Only Once

Chapter Three: An Inequitable Mark

Chapter Three: An Inequitable Mark

Erika angrily marched down the crowded hallways of her school. The short, knit skirt she was wearing clung to her body as she walked, making it harder to take long strides, and her black wavy hair vivaciously bounced with each step she took.

Anger and determination radiated from her as she swiftly turned a corner and narrowly avoided walking right into small, unsuspecting freshman. The freshman, however, dropped his books in surprise but Erika strode right past him.

"Hey, Erika!" a random person greeted her.

But she ignored the person; she was too furious for small talk. The last thing she wanted was pretend to care and talk to people whom she considered to be merely acquaintances. Instead, Erika’s high heels made loud clanking sounds as she took the final steps to her destination: the cafeteria.   

She dramatically threw the glass doors open and entered the smelly and crowded school cafeteria. As always, there was a group of people crowded by the microwaves, wanting to heat their lunches and the schools narks were seated on stools a few feet away from the microwave and watching over everything with narrowed, cautious eyes.

Erika walked right past all that, not even bothering to spare a glance, and instead strode to her table. The table. Located in the very centre of the cafeteria, only the most prestigious students of the school and senior grades had the dispensation of sitting there. The inhabitants of the table were all rich, well dressed, reasonably good looking and supposedly amiable folk through a façade of sugary smiles and behaviours.

In other words, they were all what Erika considered being frauds and personally, she couldn’t stand the majority of them.  

Erika marched down the length of the table and finally approached the very end of it were the only people she could tolerate were seated. In other words, her friends and boyfriend.

"What's wrong?" Jenna, her Korean friend, asked and glanced up at the raven haired girl through her bangs. The fact that Erika had yet to take a seat was a bad sign.

"Yeah, you look like you're in a really bad mood." Melanie, her other friend, uncertainly agreed and momentarily stopped eating her salad.

Erika paused for a moment and looked at her two best friends and boyfriend, ignoring everyone else seated at the table, before tossing her graded English essay on the table.

Although it looked like it was reasonably well done as it had been typed using a sleek font and printed on thick paper with a laser jet printer, the pages were covered with red markings and scribbling.

"This is what's wrong." Erika declared, motioning to the paper and sliding into a seat beside Melanie.

Chade, who was seated across from Erika, tentatively picked up her essay and examined it. His blue eyes hastily scanned the paper and he looked up at his girlfriend after he was done.

"This is a fine mark!" he exclaimed. "A sixty-four percent is nothing to be upset about!"

Erika glowered. Unlike her, Chade considered getting any mark over sixty percent to be amazing. With that said, he rarely got anything over sixty percent.

"Did you speak to your teacher about it?" Jenna asked as she grabbed the paper from Chade and started looking through it, flipping the pages and thoroughly examining it.

"Ugh yes," she groaned and ran a finger through her hair. "But she said that a sixty-four was apparently very generous of her and that I deserve way lower."

"Oh," Jenna said, not knowing what else to say. She always earned high marks and never had to deal with the hassle of having to beg for extra marks.