Just The Four Of Us

Ch. 12: "I could get used to this."

Marley's POV

My math class's desks were arranged in a series of rows facing the front Promethean board. Dr. Mchardy stood in front waiting for the rest of my small class to file in.

"You three. In front." She said pointing to a group of girls. She continued to give everyone their new spots, "next row- and lastly, you guys in the back."

I paid no attention to where I was told to go, I was too focused on fixing the plethora of pins on my bag strap.

"Marley? I thought I gave you a seat."

"Probably. Sorry, I wasn't paying attention."

"Well, you're in the back."

I found myself in between the people considered to be "the smartest" in the class. It's funny, now that I look at it, by row the grades seem to-

"Oh shit."

I glanced to the person next to me, who basically finished my thought process. "You see it too right? It's set up by IQ."

"I mean...I'm not necessarily mad about it. At least I'm considered to be the smartest."

He wasn't wrong. It kind of gave me a new found confidence. At least I'm appreciated at school.

I could get used this.

***

Throughout the lesson, I don't think my mouth ever stayed shut for more than ten seconds at a time. The best part was that Dr. Mchardy never corrected us once. She didn't feel the need to hover over us constantly now that we were at the top of what basically became the class hierarchy.

I heard strong words coming from people in the first two rows featuring, "Oh I'm not dealing with this woman any longer" and "I'm getting my parents to talk to the school about this." Some of them coming from the closest friend I had in that class, Taylor.

I caught up with her at the end of class, because one: like I said, she was the only one I had, and two: what was going to happen to our teacher if she gets another complaint on top of the stacks of complaints already given to her?

"Hopefully administration will decide to fire her. She can't teach and she definitely isn't good with kids." Taylor retorted with rage in her sentences.

"Dr. Mchardy is not as bad as you make her out to be. I'm doing pretty okay..."

"Yeah for your words of reassurance 'Miss Back Row'.

I don't know what she wanted me to say. It was the truth. If I managed to make consistent A's and B's, how bad of a teacher is she really? There's no way she could actually be fired or anything like that.

Or at least, I didn't think so.

Hannah's POV

I arrived home and opened up the mailbox to find an abundance of letters from different colleges addressed to Ashley Riddick; she already had her scholarship to Louisiana Tech, yet she still received letters from desperate colleges. It served as a constant reminder that I was going to end up as an only child with Ash going to college and Alyssa downtown in Medical School.

I could hear the echoes of Ash's flute sounding through the threshold even before the door was unlocked. I put my hand on the doorknob and twisted it to enter.

"Ay yo me familia I am here." I announced to no one in particular

"Hannah come listen to my Christmas repertoire. Tell me if I suck."

I don't know why she enlisted me as a critic. It's not like I know what it's supposed to sound like. At least I had the ideas of the melody of "Mr. Grinch." Even if it was bad, it's still festive music and anything holiday related is my favorite thing.

I love everything that came with December and its festivities. The music, the neighborhood with every inch covered in lights, the Doctor Who specials, the confronting smell of pine that emanated from Mom's lampe berger, and having all my family under one roof. Lee did come home from Ruston every other weekend because of her major case of home sickness, but that's beside the point.

"I'm sure it sounds fine. My definition of amazing is your definition of horrid. The audience isn't going to have a copy of the music anyway."

"Ugh you're useless. You can go away and lock yourself in you room like usual," she replied.

"With pleasure." And with that I bounded up the stairs to my desk. I pulled out my journal and began to record the occurrences of my day. Nothing barely significant happened at school, it just lets me vent my thoughts and relax my nerves. Writing always had different purposes in my mind. Some days, it was an outlet for stress. Others, a way for me to express my emotions that danced around in my mind into stories and stanzas. There were few occasions where I felt that my thoughts were ineffable. Impossible to confine into small cookie cutter molds words. Most people would consider that as writer's block. I considered it as a challenge. The brilliant thing about literature is that the meaning never has to be truly stated. There's always loopholes and liberties that can be easily worked around. But I didn't feel the need to have to put literary devices into my entry. All I wanted to do was get everything on paper unwind the coil I had tightened up throughout the day. And writing, has always provided that for me.

"Sprout! I brought dinner home so come out of your dark hole and join your family."

My door unhinged slightly and I stepped out and hissed at the hall way lamp. I rhythmically descended down the staircase to the kitchen.

"So how was your day dadther?"

"Ah it could be better? You?"

"Well I realized how much I hate the students in my school," I answered, reminiscing the exchange of conversation I had with Tori earlier.

"Not like you didn't already know that coming into this."

"You right. You right."

I just don't understand why or how people like her are able to get so far in school. Especially when she tries her hardest to make herself feel better from putting down other people by her grammatically incorrect string of insults. She should at least try to make insults worth saying aloud that'll actually cause damage. At this rate, all the pain I'm feeling is the pain that she can't feel good about herself without making people feel worse about themselves.

A/N
So Mandy has officially been upgraded to title of Aaron Burr (sir, respectfully) because of some drama ish going down with someone stupid girl that Marley and Tabatha can't get away from. So we decided to put her as Lee because Laurens gets to shoot Lee and honestly that's how we feel about the whole situation.
~Han Ban🙃