Mrs. Hessefort gave them a curious look before she shook her head and went on with her planned schedule. “Okay class! To start off our new semester, we have a pop quiz!” she announced.
The collection of moans and boos from the class disappointed her.
“Oh, come on everyone! It’ll be easy! It’s just about the chapters you should have been studying during the break!” The class only booed louder. Mrs. Hessefort simply rolled her eyes and began passing out the pop quiz.
Jeraud took a look at it as soon as it was in his grasp. He had to do well on this test. He had to keep up his grade up. It is the highest in all of Mrs. Hessefort’s classes. He couldn’t afford to lose it anytime soon.
Scanning through it, he quickly realized it was about the evolution of whales, the chapter he was actually studying on the day the circus freak moved in. There was one question he wasn’t too sure about, but that was because the trouble with the twins had distracted him.
“Do not start that quiz, Jeraud Fray.” Mrs. Hessefort commanded as she spied him beginning to pick up his pencil. He dropped it as soon as she called him out, and his partner, Frankie, chuckled at his getting caught. Jeraud gave him a sarcastic chuckle right back and turned back to Mrs. Hessefort. She was talking to the troll, probably asking if she wanted to take the quiz, considering she did miss a whole semester. The witch smiled, nodded her head, and was given a paper.
When Mrs. Hessefort was finished passing out the sheets, she informed us that we had twenty minutes for this ten questioned quiz, and it would be worth twenty points. Go figure. Staring at her watch, she gave a slight nod for the class to start.
Jeraud began furiously scribbling on his paper as the answers were coming to him at warp speeds. He skipped the question he didn’t know, and came back to it only after finishing the rest of the quiz. Checking at the clock, he realized he only had about five minutes left.
Chewing on the top of his lead pencil, he hastily made an educated guess and filled up the last question he didn’t know, raising his hand for Mrs. Hessefort to collect his paper.
Frankie chuckled besides him, still working on question eight as he shook his head.
Mrs. Hessefort smiled as she made her way to his desk, her stride happier than usual. “Great timing, Jeraud. You made second.” She whispered.
His heart actually stopped. He could hear the single toned beep of an electrocardiogram. Second? Second?! He had never received second in anything all his life!! “Who got first?!” he asked urgently.
“Rose did, actually.” Mrs. Hessefort smiled in disbelief. “And here I thought she wouldn’t know a thing about the evolution of whales.” She mused as she trotted off to collect someone else’s paper.
He could feel his blood boiling beneath his skin as he turned towards that freak.
She was silently sitting there as Romeo struggled with his questions. Her facial expression was pained. She really didn’t seem to like sitting next to him.
But Jeraud couldn’t care. She couldn’t have gotten any of those questions right. Even he had a hard time with every question, so there was no way she could’ve known anything. She hadn’t even read the chapter on it during the break. That troll must have guessed on the whole thing.
He sat there with a pout for the last two minutes of the test. Everyone finished eventually, though some needed more time.
Mrs. Hessefort then gave us some written work to do with our partners while she graded the quizzes, and the classroom fell to hushed whispers.
Jeraud took quick peeks of Rosalind and Romeo, but they were facing away from each other, doing their partner work individually. He smiled in relief, he just couldn’t help it. Romeo, for whatever reason, doesn’t like the stupid witch. Of course, it was a mutual disliking, but Jeraud could care less. It was helping his cause either way.
Halfway through their partner work, Mrs. Hessefort passed back the scored quizzes. Some students seemed surprised by how well they did or didn’t. Others acted as if they knew what was coming.
Jeraud, like many other students, were just relieved to get the grade they did. He had only missed half of a question, the one he had guessed on. That means he still had the highest grade in the class. He turned and snooped at Frankie’s score. He missed five questions and failed. Frankie took a peek at Jeraud's score and snorted. “Of course you got 19/20. You’re a freggin genius.” He mumbled.
“What? Jer got an almost perfect score again?” Mikey groaned. “Great, now I feel stupid… I only missed three and I thought I did well. But that’s only average…”
Others began to complain about their scores, and asked why Mikey had called him “Jer.”
“God damn it, Mikey!” Jeraud hissed at his chuckling friend. “I told you not to call me that!”
“Class, class! I need to recollect your quizzes and announce the highest grade.” Mrs. Hessefort proclaimed.
“Do you really have to announce it, Mrs. Hessefort?” someone groaned. “We all know that Fray has the best score. Again.”
Jeraud could feel everyone’s eyes burn into the back of his head in total hatred and jealousy. He sat up taller despite the weight of it all.
Mrs. Hessefort shot her class a wicked smile, something she usually saves for when they did something terribly wrong. “But he didn’t get the top score.” Mrs. Hessefort informed slyly.
Everyone did a double take, including puzzled Jeraud. He had only missed half a question! That meant whoever had the top grade must have gotten a perfect score!
The classroom burst up into excitement. Everyone was asking ‘Who? Who beat the smartest kid you’ve ever had, Mrs. Hessefort? Who did better than Jeraud Fray?!’
He slumped forward into his seat in disbelief. Someone had beaten him? He had gotten second place once again?
Suddenly, it clicked. There was no way, not her. Not the freak! Was it the freak?! He turned to her direction, but she was lost in the sea of students trying to pry the answer from Mrs. Hessefort’s lips. He stood, desperately trying to eye her down, to scorn her for the position she had left him in, to make sure there was no way in living hell she could out-best him a second time in a single day.
“It was Rosalind.” A cold, firm voice answered the question Jeraud was dreading with every molecule in his body.
ns 15.158.61.44da2
