Scholarly

February: the Thing About Substitutes

Hi guys! I want to start updating every Friday now, so here's Friday update #1. Only two more chapters and an epilogue left in this! :) (Which I've got to finish because I need to start the next installment - covering their sophomore year - as soon as school starts. But still! Almost there!)

Tuesday, second block, February 10th: Mr. Peters was absent. The sub was a scatterbrained algebra teacher who didn't know the first thing about music and promptly dismissed the Elite Orchestra to "go practice". 

That didn't happen.

Oh, sure, some of them did. Alex, an antisocial bassoonist. Kaori, who'd probably rather practice than anything else. Taylor, a mousy flautist, probably trying to get away from an obnoxious percussionist who'd taken a liking to her. But Sydney?  Unfortunately, this was not the day for working on her parts.

Elena was still in knots; Fernando, the school's resident senior geek, had asked her out a week prior, and she was apparently so disgusted (they'd been longtime friends but she was the polar opposite of attracted to him) that she still hadn't gotten over it. Given her tendency towards hysterics, it was not a pretty predicament, and as Elena's stand partner, Sydney'd been jammed right in the middle of it. 

"Why would he put me on the spot like that?" She sobbed, doubled over in a chair as Sydney awkwardly observed. Under normal circumstances she'd be just fine in this position, playing emotional doctor to a friend in hysterics, but this was just awkward. 

"Um...he's awkward" was all she could manage. Anais, a French horn-playing Belgian exchange student, clucked her tongue sympathetically as she watched. 

She could hardly have been more relieved when the bell rang. Even Mr. Greene's lectures, which could be put to more effective use as a treatment for insomnia, were better than dealing with Elena Quiroga's love life. 

"You look done," Leah commented. She knew she must've looked exuahsted as she came into history, but was it really that obvious?

"I am." 

"Elena again?" 

"I'm pretty sure he's gotten over it better than she has, which is saying a lot," Sydney huffed. 

Vivian had seen him at the Science Olympiad meeting her mother had made her attend last week, and he'd apparently looked shattered. 

"Wow. Well, now you can sleep," she responded.

"No way. We're doing Quiz Blitz today." 

Leah perked up immediately. "We are?" 

Quiz Blitz was something of an urban legend in Mr. Greene's class. A fast-paced online quiz game, it allowed users to choose their screen names, which, in this class, opened doors that should probably have been left closed. 

Closed and securely locked. 

Mr. Greene had long since given up on trying to enforce his "use your real name" rule, but he still, without fail, had to kick out at least five names every round on the grounds of "inappropriateness," most of them created by one Yash Kapadia. 

That in mind, the pair attempted as best they could to stay awake through a dull lecture about the Byzantine Empire. Sydney, normally studious to the extreme, spent more time watching Edward Leon, who sat in front of her, play with a Fidget Spinner under his desk, than she did listening. But at least she couldn't get a detention if she stayed awake. 

"That's gonna be the thing I miss least about this year," Leah remarked, leaving a thoroughly disappointing round of Quiz Blitz in which no names were deleted.