Heretic, Child

2. [A.S]

Frankie is given the cold shoulder by Percy for the rest of the term. He doesn't seem to know who to trust on the whole Mrs Dodds ordeal. No one else claims to have any idea who she is, so surely Frankie must be playing some kind of cruel trick on him too. Why else would she pretend to sympathise with him over her disappearance after he's been nothing brusque to her for most of their lives?

Just like Percy's opinion of her is constantly evolving, so is Frankie's opinion of him, and ever since that field trip she had been at a point where she didn't care what he thought of her. Let him give her the cold shoulder in the halls, it was no skin off her back, none, whatsoever.

But just when she thought that she might be doing better, that she might not have to move schools at the end of the school year, shit hit the fan.

In her delusion that things might end in her favour, Frankie had persuaded her best friend into sitting in the auditorium during the breaks between their exams. They weren't being destructive or anything untoward aside from the fact that they weren't supposed to be in there to begin with. Amit was studying in an attempt to not get held back a second time, and Frankie, who knew better than to try and overload her brain in the hours before an exam, was sitting behind him trying to put his floppy black hair in a rose-gold butterfly clip.

Amit made a sound of irritation when Frankie's efforts pulled him too far away from his notes. "Frank, I really don't want to fail, again."

"You won't fail," Frankie assured him, even though she had no idea how well he'd adjusted to the American school system in the last four months. "And you didn't fail last year."

"They held me back all the same, I don't want that to happen again."

Frankie sighed, Amit had twice the dedication to school that she did. She coasts by on mostly Cs and a handful of Ds when Amit stressed over even the non-weighting assignments, only to get the same less than stellar marks as her.

"Alright," Frankie put Amit's hair clip and comb down next to him on the stage, and snatched the palm cards from his hands. "Give me these, I'm gonna ask you questions, you're gonna answer them, and you're gonna remember this crap, and get a pass on your science exam."

It was proof enough of his nerves that Amit only turned around to face her, cracking his fingers in anticipation of Frankie's first question.

"Question one:" She flicked through the stack of maybe thirty-five cards, impressed at the lengths her friend had gone to and only slightly sheepish that all she'd done was glance at her workbook. "Did you raid Mrs Wilson's art room without telling me?"

"No," Amit shoved his hands under his thighs.

"Then why are there so many colours of paper, was it some other teacher that you stole 'em from?"

"It's some dyslexia hack the guidance counsellor told me to try."

"To help with what?"

"Reading?"

"Is it working?"

Amit groaned and flopped forward in a display of his in-human levels of flexibility. "I'm gonna fail this exam."

"Hey," Frankie said firmly, pulling on his shoulders until he sat up properly to look at her. "Your worth is not contingent on this exam. It is not contingent on any of these exams. I will curb stomp anyone who tries to tell you otherwise, alright."

Amit's pout deepened and his eyes went glassy. "Frank, you're gonna make me cry."

"You're gonna make me cry if you try and get me to sing that song about the periodic table with you one more time."