Homeschooling

Chapter 1

I sat down on the couch early the next morning, waiting for Mr. Bear, our teacher to come in. Harold sat next to me. He was a really old Hermit Crab. Cinnamon and Jeff, two Tarantulas, sat down as well. Aristostenes, our Betta Fish, was swimming around in his fish bowl on the table beside Orzo, our Juvenile Grey Ratsnake. Cinnamon W., my pet Tarantula and my best friend, groomed herself beside Aly, my sister. Mrs. Kit sat down on the other couch. Soon, Mr. Bear arrived.

"Good morning, class. Please take out yesterday's homework that you should have completed" he said.

We all started rummaging through our bags for our homework. Harold's was a mess. I sighed and took out the crumpled homework I only half completed.

Mr. Bear started collecting it. "Olivia, why is this only half-done?" he asked, looking at me. I was worried that everyone would start laughing at me.

"I was doing the dishes, and I forgot to finish it when I was done" I lied. Mr. Bear shook his head. "You are going to have to complete your homework as well as do your assignments to get a grade in my class" he said.

It turns out Jeff and Aly never did their homework either. Aly had been too busy playing Masquerade on her new laptop and Jeff had a date with Cinnamon, so he never had time to complete it last night. The real reason why I had never completed it was I had dedicated two hours after dinner to watching Taylor Nicole Dean videos, and by that time, it was time for bed. I had named one of my stuffed animals after Attah, her fattail gecko. I loved those things.

Mr. Bear collected the rest of the homework. Aly had been truly a 'teenager' for the past three days, which is why the dishes never got done and her laundry was overfilled.

"So, it seems that not everyone did their homework, so we are going to have a quiz" he said. We all started groaning and complaining in protest.

"The quiz is twenty questions, and half of them are multiple choice" he explained.

Harold sighed and slammed his binder on his lap. I hadn't even studied for it, nevertheless I watched YouTube way too much and looked up 'doing homework frustrated' instead of actually doing my homework. Somehow looking at pictures of people doing homework helped me get motivated to do mine.

Mr. Bear grabbed the quizzes and headed back to where we were sitting. Cinnamon fluffed her long, beautiful blonde-silver hair over her shoulder and looked at me. I had always been super jealous of her hair. It was all the way down to her abdomen, and it was always curled. Cinnamon was so beautiful, despite she was only a 17 year old life-size Tarantula and Jeff's girlfriend.

"So! The quiz is on adding and subtracting fractions, and if you fail it, you fail" he said. I sighed. I hated fractions.

After we all had our quizzes, Mr. Bear sat down. "After you are done with your quizzes, I am going to be collecting the packets you all were supposed to do for homework. You were supposed to complete it and turn it in, and I gave you three days to do it, so there's no excuse why it isn't done" he said.

No, I hadn't done that either. I had been super focused on building my Marimo Moss tank, and had spent nearly $100 at PetSmart buying out their Marimo Moss Balls, then putting them in cups of water, laying on my bed, and petting them and talking to them for nearly two hours.

I leaned over. "Hey Aly, did you do the packet?" I whispered. She looked at me, then shook her head. "I only did half of it" she whispered back. I felt happy, now that I wasn't the only one who hadn't done it.

The problem was, Mr. Bear meant during the quiz he would be picking up the packets. What a relief he didn't look at them!

I sighed and kept trying to focus on the extremely hard quiz. Last year, at the end of the school year, I had cried during the the nearly entire duration of my math exam. I was crying because partly, I couldn't do it, and mostly because I had told on the wrong teacher that was watching me during it.