Acid +rap

Seven

I apologize for the late update guys. My island got hit by hurricane Irma and now Barbuda, a place I once called home is a cesspool of destruction.
Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers as we pick up the pieces from here.
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SIX

Chemistry class is less stimulating than usual today.
We're starting a new topic – Acid/base character. As usual, the Healers and Scholars are literally running the class and Mr Bruno is fighting tirelessly to get other students to have a chance.
I watched their lips flap collectively as they fought to speak over someone who was trying to ask a question, while the teacher grew more and more frustrated. I didn't blame him – Mr Bruno was a Scholar too - and they always got annoyed when unnecessary shit happened repeatedly.

The thing I couldn't stand about Scholars is their annoying tendency to hog the teacher's attention like they needed it. Half the Scholars at Ascinder didn't even need to be here – they had burned through the curriculum by sophomore year. I swear these guys only came to school for the attention and to feed the sense of superiority they lived for.
Don't get me wrong – I don't hate them or any other Enhanced people. I just happened to enjoy classes where I can listen to a teacher explaining something without some know-it-all interjecting every five minutes and asking questions that would be answered anyway if they'd kindly shut the fuck up. Healers were almost as bad, but it only happened in classes that pertained to the human experience, where that sort of discourse made sense.

I'm no Scholar, but I've managed to get by rather comfortably due to my obsessive compulsion to be on par with those around me. Ever since discovering my condition, mother and father had drilled into me a need to keep up with everything and be good at as many things as I could be.

So I became an athlete. And an amateur gymnast. And an amateur cook. And so on, and so on.
It was tiring, it painful, but it was fun.
Frankly, nobody gave a damn about my prowess in any of my skills, but that didn't dispel their fear of me being examined by someone from The Authority and found wanting. They made me learn any possible thing I could so that I could pass off as something if I got caught.
It was a good plan. It also turned me into a jack of all trades and with an Enhancement of none.

If anything I could always pass for a Hunter – I was nowhere near as sly as my parents, but I could sneak around and fight well enough to pass it off. Gods knew I'd never be strong enough to be mistaken for a Warrior.
But I digress.
"So, can you tell me why alcohols can be classified as acids, Miss Connery?" Mr Bruno's voice drags me back to reality. I blink twice and remember that I'm still in class.
"Um..." I begin, trying to arrange my thoughts in a manner that would make sense out loud. I heard snickering in the room but graciously ignored it.
Rude.
"Acids are acids because they can lose a proton in solution, right?" I resume, phrasing it as a question so I didn't sound too sure of myself while I was bombing in front of the whole class.
He nodded his approval and motioned for me to continue.
"So since the oxygen on the hydroxyl group keeps hogging all the electrons, this lets the hydrogen proton just float away in solution to form an H3O molecule, or whatever."
I looked around the class for any sign of ridicule for my answer. I found none, but two preppy Scholars at the front sat there mulling over my answer. They shrugged at Mr Bruno, indicating that I wasn't wrong.
I let go of a breath I didn't know I was holding and twiddled my thumbs nervously.
"Are they good acids, Miss Connery?"
I shook my head, but he didn't accept that. He wanted more words.
"They're trash acids because that dissociation hardly ever happens, and the alcohol always gets protonated again really quickly."
"Good work, Miss Connery."
I smiled lightly in return and looked up to see Erma giving me thumbs up. I smiled wider.
This wasn't so bad.
Class progressed easily afterwards and the number of people that kept glancing warily at me was at an all-time low. I know it's forced, and I know it's probably as a result of fear, but I appreciated the gesture nonetheless. This sliver of normal warmed my insides more than I could have anticipated.