Bittersweet (Jenna Ortega)

chapter seven.

TUESDAY

Maise's POV

"Don't touch that." I slap Jenna's hand away from my soccer trophy that I received in seventh grade. "You destroy everything you touch."

"Harsh."

"Truth." I mock her tone.

"I expected your room to be.. messier."

"I'm not a teenage boy." I rummage through my bag for my History textbook.

"News to me."

"Hilarious," I imitate a fake laugh. "Can we just get to the tutoring? Any time spent with you is time I could be spending more productively like sleeping or eating or breathing or—"

"I get it." She scoffs.

I flip open my textbook, ignoring her as I settle on a page to read. Only two minutes in and I can't focus due to her snooping through my bookshelf.

I turn around in my chair, scowling at her. "This isn't a library. Put my shit back."

"The seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo.. and you annotated it too? God you are so sad." Jenna's chuckle is so condescending, I can't stop my rage. I stand up and wrench my precious book from her grubby little hands.

"Stop touching my stuff. Sit down."

Jenna rolls her eyes, flopping down into the chair. "You're no fun."

"Oh, like you're any better. You want me invading your privacy? As I recall, you didn't even want me to set foot in your place."

I notice her face fall for a brief second before her features morph into a glare. "Hand me my textbook, I'll quiz you on what little knowledge you already have."

"No, I hate quizzes."

"No shit. That's why we're here." She scoffs. "Get me my textbook, it's in the third pocket of my bag."

I groan out a quiet complaint and reluctantly grab her textbook. I hand it to her with a narrowed stare.

"You're so kind, thank you." The sarcasm is heavy on her tongue.

I hoist myself up onto my desk. "Hit me with the first question."

"Don't be so surprised when you don't know the answers to any of them."

I blow out a mocking breath. "I know more than you'd think."

"We'll see about that."

Jenna scribbles down my score as I swing my legs back and forth, waiting on my results.

I'm pretty confident in all fifteen questions. It was like a spitfire of answers, one after the other. I didn't even hesitate.

"Alright," She says, sliding a piece of paper over to me. "You got one question."

"Wrong?" I ask smugly.

"Right. One question you answered out of the whole fifteen is correct."

My mouth drops open. "You're kidding." I mutter in disbelief.

"Take a look for yourself." She taps her pen against the singular question I got right, and the other fourteen that were wrong.

"Shit, I really do know nothing."

"You need to study more. No. You need to study, period."

I dive onto my bed, shoving my face into a pillow. "I should just take the fail."