The Story of Tonight

Chapter Six

Her mother had ordered her to turn down her music so now she had her ear buds in. When she'd pounded on the door, it looked like she had been crying. Her mother was not a cryer. She suddenly felt terrible for giving her a hard time earlier. She'd messed up and then pushed things too far.

She turned back to the beginning of her social studies chapter once again. They were writing their first paper, addressing the contributions of the Ancient Greeks to modern society. It was brutal. There was a specific format she was supposed to follow and it didn't make sense to her. Why did it matter the format if all the information was there? Mr. Martin sucked.

She did the best she could and hoped for the best. It was just a rough draft for now. She pulled out her phone and opened Twitter. Of course she followed Lin and was grateful he tweeted often. Seeing what he posted always made her feel better. Maybe he'd tweet about her at some point. That would give her some cred at school.

Emilia avoided her mother for the evening and went to bed around ten. The next morning, she treaded carefully, saying very little. Her mother seemed more refreshed and ready for the day. She reminded her to come straight to her office after school. There would be no more "study dates".

Emilia made it to school on time and started to trudge through the day. She groaned as she entered history class, wondering what hell Mr. Martin had in store today.

The bell rang and he got right to it. "Alright!" He clapped his hands together. "Take out a blank piece of paper. Pop quiz."

Her heart sunk and she felt like crying right there on spot. He expected them to master the reading AND turn in a rough draft? Emilia slowly got out a paper, blinking back tears. She knew she was going to completely bomb this.

The palms of hands became sweaty, and it felt as if someone had turned the thermostat up ten degrees in the last minute. She tried to focus: on the pen, on the piece of paper, and on anything she had possibly retained in her brain over the past two nights about Greece.

"Question 1, What was the last period of Ancient Greece called before they were conquered by the Romans?"

Emilia tapped her pencil on her paper, scouring her brain for any tidbit of knowledge but drew a blank.  The noise of her pencil resulted in glares of other students around the room. But she didn't care about them. She only cared about figuring out the answer.

She didn't have time to think because Mr.Martin was already on the second question. She quickly scribbled an answer down, not even remotely thinking she got it right. The next three questions went in a similar fashion, the heat of the room becoming more smothering.  She took off her cardigan to try to cool off, but it was to no avail.

"Last question, what major civilization that came soon after the Greeks was greatly influenced by their culture?"

Emilia barely knew anything about Greek culture, and now she had to figure out the culture of another? Was Egypt even a civilization then? God, why couldn't this be multiple choice? As her eyes glanced around the room, she could see the other students writing their answers down quickly with ease. None of them looked stressed, as if she was the only one who knew this was even a pop quiz. Their confidence only made her feel more inferior.

"Time's up. Pencils down and I'll come and collect your papers."

Lia looked down at her paper to see the last question unanswered as it was taken off of her desk. The tears that had been held in her eyes were at imminent risk of causing her to be known as the girl who loses her shit in class.

She inched her hand up slowly and waited until Mr.Martin excused her before she quickly gathered all of her things, not caring her ridiculous she probably looked packing up in the middle of class, and went to the bathroom.