LOVELORN

12|Math & grades

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*𝘛𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘴 𝘢 𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘨𝘦𝘳 𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘴𝘦𝘹𝘶𝘢𝘭 𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘢𝘶𝘭𝘵.*

THE SECOND Mrs. Leigh announced that we could start the test, everyone flipped it over, their eyes scanning the paper, already beginning to jot down solutions. I was blinking, trying to clear my hazy vision and calm my breathing.

The numbers were blending together and my palms were turning clammy. I've been studying. I can do this. Focus, focus, fucking focus Naya. Glancing up at the clock, I noticed five minutes had passed. I took some deep breaths and pulled myself the fuck together. Once I could actually focus on the problems, I realized I knew how to solve them. Caio and I had gone over similar ones.

A surge of pride overcame me as I filled in some questions. I tried not to panic when I got stuck on something, instead, I moved on and came back to it later. When the time was up, I felt much better about the test than the last one. It was definitely still far from an A, but if I'd even managed to pass, it was an accomplishment on its own.

"How'd it go?" Avi asked when I came out of the classroom.

"I managed to answer quite a lot of them!" I beamed.

"That's-"

Before he could answer, someone attacked me with a hug. I almost lost my balance, but righted myself and tried to recover from the near heart attack. The culprit was, of course, Zora.

"Math! How was it?" She asked me.

"I think I did okay!"

She squeezed me to the point that I couldn't breathe for a moment. "I'm so proud of you!"

I smiled, softer. "Thank you."

After she let go of me, she seemed to take notice of Avi. They exchanged stiff nods in greeting. There was some weird tension between them I couldn't decipher. I swallowed the knot in my throat and brushed it off.

Zora seized my wrist and dragged me away to lunch. We got our food and sat down. Caio was back and everything seemed fine between him and Mai again, so I figured I'd imagined that something might have happened between them.

"How did you feel about the test?" Caio asked.

"Much better than last time. Your tutoring really helped, thank you."

He smiled. "Happy to be of help."

The others fell into conversation after that. As usual, I mainly sat back and listened. Caio was usually primarily an observer as well. At least in group settings. Zora, Mai, and Mara took the lead. I was okay with that. Silas appeared to be happy simply to be in Mara's presence. His eyes were always set on her. Whenever she would laugh or do something cute, he had this adorable smile on his face. Anyone with eyes could see that he adored her.

"Naya!" Mai exclaimed suddenly.

"Mhm?"

"You're single, yeah?"