Alternatively

The Assignment

"Hey, wait!"

She didn't wait.

"Anna-" he scowled, pushed through the hall. "Come on, it can't be that bad!"

"Leave me alone!"

Percy huffed and ignored the looks and frustrated grunts he invoked as he tried catching up. She was like a shark cutting through schools of fish while he was stuck in a drain, and for what? Neither of them excelled in English, it was a safe zone of mutual frustration. A bad grade shouldn't have been cause to storm out of the room as soon as class ended.

"We still have the test coming up, you can recover then!"

Her blonde ponytail shimmered as she shook her head before disappearing around a corner.

"Jesus Christ," he muttered.

Chasing the school's apex predator wasn't smart, especially when she was on a rampage and for once, he wasn't in her warpath. But that look on her face, the color draining from her cheeks as the teacher talked and she had to force herself to nod, it was something she couldn't shake off or get out of her system by arguing with him.

And he did try to argue, because they always did, but he pulled back, her single snap stinging even as the bell rang.

"You shouldn't go to gym angry!"

She glanced over her shoulder, eyes burning. "Don't you have somewhere to be?"

"I got a bad grade on that poem thing too," he weakly waved his paper. "It's no big deal."

Her snort was malicious.

"Okay, maybe to you it's a big deal, but no one else will think less of you."

"Oh, thank you," she whirled around, advancing on him so quickly he instinctively back peddled. "Thank you so much for your kind words, they hold so much merit."

"Woah, I only meant-"

"It's not all about you!"

He raised his eyebrow, but that just infuriated her more. Her rage cleared a circle around them because everyone else was smart enough to leave her alone, a circle that stretched from locker wall to locker wall even though she was so close he could feel quick breaths on his skin.

"You wrote," she fumbled for his hand and snatched the paper, tearing it half down the middle. "You wrote about Mr. D? Good job, you wrote about our principal, everyone wrote about our principal!"

He struggled to catch the pieces as she flung them back. "Why are you mad at me, what did you write about?"

"You stuck to the prompt, because of course you did, no one actually thought about it, you probably did this last night!"

Actually, he did it on the bus ride that morning, but that was beside the point.

"And for once, I thought I got it! I thought that I was doing a great job, interpreting it beyond the words on the page," she sarcastically gestured. "But apparently, it wasn't that deep!"

"So wait," he grabbed her flailing arm and immediately dropping it. "I'm confused, did you get a bad grade or not?"

"This is all your fault!"

"My-"

"You and your stupid jokes and stupid hair and ugh, how do you have the energy to be this all the time?"

He frowned; not just anything would have her so worked up. She got furious, but this...this was chaotic.

When she took a millisecond to breathe, she anchored herself in a glower, staring at him with her lip curled. "What."