Rivals

The Rivalry

I love soundtracks so I'm assigning every or most chapters with a song or songs you can listen to before or after or during or not at all I don't care. They will relate to what is written in the chapter.

I walked into school on my first day of junior year and immediately gravitated through the living, breathing mob of students to find Hannah. We stood in line to get our class schedules together and were ecstatic to find out that we were in Physics 11 together. 

After twenty minutes of indescribable chaos as 400 students piled into the common area to find out the courses they'd be in first semester and what friends were in their classes, we made our way up the stairs to room 310. We sat down beside each other in the back left corner of the room to avoid as many people looking at us as possible, and watched the rest of the class funnelling in as the clock ticked closer to the school year officially starting. Most of the class had found seats that were ideal for their needs (whether that was close to the board because they were blind and always forgot their glasses, or in a clump of all of their friends so they could talk instead of doing work), when I saw a final body come in out of the corner of my eye. I couldn't believe it as I watched him set down his bag and sit beside his friends 4 or 5 desks to the right of mine. 

Tyler.

That stupid asshole Asian kid from my P.E. class last year that was apparently smart enough to be in a math class a year above his grade was chatting it up with his friends obnoxiously loudly just 6 or 7ft away from me. I made a face, but kept my composure. It wasn't like he was terrible. This year, I decided, he wasn't going to bother me. I would sit in my corner, do my work and ignore him. The only problem was that he was impossible to ignore. And no, this was not because I had a crush on him; any feelings I'd had for him were long gone by then. I walked into my Pre-Calculus 11 class later that day (taught by the same teacher in room 310) only to find him sitting in his seat at the back, prepared for his class. I couldn't avoid him if I tried. My saving grace was that Hannah was in my Physics class with me. At least I could handle Tyler half the time. That is, until Hannah changed her schedule to be in another class during that block, and have Physics in the second semester. Wonderful.

Despite Hannah leaving me alone in that class with Tyler, the first two weeks of class were successful. I was getting good marks on all of our quizzes - our teacher didn't give us homework so we were instead made to do a short quiz at the beginning of class after a lesson - and I was understanding the concepts perfectly. Finally, it came time for our test. We were given the review assignment a few days early to prepare, which had to be handed in for marks. We were given one full hour long class to work on it, and the test was the next day. I found the test to be a breeze, understanding the kinematics concepts completely.

The next day, when I came into class, I noticed a white board with PHYSICS 11 written on the top and a list of numbers starting from one all the way to ten down the board. It wasn't this that caught my attention, but the fact that Elizabeth Moore was written in the 1. spot, and Tyler Kou was directly under me. A giant grin broke out on my face as I realized that I'd gotten 96% on the test and received the top mark in the class, while Tyler scored 95%. Just when I thought I couldn't get any happier, I looked around and saw Tyler himself wearing a face of anger and hatred as he looked at the board and at me. My smile grew even bigger, and - incredibly amused and proud of my victory - I started to do a dance.

"Alright, I'll give you this one," Tyler said. "But I'm getting the top mark on the next test."

The way he said this, with such determination, almost scared me. 

It was a few days later that we had a test in math. The night after the test, I was so nervous I could barely sleep. He couldn't get a better mark than me, or he would crush me with his arrogance. When I got to school the next morning I practically ran up the stairs to 310 to see that board. The anticipation was nearly killing me as my heart beat undoubtedly accelerated past 100bpm and sweat collected in my palms. Sure enough, when I got there, I saw PRE CALC 11 written beside PHYSICS 11, with the same row of numbers going down the board. The first thing I noticed when I looked at the board, however, was the name Tyler Kou. In front of the number two. I could've screamed I was so happy. Elizabeth Moore was written in the number one spot again, this time with a 98%. I did another dance of joy at my incredible success while Tyler stated that he didn't care, as long as he got the top score on our next Physics test. 

Two weeks later, after another test, I was genuinely scared to enter the classroom. I knew that my teacher had posted the marks, and I couldn't stop myself from thinking about how badly I would be annihilated if Tyler got the top mark; he didn't need that kind of ego boost. Taking a deep breath and summoning the courage, I turned the corner and entered the classroom. The previous scores had been erased, and I saw my name in the number one spot again. Before I got my hopes up, however, I saw that Tyler and I had actually tied with 86% each. Although I was happy about this, he was still disappointed. He would, however, as he made clear to the class, rather have a tie than a second place. He also decided he could still shatter my confidence by reminding me that even though I tied for top mark, it was still only with an 86% and was not impressive in the least. I took this with a grain of salt, though, because I knew he was being just as hard on himself as he was me. It as around now that I actually started to feel almost bad for him. If I was hard on myself, how must he be feeling? I thought about how stressed he must be about all of this. But after a string of rude comments (because god forbid he keep his mouth shut for more than a minute), I was back to hating him entirely. 

It was later in that class that our teacher noticed that he'd marked an answer wrong on some tests, but right on others. He stressed, though, that this was only a worth half of a mark.

"Did you mark it wrong on mine?" Tyler asked, hoping he would be boosted up to top mark.

"No, I marked it right on yours and added it to your total before.."

"What about Elizabeth's?" he asked, half pretending not to care and half too anxious to hide it.

"Let me check," the teacher said as he rummaged through a pile of papers to find mine. He flipped to the last page and used his pen as a pointer to navigate his way through the graph I drew. "Nope, see: she did it right but I marked it wrong. So that means..." He stood up and grabbed a dry erase marker. I could barely believe my eyes as he erased my mark and added .5 onto it, bumping me up to top student and raising my score to 87% - 1% above Tyler's. This was the happiest I'd felt about any score; despite it being 11% less than my best test percentage so far that year, I had risen above Tyler's negative comments about the percent we both got and proved my academic skills. The more I got top mark, however, the more he hated me. This also meant that he felt worse about himself, so he would make more degrading comments to try to insult me so he felt better about his marks. I understood this, however, and wasn't bothered by it. I took every comment as a compliment for him feeling insecure because I was doing better than him.

"I'm gonna get top mark in this course, just wait for it: at the awards ceremony, the top Physics 11 student isn't even in grade 11," he laughed.

I laughed, too, and wished him luck. I was determined to get the top mark in that course, and nothing would get in my way.