Scarred Hearts

31 | Detention

In the otherwise empty classroom, Mr. Davis was stationed at his desk diligently grading papers while Valeria and Nicholas occupied single desks side by side, the silence heavy around them.

Tapping her foot impatiently and with unmasked annoyance plastered on her face, Valeria retrieved her chemistry manual and notebook from her backpack. She may as well make the most of the wasteful hour.

Nicholas leaned back in his chair, his arms crossed casually as his gaze wandered around the empty classroom. "Well, this is fun," he remarked dryly, his voice kept low but slightly amused.

Valeria shot him an irritated glare. "Not really."

Unfazed by her reaction, Nicholas grinned. "Come on, it's not so bad," he teased. "We could be doing something much worse than sitting here for an hour."

"Like cleaning the windows, for instance?" she said innocently.

Nicholas rolled his eyes at the memory.

"I just can't believe we're stuck here because of Lana," Valeria continued, frustration clinging to her voice.

Mr. Davis shushed them with a disapproving look, prompting Valeria to clamp her lips shut.

When the teacher returned his attention to the papers on his desk, Nicholas leaned in slightly, his voice barely above a whisper. "At least we're in it together."

She couldn't resist a smile before she turned her attention to the chemical kinetics problem before her. The rate constants and reaction orders seemed to blur together, and she might as well have been asked to decipher ancient hieroglyphics. She chewed on the end of her pencil, trying to make sense of the problem, but it felt like her brain was stuck in neutral.

Suddenly, a little folded paper landed on her desk. Valeria's eyes darted to Mr. Davis, who was focused on his task, and then to Nicholas, who looked at her with a mischievous grin.

She opened the paper, and it read, "Need a hand?"

Glancing back at him, she tried to conceal her relief at the offer of help with the daunting subject. Without hesitation, she scribbled down a reply ("If you insist") and neatly folded the paper before tossing it onto his desk.

His grin spread wide in delight as he read her response. She nibbled at her pencil, her anticipation growing as she waited for his reply. Finally, it landed on her desk: "Here you go," it read, accompanied by an amateur drawing of a literal hand.

Through narrowed eyes, she saw him smiling so widely that a hint of a laugh escaped, but the moment of amusement was cut short by a sharp reprimand from Mr. Davis.

"Speak again, and we'll stay here two hours instead of one," Mr. Davis's stern voice echoed through the room.

Valeria shot Nicholas a pointed look, silently urging him to stop with his shenanigans.

His earlier overly enthusiastic smiles suddenly made sense; he was messing with her. Valeria's expression remained serious as she penned her response. "I do not appreciate your dry humor," she wrote.

She tossed the paper his way and refocused on question number one, but before she figured out the damn problem (which would take quite a while), the sheet of problems was swiftly snatched away from under her nose like a rug pulled from under her feet.

Nicholas quickly glanced at Mr. Davis, ensuring he hadn't been caught, before diving into the sheet. A minute later, it landed back on Valeria's desk, accompanied by a "forgive me? :)" scrawled next to question one, along with a detailed step-by-step guide on how to solve the problem.