Aria's POV
Two minutes. That was all that was left of this exam. Two minutes and it would be summer.
I glanced at the clock, anxiously tapping my pencil as if it would miraculously make time speed up. Two minutes was such a short space of time but lasted a millennium. The slow ticking of the clock echoed throughout the gym, tormenting every student. I impatiently shuffled in my seat.
The invigilator eyed me furiously for not focusing on my exam, her oval glasses resting at the point of her crooked nose. That piece of paper on my desk had become non-existent to me, the questions now a blur of terminology. The silence in the room was deafening; no one in the gym payed even the slightest bit of attention to their work as their glazed-over eyes burned through the clock. We had been having constant exams all month, and this was the final straw. The last step.
I rubbed my temples, telling myself to make these last few seconds of the exam count. Mentally forcing myself to pay attention, I read through my answers for the last questions. My eyes landed on the word 'electromagnetism' and my last working brain cell exploded. I glanced over at the girl to my left. She had her head rested on the desk and she snored lightly; she had been asleep for the past half hour. The guy to my right had been building some makeshift tower with his stationary - he rested a ruler on top of his water bottle and aimlessly tried to balance his pens on the ruler. They represented everyone else in the room and heightened the fact that not one person was paying attention.
'Screw this,' I told myself in frustration, before closing my booklet of answers. If I didn't know the answer before, there was no way I'd be able to come up with some smart response now. 'Who's gonna pass physics anyway?'
The second I closed my booklet, the invigilator spoke the words that signalled the end of our hellish exams and the well-deserved start to our summer break. I welcomed the wave of relief that rushed over me, unintentionally smiling.
"Time's up. Put your pens down." She croaked, the boredom evident in her monotone voice.
The tension in the room lifted immediately whilst the teachers stalked round the room to collect our papers. I looked over my shoulder at my best friend Thalia, who was sat behind me. A broad grin was spread across her face, spreading the freckles across her cheeks, and she gave me a supportive thumbs up.
"I think it's safe to say the grade boundaries will be extremely low for that exam." Thalia giggled, when we were finally allowed out of the gym. A teacher nearby glared at us - the silent way of telling us to be quiet.
"It's physics. Everyone was bound to fail anyway," I whispered, a slight smirk tugging at my lips. "How am I supposed to know about seismic waves anyway, when my teacher skipped that part of the course? I'm pretty sure the only thing I remembered for that exam was the equation for speed." Despite the fact that the exam was virtually impossible, no one cared. It was summer now and all those hours of the non-stop revision sessions and the mental breakdowns from stress had finally come to an end.
Everyone stood in their groups outside the gym and were clearly fit into their own small stereotypes. You had the typical students who huddled in a circle, exchanging their answers to make sure they were right. Another group was a group of girls, who already had their phones out. I overheard one of them complaining about her 'boyfriend', and it led me to wonder if she actually did anything in that exam or if she just pondered about some guy she liked. The other girls tried to comfort her whilst re-applying mascara and lipstick.
Thalia and I didn't fit into any of the stereotypes in our school. We weren't popular or geeky, we weren't the smartest or the dumbest, we were just us. I was known as the girl with the odd shoes, which made me seemingly more well-known around the school. For the past two years I had been wearing odd converse - one would be white and the other black.
Just like the rest of our year, Thalia and I couldn't leave our school any faster. Rucksack slung over our shoulders, we were out within seconds, leaving our school and our troubles behind, and embracing the start to our summer break.
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A/N this is just the first chapter so please like and leave a comment would really appreciate your opinion! x
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Before the Never After
Romance"This is the story of how I fell for the wrong guy, fully aware he wouldn't be there to catch me." One summer. Two months. Freedom. Aria Hunter, after finally reaching the end of her exams, has two months of summer to relax before starting another y...
