H.O.P.E.F.U.L

more time...

The busy university hallways echoed with Sirena's raucous laughter as we made our way to the math classroom.

"You sure it's not just in your pocket?" Lucy asked Nash. The idiot had left his phone at home and hadn't realized until now. He had paused everyone in the middle of the hallway to rifle through his mess of a backpack.

"Shit." Nash mumbled under his breath. "It's not here,"

"Maybe if you actually organized your bag as well as you organized your room, you'd be able to find it," Quinn said dryly from where she was now leaning against the wall, arms crossed.

Nash's room was the most horrendous mess I'd ever seen. When we first moved in, he and Corey had shared a room, but then Corey had made him move into the basement. It was that bad. At least in the basement, his mess could be contained in one place.

"Thanks, Quinn, great help," Nash snapped back. "Whatever, I'll just find it after class." he zipped up his backpack.

"Can we stop blocking the corridor now?" Quinn asked.

"Yes, yes," Nash sighed. Just as he slung his backpack around his shoulders, his calculator fell out clattering on the hallway floor.

"Didn't you lose that last lesson?" Corey asked.

Nash just gave him a dirty glare as he picked it up. "Thought I did, actually.." he mumbled

"Can we all walk a bit faster?" Lucy asked impatiently. "We're gonna be late." She flashed everyone the time on her phone.

"It's math. Does it matter if we're late?" Sirena asked.

"It does to me," Lucy said. "You see, Sirena, some people want to get good grades."

"Doesn't everyone?" Corey said, grinning at Sirena. She rolled her eyes.

We turned the corner and into the classroom.

"You 6!" The teacher, Aadesh, scolded, pointing at us with an angry look on his face. "You're seven whole minutes late."

We stood there in the doorway awkwardly. Suddenly, his face broke into a smile, and he waved a hand. "Just kidding, it's fine,"

"Thanks, Professor," Lucy responded to all of us. Thank goodness he was just joking.

"Take a seat, everyone," Aadesh said. "Don't worry, we haven't started yet, I've been telling everyone about my adorable little babies."

Nash's eyes widened. "Kai and Ariel?"

"Doesn't he have the weirdest obsession with those kids?" Corey nudged me and whispered in my ear.

"It's a little unsettling," I responded. "He'd be a good dad, though,"

"Agreed,"

"And this morning, Kai ate a whole piece of cake!" Aadesh had finished retelling Nash and the girls his long story about whatever his kids had done today. To be fair, his little baby twins Kai and Ariel were easily the cutest kids I had seen, big blue eyes and blonde curly hair.

Although he talked about his kids a lot - maybe too much, through all my years so far I'd had Aadesh as a math professor, and he had always been amazing, both as a teacher and a person.

"Anyways, enough about my little kiddies," Aadesh laughed. "Let's get into some actual work,"

We took our seats in the top left corner of the huge amphitheatre and unpacked our stuff.

"Alright, so let's turn our thoughts to our most recent investigation on statistics."

I took out my notebook and laptop to start working and taking notes.