Quiet Heart

Chapter 3: Homework, Teachers, and Friends, Oh My!

I placed my pencil down on my desk, once I had completed my Chemistry test. It felt like I had been stuck in there for ages, because every time I would flip the page on my test, it just kept going.

I got up from my seat to go turn in my paper, when I felt someone tap me on my elbow. I turned to see it was Hailey, who sat next to me in that class, thank God. I'd go insane if my best friend wasn't there to keep be from exploding.

"Did you do the back side of the last page?" she whispered.

"There's a back side?" I whispered back, feeling anger beginning to well up inside of me.

I flipped the test packet over to see that there was in fact a back side that I hadn't completed. I went to sit back down to finish my test when I heard, "Miss Haining? Aren't you going to turn in your paper. You stood up, so I only assumed..."

Shit, I thought to myself as I heard my teacher speak.

"No sir. I just realized I hadn't seen the back page. I was gonna finish it, then turn it in."

"I'm sorry, but you know the rule in my class Miss Haining." he responded pointing his finger to the Turn-In basket on his desk.

The rule in his class was, once you stood up to turn in your paper, you couldn't do anything else to your assignment. You couldn't even put your name on it. Now you know why I hate this class so much.

I reluctantly stood back up and turned my look to Hailey, giving her a sigh and rolling my eyes. She sympathetically grinned back. We both knew I was going to be complaining about this at lunch. We still have yet to find out why our Chemistry teacher was such an asshole all the time.

I walked (well more like trudged) over to the Turn-In basket and tossed my packet in. As I made my way back to my seat, my focus was directed at Andrew in the seat behind mine. He looked up and gave me a cute little frown to let me know he felt bad for me. I gave him a small frown back, then sat back down in my seat, resting my chin on my hand.

Sitting there having nothing to do caused my mind to wander. I couldn't help but think about what my parents would do when they checked my grades and saw the low score I was going to get on that test. They would probably end up grounding me. I never bothered standing up for myself when it came to my parents. Every time I did, it either led to a longer grounding time or just a pointless argument that I had no chance at winning.

Usually when I was grounded, either Hailey, Andrew, or both of them would sneak in my bedroom window. How they did it, considering my room was on the second floor, I'll never know. For some reason, I liked it better when Andrew came over. I guess it was because whenever Hailey would come over, she didn't really know how to comfort me. She'd never been grounded before, so she couldn't really relate. Andrew, however, just always knew what to say.

***

Finally, after about 20 minutes of just sitting and doing absolutely nothing, the bell rang for us to head to second block. I let out a huge sigh of relief as I stood up from my chair and picked up my books.

"Don't be too relieved. We still have PreCal to go to." Andrew sighed from behind me.

Are you kidding me?! I thought to myself. How could I have forgotten about that? I still had that unfinished PreCal assignment in my locker.

"Crap. Why'd you have to remind me?" I finally replied with slight laughter in my voice.

"You'll be fine." Hailey said dragging out the i.

We all left the classroom, me ahead of both of them. I sped walked all the way to my locker, hoping I could grab my PreCal stuff and get to class early enough for me to get at least some of the assignment done. Of course, on the one day I'm in a hurry, Ethan is waiting for me at my locker. He didn't usually do this, so I immediately knew something was up.