Piece of Work

"Shit," I muttered as I looked down at the huge 62 that was scrawled at the top of the science lab that I'd passed in two days earlier. It counted as a test grade.

Despite the fact that I wasn't the greatest of kids, I actually was a pretty good student, usually pulling off A's and B's. This D- was seriously going to hurt the C that I already had in this class. How could she keep giving me bad grades if she didn't even know who I was?

"Overall, I was pretty disappointed with these grades," Mrs. Parrish announced, walking in front of the class. I glanced down at my paper.

First, all I noticed was a whole bunch of red. Then, I looked closer and realized that she even marked the answers she gave the class wrong.

Immediately, I raised my hand. "Um...Ugh, come on, Mrs. Parrish. You know this...No. What's your name?"

"Faye."

"No bells. So what's your question?"

"Why are these answers marked wrong? The questions at the end for the conclusions? You marked two, three, six, eight, nine, and twelve wrong...but you gave the whole class those answers..."

"Really? Oh... Can I see you paper?" I got up and walked to the front of the classroom, resisting shoving the paper in her chubby hands. There wasn't enough hatred in the world to express toward this woman.

"Oh, no... That's very wrong. If I gave you that answer, then I must have been dreaming or something. No, that's wrong. So I must have marked it wrong on everyone's."

I paused for a second before adding, "Are you going to give us the points...?"

"Oh, no. It was wrong. Here you go." She smiled and handed me back the paper. I nearly snatched it from her and stormed back to my seat. I hated her so much.

My jaw was locked for the rest of class, about forty minutes, as she went on and on about solutions, and not even solutions in the body or anything. She was talking about saltwater. Like we care.

"I can't believe her," Olivia sighed as we stepped out of the classroom. I was kind of shocked that she was going to start the complaining, since she almost never did, but I didn't let any of that emotion be displayed on my face.

"Neither can I. I almost failed that lab. That's a friggin' test grade." I gritted my teeth and felt like the only way to get over this anger was to punch a locker. Or kill someone.

"I know. I actually did fail." Olivia handed over her paper, which, sure enough, had 55 on top of it. "Apparently, my answers didn't match my data."

"Who cares?! They were the right answers!"

"I know." She reached up and wiped away the tears that were started to spill over.

"She needs to be put down," I muttered. "She's too old and too crazy to have any job, never mind a teacher."

Handing Olivia's paper back to her, we headed to the cafeteria for lunch. Our schedules rotated every day, so classes were always at a different time.

When I got to the cafeteria, I took a couple deep breaths to calm myself down. It was only one of many bad grades. I'd no idea why it was affecting me so much. Maybe it was because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get a good grade? Probably.

Olivia and I sat down at one of the sketchy tables at the side of the cafeteria. They were labeled "sketchy" because they were so secluded from the rest of the tables.

"I just can't believe this," Olivia sniffled. I didn't know how she managed it, but although she was crying, her makeup had barely run at all. That took talent.

"Just put it in your bag and forget it. Everyone fails stuff sometimes."

"You don't," she mumbled, pulling her lunch out of her bag. Instead of answering that, I stood up and walked across the cafeteria to buy lunch.

As I passed a table, looking around the cafeteria, I saw out of the corner of my eye that someone looked in my direction. So obviously, I looked at them from the corner of my eye.

It was the boy with the blue eyes. He smiled slightly before turning back to his friend that was sitting next to him. Okay, so maybe he wasn't emotionless.

I bought a bottle of water and a bagel before walking back to the table. "I can't believe I got such a bad grade," Olivia whined.

"It's okay. It's not going to kill you. Don't you have a B in that class or something?" I started spreading the small bagel that I bought with cream cheese, making sure that was spread thinly and there were no clumps. For some reason, I was really particular with how cream cheese was spread on my bagel.

"Yeah, but that's going to bring down my grade. I don't even like getting B's, and this is going to make everything worse."

"It's gonna be okay," I assured her. "You can still get your grade up. We have two weeks left."

"I guess," she mumbled before finally taking a bite of her turkey sandwich. She always had healthy lunches, like a turkey or chicken sandwich on wheat bread with mustard and some sort of vegetable.

After lunch, I had to go to history. I was almost to the classroom when I felt someone bump into me.

"Hey!" I exclaimed, fury raging through me, as I turned toward the person. But my face brightened when I realized who it was.

"Hello," Dan greeted, a smile on his face. He didn't seem to care too much that he scared me out of my mind.

Dan was pretty tall with long-ish brown hair and green eyes. We met in fifth grade and had been friends ever since. For some reason, I always made friends with people who were smart and well-behaved...Why, I'm not sure.

We both walked to history and he sat down in his seat while I stood next to his desk, telling him about the kid I saw in the hallway.

"Sounds like someone has a crush!" he teased.

I almost punched him in the face. Not really, but kind of. "I don't even know him."

Before Dan could retort, our teacher walked into the room and gave me an annoyed look. "Faye, sit in your seat."

"Okay." Class started and I shook off the thought of that kid. What did it matter anyway?

Turns out, it mattered a lot.