The Smell of Rebellion

Chapter Four

A/N: Thank you for 100 reads!!!

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"Hortensia," The teacher called her name unenthusiastically, with a completely unamused expression, "take a seat. I will not have you interrupting my class like this, so please, head to your seat and open your textbooks to page 35."

Miss Plimsol was a rather short woman, with greying brunette hair worn in curls. Her eyes were a warm brown colour, and her skin was white, but well saturated. She had full lips and cheeks, with some faint wrinkles visible. Smile lines were also on her face, but Hortensia seldom saw her smile much. Must've been a result of teaching at Crunchem Hall.

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes, and suppressed a sigh as she walked to her desk in the third row, on two desks away from the right wall of the classroom. Hortennsia pulled out her heavy English textbook with a bit of a struggle, not bothering to close it and button it shut as she left it leaning against the leg of her desk.

Realising she was missing her pencil, she turned to the girl next to her, Mia, and whispered, "Can you give me a pencil?"

Mia Jenkins wasn't exactly known for her kindness, but she had loads stationary to spare, and she wasn't heartless, that was for sure. She rolled her green eyes, opened her pencil case, and passed her a sharpened pencil.

"Thanks," She whispered, and Mia shrugged in acknowledgement before returning to the lesson.

Miss Plimsol didn't seem to notice their whispering, or didn't care, and continued teaching the class.

"Your vocabulary words for this week are," She turned to start writing them on the blackboard with white chalk:

Adjacent

Accumulate

Adapt

Adequate

Drastic

Elaborate

Obedient

Oblivious

Peculiar

Persuade

Students opened notebooks and the sound of pencil on paper started to sound, and Hortensia rested her casted arm on the notebook as she wrote the words down in her scratchy handwriting. She knew she had to write fast, since Miss Plimsol had the rotten habit of erasing things too soon.

Sure enough, after only about two minutes, Miss Plimsol started to erase.
Panicked, Hortensia began scribbling faster in her notebook, rushing to get the words 'peculiar' and 'persuade' down.

Just in time, too, because when she looked up again, the only trace of the words ever being up was a blurry white background. Hortensia let out a quiet breath of relief as Miss Plimsol started to say, "Can anyone tell me the definition of adjacent? It's listed in the first section of page 35." Heads snapped to books, students flipped through pages, and eyes scanned the pages as fingers traced the letters.

Olivia Deverell raised her hand, sitting up straight like she always did. She was one of the more uptight prefects at Crunchem Hall, with black hair, darker skin, and brown eyes. She had her dark brown hair in a single braid down her back all the time. She spoke formally and walked formally and acted like a soldier all the time until she hardly looked and acted like a primary school student. She was also stressed constantly, pressured by grades and her school duty.

Hortensia had tried to talk to her a few times, but it was hard to talk to her. She was too serious for that, so she only tried to talk to her during break when she was fractionally less stressed. Even then, she was very uptight and quite stuffy, so Hortensia tended to avoid her.