The Flynn Effect

bonus chapter

Flynn

MRS JUNE IS not happy to see me. She flips through a file which I suspect contains my academic records over the past few years and pushes her glasses further up her nose. Mind you, she never wears glasses except when she has me in her office or any other 'notorious' student apparently.

If it's an attempt to look menacing, then she'd have to do better than that.

"You're going to fail." There. She drops it just like that, without any filter.

"Yeah, no shit."

The arch of her eyebrow is so sharp, it scares me for a second. "Excuse me?"

"It's an inside joke." Carter quickly says, coming to my defense. "What he's trying to say is literally the opposite."

What the fuck does that even mean? "That doesn't even make any sense."

"Shut up." He grits and I lean further against the chair with a sigh.

Mrs June slams a sheet of paper in front of me and points a finger at my grades. "If any of this is funny to you, then I suggest you might have to reconsider your sense of humor because you're not going anywhere if you keep failing English like this. It's one of the core subjects you need to graduate," then she turns to Carter. "You both know that."

I glance at my scoresheet and trace my grades with my eyes. It's fairly good to be honest, not bad if I want to end up as a high school teacher but for some reason, English keeps fucking me up. I don't mind my grades. I've not cared about them ever since I gave up my position as swim captain. I've not cared about many things since then but it's been a while since I felt like a true idiot and now, staring at the reds on my scoresheet, I really do feel like an idiot.

"I don't get it," she tells me, snatching the paper away from me. "I'd understand your excuse as captain but you dropped that title a while ago. We don't accept that excuse for athletes anymore now, Carter knows that. So there's no excuse not to study."

"Unfortunately." He mumbles, smiling at her regardless.

I scratch my eyebrow and tip my head back against the chair. I don't want to spend another minute in here.

To my misfortune, she nods at Carter and gestures towards the door. "If you'll give us a moment."

"Of course," he says, rising to his feet. Then he leans towards me and mumbles, "Don't fuck this up. She's trying to help you." And then he turns around and leaves.

It's just me and her in this stuffy-as-hell office and all her attention is on me now.

"Flynn, I understand you're struggling–"

"I'm not," I say, cutting her off before she can say anything else. "I'm fine. My sister has nothing to do with this."

She regards me for a moment before clicking her tongue and looking away. She pushes her glasses up her nose again and brings out another sheet of paper from whatever collection she has down there. "If you say so."

She clears her throat and begins. "Do you have a problem with the teacher?"

"No."