Ria. That was all they called her. That was all she remembered. All she knew of her past was that an old matron found a little brown skinned girl at the orphanage gate. Who left her there? No one knows....... but it is a mystery Ria is determined to...
Ms. Flora handed out the test results the next morning, but to Ria's disappointment, she did not receive hers.
"Ms. Ria and Ms. Angelo, your test results are still with me and I will be seeing you after this class," she announced.
"Uuu...." someone howled low, while others gave an exaggerating gasp while looking around in surprise. Throughout the class, Ria could not sit comfortably in her seat. She was so worried about what she might be in trouble about. She knew she had done her test well, without any plagiarism; so she thought, what could be the problem?
While the other students left after the class, Ria stayed back with another girl. She was short, a fair complexion, had dark eyes behind the rimless glasses she wore and her hair was dark, silky and trimmed well to shoulder-length. She gave Ria a quick smile from the corner of her mouth, before turning back to Ms. Flora.
"Okay girls, do you know why I did not give you your results earlier?" Ms. Flora asked from her desk. The girls exchanged a confused glance before shaking their heads with a no. "Look at your grades." When they looked into their papers, Ria had an A- while the other girl had an A+. They turned back to their teacher, still giving a puzzled expression. "Your methods of working are exactly the same, in about 80% of the the whole test. I have reason to believe that there may be a sign of plagiarism, here?"
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"Wha- but Ms. Flora, you know me. I'd never do that," the girl declared. The teacher looked right at Ria and she wondered what she could say to prove her innocence as well.
"Ria?"
"I sit at the far corner," Ria just stated.
"Yea, and I was sitting right here in the second row," the girl noted.
"Well there has to be some explanation as to why the both of you, used a university level short-cut method to solve problem 7!" the teacher said, "And you both set out your working the same way, compared to the other students who most of them, got wrong." The girls looked at each other, before looking back down at their papers.
"Well...... I have done a little bit of Advanced Algebra III reading," Ria replied in a small voice.
"Really? Me too!" the girl turned to her with wide eyes. "Although I've only attempted one-fifth of the problems in there." Ria was impressed, and thought the girl was pretty smart enough to attempt university level problems and equations.
"Okay, I guess you're both just naturally smart," Ms. Flora said with folded arms. "I suppose you weren't entertaining plagiarism?"
"No Ms. Flora," they both assured. Then, their teacher dismissed them from the classroom.
"Can you believe that she'd actually think, I was gonna copy someone else's answers! Despite being our regional mathletes team coordinator from last year," the girl told Ria as they walked down the hallway. "I mean, what the hell! Latinas can be Einsteins too!"
