Simple Strings

A red forty and a simple demand

A/N: Hello everyone! This is my first story that I will be publish on Wattpad! Please excuse any spelling or grammar errors, I'm typing this on my dumb phone. I don't know when I will be posting the next chapter but you guys can start making predictions on what happens next! Hope you enjoy!

It was a cool, autumn afternoon. Nine year old, Karolin Marionetka, sat in her normal bench on the bus.

Second row, left side by the window.

A soft  sigh came from the girl as she thought of the heavy paper in the Math section of her binder, holding last weeks test. The burning number made her chest hurt with a depressing weight that made her cringe. The bus stopped at Karolin's road, a three minute walk from her little house in the little state of Vermont that everyone else in every other state always forgot about. Except in Delaware. Even Kara forgot about them. Another sigh took hold of the young girl as she stepped off the bus, her long hoodie coming to her knees like a dress as she hiked down the chilly sidewalk to her uninviting house. If Karolin had any friends they would never visit her. That is saying if she had any..implying she has none.

Which she doesn't.

The girl took her jingling keys from her hoodie pocket and unlocked her front door, stepping in the slightly warmer house and sighing. Again. She made her way through the house, stopping in the kitchen to discard her backpack on the table. Her feet took her to the refrigerator, which she took the last can of soda from and pulled back the tab with a small hiss from the drink. Karolin paced her house, slowly drinking her soda as she thought, finally finishing her refreshment and tossing the empty can into the small blue tub by the garage door. The girl sat at the table, back to the front door, and opened her bag. Her hands pulled out her black binder which she than flicked past two tabs, a red and yellow one, to get to the blue tab marked in bold, permanant marker.

'MATH'

Jesus, mom, can you make the subject look anymore dangerous? Kara shook her head and weaved her fingers through the pages, looking for the test she had taken. Finally she found it and pulled it from the binder, ruining the three holes that held it in the book in her rush to pull it out. She leaned over the page and sighed, in the top right hand corner was the large, bolded-red number that marked her grade. A big fat '40'. The girl sat there for nearly half of an hour, planning an excuse for the horrid grade. Before she could think of a proper reason, though, another set of jingling keys could be heard from outside Karolin's front door. The door creaked open and in stepped her mother, who than shut the door and locked it.

Her mother set her bag down and entered the kitchen, pausing at her daughter's chair and setting a hand on the back of it. The woman leaned for slightly and read the grade over Kara's head. The girl could feel her mother's eyes darken as she read the fifth failing grade that she had gotten in a row. A long, drawn out sign came from her mother leading Karolin to look up to her mother's deep frown. The threat of a year long grounding came to her eyes.

"I'm really sorry, mom, I did--" Karolin was cut off by her mother's sharp voice.

"I said it again and again, you need to study! I told you if you got one more bad gr--"

"I did study!" Karolin interrupted, throwing her hands up.

"Don't fucking speak when I am, young lady!" Karolin gritted her teeth, slumping in her chair. "No TV, no borrowing my laptop, no calling Sara-" Sara was Karolin's cousin and best, as well as only, friend, "-and you can count getting a damn dog out of the picture until you start getting better grades!" Karolin slapped her hands over her ears, trying to muffle her mom's yells and felt fingers pry her hands away. "Don't you dare ignore me, Karolin Marionetka!" Karolin jumped from her chair, pulling away from her mother as hot years began to stream down her cheeks.