you want to do?" Savannah asks.

"Yeah, pretty much."

"I'm sure you'll figure it out soon," Mercy tries to comfort.

"Yeah," Layla lies.

Honestly, she does know one thing for sure. She doesn't want to go to university. But if she tells her homeroom teacher that, her parents will find out and she already knows how badly that will go down.

"I don't think I can deal with maths at this time of the morning," Mercy complains right after the bell rings. The girls rise to their feet, bags in hand, and begin heading down the hallway to their class. "Do we have to go? Can't we skip class?"

"Yes, we do!" Savannah immediately says, having to quickly dodge out of the way of another student whizzing by in the opposite direction. "Besides, we get our tests back today."

"Joy," Layla sighs.

Making it to the classroom, they sit down in their seats and pull out their textbooks and notebooks. Layla opens her bag and sighs again when she realises she left her textbook at home. Oh, well.

"Hurry up and get settled in class, we have a lot of work to get on with today!" their maths teacher, Mr Richardson, announces as he enters the room in an energetic whirl. Dread immediately courses through her. If he's in a good mood that means they'll be doing a lot of work. "Come on James, hurry it up! Chop-chop!"

"Does this mean we did well on our tests?" James asks from his seat a couple of rows back.

Callum shrugs unhelpfully and Kai's too engrossed in answering some additional maths problems from the textbook to hear the guy.

"If he's in a good mood, maybe I did better than I thought," he sighs hopefully to himself.

They'll soon find out it seems because their teacher starts waltzing around the class to hand out the tests from last week. There are a few groans, a few happy reactions and some unsure responses once people receive their papers.

Layla's paper is finally placed down in front of her.

"Don't take your mark to heart, you're working outs are almost there, it's just your answers," Richardson murmurs, pausing momentarily by her desk before moving on again. Layla doesn't bother looking at her mark and turns her head to the window instead.

Mercy and Savannah nosily look over at her paper. They don't say anything though so she must have gotten a bad mark.

"So I thought today we could go through the questions together and figure out where people went wrong!" their teacher explains excitedly. "Let's start with the first question. Can someone who got it correct explain how they got their answer?"

The lesson officially begins as someone in their class lifts their hand to answer. Savannah gives Layla an encouraging tap on the elbow to listen. Guessing it won't hurt to at least try and pay attention, she faces the front, cupping her chin in her hand.