If You Miss It

5. hit or miss

CHAPTER FIVE

HIT OR MISS

—

"High schoolers are so stupid, it hurts."

Eden laughed, shaking her head as she continued to grade her papers, occassionally peering into Dmitri's own papers, probably to check if he was grading them correctly. "D, you were a high schooler not long ago."

"And I was fucking stupid not long ago."

"You still are."

Rolling his eyes, Dmitri sighed, adjusting the reading glasses on his face. What the fuck does this answer even mean? Jesus fuck, what are these students on?

This was common for the two of them— Eden would come home with stacks of papers waiting to be graded, beg Dmitri to help her grade them because apparently, according to her, that was the worst part of being a teacher. And when he would refuse, she would bait him by promising to be nice to Juno for once.

Of course, he always gave in.

"The fact that these kids don't know how to spell definitely astounds me," Eden muttered after a few minutes, her hair up in a small ponytail on the top of her head, white face mask covering her skin, a complete contrast from her actual skin tone. "That and necessary. How is it possible?"

Dmitri sighed, circling a giant seventy two on the top of the page he was correcting. "I mean... I still spell necessary wrong all the fucking time. Besides, not all of them can help it. Some kids have learning disorders and shit, right? Dyslexia, ADHD, all that. Can't blame them for not doing well in class," he defended, pointing his red pen in Eden's direction, nearly stabbing her fucking eye out.

A dissatisfied hum left her mouth as she set another paper down, the bright red thirty three glaringly obvious, too obvious for Dmitri to ignore.

"E, what the fuck?" Dmitri questioned with an incredulous laugh. "Why on earth are you giving out fucking thirties to students?"

Huffing, Eden flopped back onto Dmitri's bed, staring up at the broken fan which made a ticking sound every time it finished one revolution. "My students are the fuckin' worst, D. Don't get me wrong, I love my job, and I love to teach them. And I know damn well that I'm a good teacher. But—" Eden sighed, and Dmitri just knew that there was something else that was bothering her, something that she wasn't telling him. The obvious discomfort in her tone was enough for him to know.

"What is it?"

"It's always the rich, white, mentally stable kids with all the fuckin' resources and privileges in the world who just don't bother to try. I overheard one kid tell someone else that my body was too distracting for them to concentrate on what I'm sayin'."

Dmitri stopped. He stopped everything, pen tightening in his grasp. "What?"

Eden just shrugged. What the fuck? "It's not the comments that bother me. Well, they do, but— it's that they literally just make those comments without a fuckin' care in the world. I'm an English teacher, for fucks sake. I teach them to be good people, and this is the shit that they do.

"And I mean, I can't even tell any of the teachers at the school, 'cause they're all stupid fuckin' men. The women get treated like shit in school, and like— it's worse 'cause I'm not white, and the school's management is fuckin' trash," she finished, tossing her pen at Dmitri, probably expecting him to catch it, if the disappointed sigh that she let out after it rolled away was anything to go by.