The pencil moved quickly across the page forming letters one after the other. Handwriting that was sloppy, but still legible, began to fill the notebook page, as words were written down faster than the ticking of the clock. Slight smudges could be seen on the white paper where the graphite had been smeared by the knuckle of a pinky finger that would surely be storm cloud gray by the time class was over.
Finley's eyes darted up, quickly reading the next sentence on the smart board, before her head once again dropped to her paper as she quickly scribbled out what she had just read. The teacher's voice droned in the background and Finley did her best to listen to what she was saying. Listening was difficult when her brain was repeating "When a hydrogen atom binds with another hydrogen atom it creates a covalent bond between the two", desperately trying to jot it down on the paper before the next slide appeared. If Ms. Griffiths pressed the right arrow on her remote before the sentence was written down, the whole idea of hydrogen covalent bonds would be whisked away by the short-term memory tornado, come to purge the mind of any useless information, and never be remembered again.
Right as she finished writing the number 2 and her eyes returned to the board, the slide switched. Finley allowed herself a brief moment of congratulations for finishing the slide in time before she began writing down the new slide of notes. This slide was considerably shorter as it involved a picture- a picture that needed an additional tangent by Ms. Griffiths in order to explain what all the circles and lines meant. Finley took a breath as she finally lifted her head up from the chicken pecking position it had been in. The mechanical pencil rested motionless on the note-filled page as she flexed her right hand and slightly shook it, in a vain attempt to get rid of the cramp that was seizing it.
When she could tell Ms. Griffiths was getting ready to move to the next slide, she picked up her pencil and willed her hand to last just 7 more minutes until the end of class. However, the next screen that appeared was black and tiny white letters lined the top of the screen declaring the end of the slideshow. Ms. Griffiths smiled and exited out of the PowerPoint before picking up the projector remote and freezing the screen.
"Alright class that concludes the notes for the day. Since we have some time I want to talk about what we're doing tomorrow."
5 minutes is not time to discuss more work. 5 minutes is basically the same as 0 minutes. Ask any high schooler and they will tell you that you pack up your stuff 5 minutes before the bell rings. But apparently Ms. Griffiths and her pixie haircut didn't get the memo. She stopped tapping on the computer, having found the document she was looking for, and now looked around at her students.
"You will all be working with lab partners for the next few weeks, AND," her voice rose as murmuring had begun around the classroom, friends excitedly talking to one another. "I will be picking groups for you."
Finley was singing praises to God in her head. She wasn't a huge fan of group work to begin with, but the only thing worse, was having to pick partners. A process that inevitably always ended with her being the last to find someone and typically that someone either had no work ethic or genuinely didn't understand the class and was therefore zero help. But assigned groups? Well at least then she had a chance to be with someone who didn't suck.
It wasn't that she didn't have any friends... she just didn't have many. Outside of school she had two amazing friends that she knew through church, Anna and Belle. She absolutely loved them and would do anything for them, and she felt incredibly lucky to have them as friends. That was all she needed. Except that left her friendless at school.
Finley was pretty reserved, at least until you got to know her — then, well then she turned into a sarcastic smart-alec. But no one got to know her because she didn't have the standard societal prettiness aspect going on and she didn't really care how she looked. As far as she was concerned jeans, and a T-shirt, and sneakers were comfortable so that's what she was gonna wear.
She wasn't exactly approachable, as she had the unfortunate curse of a resting murder face that rivaled even Jeremy Renner's. And she wasn't outgoing enough to put herself out there and introduce herself to people. Instead she opted to sit in the second row of classes (unless assigned seating dictated otherwise), pay attention, get good grades, and go home. Most of the people at school were self absorbed and thoughtless jerks who she didn't really care to be friends with anyway.
2 or 3 girls had managed to actually get past the initial impression she gave off and talked to her in classes and would occasionally text her. But Finley knew after graduation she wouldn't talk to them again unless she randomly ran into them. Which again, unlikely, given as she tended not to go anywhere. School, homework, home. That was her life.
Ms. Griffiths' manicured hand pressed a button on the projector remote and the screen was unfrozen. An excel spreadsheet popped up with 3 columns filled in. One with the group number and the other two with names of students. Finley's brown eyes trailed the screen searching for her name and praying she didn't get certain people in the class.
Finley Collins
There. Group 8. Her eyes slowly shifted to the right and landed on the name of her partner for the next few weeks.
Eli Moskowitz
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Drowning
Fanfiction"I know he went off the deep end okay? I'm not blind to that, believe me. But I also see that he is drowning, not because he can't swim, but because he has lost sight of the shore and has no idea which way he is supposed to swim." ~~~~~~~~ Finley Co...
