Scout & Mollie | Inactive

I

S C O U T

She recognised the girl that came in late, shrugged her backpack over her shoulder and pulled her black denim jacket closed in front of her chest. "Ah, Miss Barrett, good to see you finally showed up to this class, but who needs to know how to evaluate integrals anyways," the Calculus teacher, Mrs. Saunders, announced.

Whispers flooded the classroom. The girl who had probably shown up for eight classes of the eighteen week semester slumped into a desk, not her assigned one, but still a desk. Scout knew who she was. She likes to watch her, not in a creepy way. More in an... endearing way.

She watched the way she flicked her hair off of her shoulder and looked at the teacher with a devilish glint in her eye. "Mrs. Saunders, I was just thinking about how good your makeup looks today," she announces, much louder than necessary. Scout knew this game, she would try to flatter the teacher so she wouldn't fail the class. She was passing all of her classes, so apparently it was going pretty well.

Their math teacher cleared her throat, "Miss Barrett, I'll let you off with a detention, but next time I will have to report it to administration."

Scout smiled a little to herself, it was always the same. I'll let you off easy today. Don't do it again or there'll be consequences.

The way the girl carried herself, it was like she was on top of the world. Scout wishes she had even a bit of her confidence, but that was something she was extremely lacking in.

By this, her senior year in high school, she had been torn down by family and friends. She was just Scout. Scout Youngblood. She played volleyball, but that season was in the fall, and any other time she was in school, drawing, or sleeping. She helped make the sets of the plays and musicals, but those had both finished a while ago.

Graduation was in two weeks, if she could just pull through, she'd be on her way to college.

"Miss Youngblood, focus on the lesson, please," Mrs. Saunders said, Scout nodded and looked to the board to continue copying the notes into her packet. She went back to her doodles o the page, there was one of the girl, her dark brown hair, wavy with streaks of blue mixed in, ending at her waist. She was a masterpiece, Scout could draw her all day.

She looked intimidating, but there was something about her blue eyes that drew her in. The bell went off, signalling the end of class, everyone got up, Scout hurried to pack up all of her things. Shoving her calc folder in her backpack, she got up and began heading to AP Literature, she didn't have this class with her, which was a real shame. Scout sighed and opened her sketch pad to a blank page.

She had a firm jaw, it was angular, but she was still beautiful. The way the dark waves of her hair framed her face perfectly, and her gorgeous, full, pink lips. Her eyes reminded Scout of a pond that was just barely freezing over, when they were in light the glimmer looked like snowflakes. Scout ran a hand through her hair before sighing and sitting back in her chair. "Good morning scholars," her English teacher said, earning a chorus of groans and a shuffle of shrugging shoulders. "Does anyone have good news?" A few kids roll their eyes and even less raise their hands. It's one girls birthday, and another kid has a track meet later today.

Scout remains in her own little world, her small pale hands sketched the girl's hair, she'd have to colour the picture in later so that she could get all of the browns and blues in her hair. Her complexion was even, unlike Scout's who's skin was blotchy.

"Scout, what did you think about last night's reading assignment? What do you think was the moral of the story?" Ms. Williams asked, pulling her out of her own world.

She stayed focused on her drawing, "it's a pretty basic moral, The Monkey's Paw is just another 'be careful what you wish for' story. Like how they asked for their son back after he was, brutally, killed. They just wanted him back, and he came back, as a mutilated zombie."

Her English teacher sighed in defeat, obviously disappointed that she didn't catch her pupil off guard, "thank you, Scout, that's exactly what the takeaway is, and I appreciate you backing up your answer with evidence from the text."

Ms. Williams loved getting people in trouble, but she wasn't very good at it. The rest of the class passed in a flash, and pretty soon Scout was on her way to lunch. The battleground, otherwise known as the East Wing Cafeteria, was always full by the time Scout managed to get there, getting through the line took up half of the allotted lunch time, so she brought crackers and sometimes a sandwich and sat at a table with two of her friends, Amelia and Jackson. "So, as a genuine question, are you going to prom?" Amelia asks Scout, Jackson starts laughing, and honestly, it was a pretty stupid question.

Scout sighs, "considering prom is tomorrow and I don't have a dress, no, I'm not going." She goes back to her spring mix and looks down at her phone, sighing.

"What's up, Finch?" Jackson asked and Scout rolled her eyes, ever since they had to read To Kill A Mockingbird in ninth grade Jackson insisted on calling her Finch, because Jean Louise Finch was in fact her namesake.

Scout looks back up at her friends, "just my mom telling me she's all set to be induced in two weeks."

Amelia and Jackson were much more excited for Scout's new sibling than she was, being the second oldest, it was nothing new. "That's so exciting, Scout! Do you know what they're gonna name them?"

She sighed, "well we don't know if it's a boy or a girl, but they have names picked out."

"What is it? Jem? Atticus?" Jackson presses for more information, Scout scoffs and shakes her head.

She looks at her male best friend, unamused, "you know my parents never pull from the same book."

Jackson shrugged, "what if they're twins?"

Scout rolled her eyes and shrugged, she looked up and saw her. The girl was running across the cafeteria, Scout couldn't help but be intrigued by her.

Mollie.