If I Fail

Chapter 1

It was Monday morning. 2 weeks of school left. The JH Basketball league tournament was just within a week. Kyle would be at school soon. He lived about 2 to 3 blocks away from the HS/JH building. He would normally walk to school given the short distance. He grabbed his packed lunch and headed out the door. Kyle was a tallish boy. About 5'11. He was skinny and muscularly built. He was also pretty fast. Running a 5:20 mile on the JH Track team. Kyle was a good basketball player. He was a good 3 point shooter and also played defense pretty well. Kyle hanged out with a small group of friends at the school though. Those guys were David, Jake, Danny, Seth and Jacoby. These 5 had sorta hung around each other since early grades of grade school. And sports like Rec Basketball and Junior's track and field kept them entertained. Some even playing rec tackle football. Anyways, Kyle and the guys were now facing a problem. For much of the school year, the guys were using the "fake it to make it" system a ton. One of the guys would take homework home with them and they would just easily google all the answers and be given the written out version of problems that more stingy teachers would want. Then he would Snapchat or text the guys images of all the problems he just easily did and they would copy off the photo's. The next day they would come to school with their work nice and done. But now finals were approaching, and even the fake it to make it system wasn't helping much. The worksheets had gotten much less frequent and more and more of review days had been repeatedly hitting the classroom. Grades were slightly dropping but since there was no gradable work coming off this could become a problem fast.

Kyle entered through the front doors and into the main room for all the JH students. Several of the guys had already been there ahead of him like usual and most of the kids as well. Unless there was some important event or something personal between two of the guys during this pre-bell for the start of school the guys usually kept silent. Finally, the bell rang and first class's became minutes away from starting. Everyone went their ways to their class's. Getting through the first 3-4 hours wasn't too bad. The guys finally made it to lunch. "Man this crap sucks" said Seth with a annoyed tone in his voice. "I feel you" said Kyle opening his lunch box without even looking towards Seth. "I swear if we don't get some grade eligible papers soon I am going to be screwed" said Jacoby following Kyle's comment. David, Danny and Jake just nodded their head in agreement and saying things such related to as "me too". "Well if I fail finals here later this week then I am not going to be eligible for the league basketball tournament" said Jacoby with more of a highly anxious tone. "Don't worry about it too much guys, remember, we don't have to remember everything for the finals. Just getting a little bit better than a D+ or C- and we are all good" said Seth. "Seth, I see what you are saying, but unlike you, we have parents that actually give a shit about good grades and won't let their kids just slide by with sloppy C's or low D's" said Kyle in a normal tone. Not trying to be aggressive or hating tone. It was just more of a joke. "Well just passing has worked for me. I know you guys got some stricter parents when it comes to grades at least" said Seth in reply to Kyle's statement. "Ok so let's say we do bad on these finals? What are we giving up really? I mean, if you look at the big picture. Are the consequences just temporary or are they come by and then gone"? said Seth to the group. "Well, other than the tournament, we'd probably lose electronic privileges at home. Probably a week and a half at most". said Kyle. Lunch carried on with not that much of conversation between the guys.   The rest of the day carried on as well. Basketball practice was the last class of the day. Getting there was the funnest part about school. You got to shoot hoops and all that other practice type stuff. The night rolled by and Tuesday would come soon. The finals were ticking minutes closer.