Legends of Mirandis Academy

Chapter 35: Plight of the Academic

Brielle buried her face in her hands at her desk. She wanted nothing more than to be able to think coherently—finals were around the corner, and she needed every result to be pristine and untouched by mistakes.

Her internship application was officially sent in, so at least she had that relief. She met all the qualifications ten-fold: this was the exact type of thing all her AP classes and extracurriculars were for. She never would have imagined herself to be that kind of STEM person, but it was a way out. And a way out was exactly what she needed. An internship with NASA was the type of thing that no college admissions officer could look past. She was guaranteed a perfect future if she got this.

But she still had to take her finals first.

English was beginning to wrack her brain, so she slid the notes away, searching through her bag for a different subject. Iridia's dark AP Chem folder and black notebook caught her eye. Brielle liked color coding her folders per subject, while Iridia, on the other hand, obviously didn't care. They were labeled, she knew the subject, and that was evidently all that mattered to her.

After their collision outside the school, Iridia had offered Brielle her notes. She had given Brielle that beautiful small smile of hers and admitted that she herself probably wouldn't use them. Wouldn't it be so amazing, Brielle thought, if she had been trying to be sweet to me? Iridia knew how much Brielle cared about her academic performance. It was just a few notebooks, but it was still a thoughtful gesture.

For a few minutes, Brielle was swept into a reverie. She slowly came to herself, focusing on the computer screen that glowed on her desk. It still displayed the NASA logo and an important-looking background. There was a little message thanking her for her application. Brielle frowned as she gazed at the screen. This was her future. Not Iridia, not Kelam. She had built her life on a foundation of dedication and her own wits; there was no room for fruitless wishing! She would go as far as she needed to get away from these feelings. She would go to the moon, if that was what it took.

She set about studying with renewed determination. Iridia's notes were absurdly messy, making Brielle's job of translating and studying them infinitely harder. She did what she could with them, mostly cross-referencing her own notes and filling in the gaps with sticky notes or otherwise, but that left her flipping through the papers a tad quicker than she'd anticipated. For the lecture material, a lot of their notes were similar. They often did independent labs though, she remembered, and dove into the folder Iridia had also loaned her.

She flipped through them, compared, adjusted, highlighted, studied. It was hard to keep Iridia out of her head when she was staring at the words she'd written. She had to focus on the factual information in front of her, not anything emotional that was trying to surface. She had a goal to complete, she had exams to ace. She could not be distracted by persistent thoughts of an endearing mechanic.

Towards the back of one side of the folder, she found a piece of binder paper. Not a worksheet or a lab form, but a sheet torn from a notebook, hastily folded and shoved behind all the notes. It took her by surprise, it being so out of place, but she had no reason not to take the paper out, lay it by her notes, and promptly open it to examine and copy down all its contents.

It was not chemistry.

It was a poem.

It was in what Brielle could only assume was attempted quatrains, something of a freeform that gave so much more clarity than whatever Draft #5 had. This was titled New Draft #1—her titles were so creative—and it was patient. She had paid some sort of attention during the poetry lesson, it seemed. Or maybe she was just inspired, but the source of her inspiration sent Brielle's heart beating at record speeds.