Electric Heart (Coriolanus Snow)

6

Sally woke up to blood. It was smeared in a trail from the bathroom to her father's bedroom. He was crouched on the ground, heaving like it was difficult for him to breathe.

"Are you okay? Father?" Sally dashed into the room, falling to her fathers' side.
He coughed, spitting blood onto the floor. "We need to get you medication." Sally insisted, but Lucien shook his head.

"You need to head to school. I'll be fine."

"No- I'm not leaving you like this." She argued.

He coughed again, a strained noise escaping from the back of his throat. It even sounded painful.

"I have a nurse who'll be coming to check on me this afternoon- Sally I've got news about your first demerit. Two more and you're expelled." There was a seriousness in his voice now. "There isn't a single university who will take you once you've been expelled."

Sally knew he was right. She also knew if she didn't leave in the next minute, she'd be tardy again earning her another demerit.

She steadily helped her father back into bed, kissing him on the forehead before heading out for school. Sally tried to shove the images of her sickly father from her mind, and focus on the day ahead, but she was finding it difficult as she opened the double doors of the academy, seeing the red, white, and black marble floors; her fathers blood returning to her mind.

Satyria Click was her first class professor of the day, and she was also the teacher who had chosen Coriolanus Snow as her class aide.

Sally walked into class, feeling as though she had forgotten something, but when she looked at the whiteboard, she saw that she was unfortunately right.

Today was the first exam of the semester. The exam that was worth thirty percent of their overall grade. It was an exam that would determine of she qualified for university.

Sally gulped as the dim realization set in. She hadn't studied, not even a bit. She wasn't an expert in communications, which was the course.

It wasn't like mathematics or chemistry. There were no set formulas or rules to follow.
She hadn't studied. She had forgotten about a test. And now Sally was going to fail.

She slowly made her way to the only open seat left, the one directly behind Snow.

Her breath hitched and she felt like her throat was getting smaller each time she tried to inhale. Sally felt her face heating with anxiety and she tried to swallow it whole, but the feeling was only growing within her, spreading across her skin like a wildfire.

A paper ball landed in front of her, all crumpled up. Sally looked behind her, which was the direction it had come from, and saw Sejanus motioning to it.

Sally turned back to her desk, opening up the paper and straightening it out.

Are you okay? It read. She sighed, trying not to let her eyes well up with tears. Sally nodded in his direction. Sejanus was too caring for his own good.

Her test was handed to her face first, and she gulped, reading the first question, and accepting that she did not know the answer.

Sally only was one solution left, and it was not guessing or trying her very best. She let her eyes wonder to the desk in front of her, which was a row below, so it was the perfect view.