Only Once

Chapter Six: Dire Decisions

Chapter Six: Dire Decisions

It was Friday second period and the students of the grade twelve University-prep Advanced Functions course were happily seated in their seats. The students were either hard at work or talking with each other as they waited for their teacher to return with the homework she had gone to photocopy. That is, everyone but one apparent person seemed to be occupied by either completing work or socializing.

Seated in the very back corner, Spencer was half asleep as he tried to tune out the two annoying girls who were sitting near him.

"Oh my gosh! Yeah!" one of the girls squealed. "They are just so hot!"

"Yeah I know," her friend agreed. "And every time I hear that line, 'That's what makes you beautiful', I just suh-woon!"

"Tell me about it!" the first girl gushed. "And don't forget about those sexy accents and angelic voices."

Both girls then proceeded to sing the song they were talking about in their annoyingly high-pitched, raspy voices.

Letting out a mental groan, Spencer covered his ears.

This was what he had to go through every math class. Those two girls were the most aggravating and pretentious beings Spencer had ever come across and they drove him crazy. On the first day of math class the two had strolled in late and the only two seats happened to be the ones next to Spencer. As a result, Spencer was stuck sitting beside them and seeing as all the other seats were taken, there was nowhere else that he could move to.

"Oh my god, Mindy!" one of the girls cried out. "My pencil broke! Do you have a sharpener?"

"Oh no,” Mindy  shrieked back. “I don't!"

"What am I supposed to do?" The first girl yelped dramatically.

"Ask around..." Mindy suggested in a slow voice, as if she was speaking to a child or a very stupid person.

Spencer got tense and waited for it.

"Hey," the girl was talking him.

"What?" he growled. Despite the fact that it was already four months into the school, none of the girls had bothered to learn his name and on the rare occasion they did talk to him, they simply referred to him as 'hey'.

"Do you have a -" the girl started but Spencer, already knowing what she was going to say, cut her off.

"No, I don't have a pencil sharpener." He snapped right as the teacher entered the class.

Immediately all the students stopped talking and turned their attention to their front of the class. Their math teacher was a strict lady who had absolutely no patience or tolerance.

"All right, so here is the homework." The teacher said as she gave the front person of each row the correct number of pages to pass back. "I also grabbed your mark math tests so I will be handing those out as well."

A few murmurs of surprise circulated around the class. They had taken that test over a month ago and many students had forgotten about it.

As Spencer took the sheet from the person seated in front of him, he thought about the math test the teacher was handing out. He had band rehearsal the night before the test so he hadn't had time to study. Besides, he had completely understood the lessons in class so he was sure he would've done well on the test. However, after seeing the test he'd soon realized that he in fact did not know anything on quartic functions and ended up leaving almost half the questions blank.

He'd be lucky if he passed.

Spencer watched as the teacher walked around the room, giving each test to its rightful owner.