Dear Dakota | Academic Rivalry Story

Six | Intimidated

N Y L A D Y L A N S

"Replay that f natural then you will be done for today."

I do as Anneliese says and I play out the last note of the new piece I brought with me before I left Florida. I put my bow down on the stand and write a quick note to myself on the sheet music.

"You got really good over these years." She comments while walking over to her desk.

"Really?" I question, not believing her. If anything I would say my playing sucks. Well, every musician says that about their playing until they play out in front of someone then they will be considered Beethoven.

I pack my violin back in its case. The office door creaks open and Delaney steps through holding a binder and her calculator. Anneliese already knows what her daughter is going to ask her. How do I solve this by only using the calculator? Needing to know as well, I stand behind Delaney while her mom shows us her calculator trick, and yup, just like that the problem is solved.

"Have you ever considered being a math teacher, Mom?"

"No way in would I be one of those. I know my ways without having to show my work." Anneliese denies automatically. "Plus you guys aren't going to be going around and solving the Pythagorean Theorem for fun. Trust me, after sixteen years of school I never had to do that."

Delaney walks to the doorframe and waves me out of the room. I sit across from her at the dining room table and also take my homework out. "What idiot decided to give us homework over the weekend? This is an absolute crime for the human specimen."

I cringe, "Don't talk like that you sound like your fifth-grade self."

I remember in the fifth grade Delaney and I would look in the class set of dictionaries and look up complex words. We would use them daily and I only now realize how absolutely nerdy that was.

Atlas and Dakota would be the ones looking up every curse word in the English language and then come home to our parents and define every single curse word that they learned. Our parents would be... shocked, to say the least. I mean what ten and eleven-year-olds are cursing?

We were.

"Did you understand what my mom was saying?" Delaney whispers in a voice so soft that she is quieter than a mouse. I turn back and look at the office door behind us.

"You can talk." I laugh, "She won't hear you."

"I know, I don't want to seem dumb."

I lean my head to the side. "You're not dumb."

"Says Miss 4.45 GPA over here," Delaney says in a teasing manner. Then her eyes light up. That happens to me when I remember something that I have been trying to say. "Atlas cut me off earlier but I was going to tell you at lunch that my brother and you have the same GPA. I don't know what happened with the abrupt leave they pulled today."

When I told them my stats the boys had these looks on their faces that were truly indescribable. Almost like math problems were floating around their heads and they finally realized what the answer was.

I know they lied about going to get apple juice from the lounge. I brought it from home, come to think about it... wouldn't it be sort of weird to be selling juice boxes to high schoolers instead of the elementary kids? I would say so.

With my first week back in high school at Presley coming to an end I learned that the boys never get to class before us. It is a bluntly obvious fact. They talk with their soccer teammates up until the one-minute warning bell rings. That is when I see both of them sprint into class right when the tardy bell rings.