"Dang, I'm pretty sure that I had the paper in my notebook. Is it still in the backpack somewhere?"
Sam groaned in defeat. He had lost his homework for Miss Jessica's class, despite the fact that the answers he provided were frequently copied from Manson and Cloey.
Any more late assignments, and the teacher is gonna be absolutely livid. Sam would probably have to attend detention after school. It was such a bummer that he couldn't hang out with Quad Four.
Thankfully, the baseball team's next practice matches were canceled due to a weather forecast of rainy weather about to drench the city's usually sunny areas.
Maybe Cloey and the others also got detention, and they would be able to join his time serving detention after school, although he doubted that would be the case since they're mostly good grade students without a mark in their attendance throughout the years.
Knowing that there was no other choice, he turned towards the person behind him. A classmate and a friendly part of Quad Four, Sheila Orbison.
"Psst! Hey, Sheila. I need to talk to you about something," Sam silently said.
Sheila looked up, with her green eyes looking annoyed by an interruption to her reading, yet Sam couldn't help but shake the feeling of her trying not to make eye contact.
"What is it?" she asked.
Sam had to present himself as vulnerable. "I know that I always ask for you guys to let me copy the homework, and I promised you all that I would do the next assignment by myself, but yesterday when I tried to finish it, I found out that the work due today had a bunch of things I didn't remember and all."
"Not even one thing you retained...?"
"Nope. I prolly was sleeping during that time. It was a pretty sweet dream, but moving on!"
Sam showed her the empty homework paper he grabbed from the back of the class, where a box of empty assignments was located at.
Sheila stared at the paper that was presented right in front of her face.
"It's empty, nothing written on it, except with recent mistakes scrubbed out?" she pointed out.
"Not just that," Sam stated, "but the questions here are so hard, like this part with the grammar. I could never finish answering these things before class starts, you know what I mean?"
Sheila analyzed the paper presented to her. All that was written by Sam was a couple of drawing doodles and eraser marks that were eroding the sentences of the questions themselves.
"Trying to erase the questions, are you?"
Sam started to sweat, and he could see his arms getting paler, like a ghost's faint view. He was probably taking this slightly too far over a single incomplete homework page.
"Sam, I don't think the questions are that hard, but maybe you should've paid more attention to the lecture when it was provided. If I tell Cloey about this, she'll especially be saddened by your grades dropping," Sheila said.
For her to be so blunt about this situation, but Sam knew she was right about him, how he was always slacking off and thinking whatever of interest had squeezed into his mind.
And if Cloey heard about his promise he failed to uphold, of trying to do his work by himself, she would be absolutely crushed by the revelation.
Sam got onto his knees, his hands clapped into the purest form of begging there was.
"Please don't tell her. I don't want her to get upset at all. We all know how she feels when someone fails at something. Cloey will be in a funk and say that it was all her fault; I don't want someone like her to experience that, okay?"
"Sam..."
Sam continued, now that his worries about Cloey combined with his fears over his missing homework. "... Y-you see, I always tried to make sure that she won't handle stuff that is way too much, stuff that I can't handle."
His hands were trembling, shaking the desk like it was a miniature earthquake, rumbling the buildings around the area, for that is his writing materials. It was a miracle for anyone else not to notice, besides Sheila, with her worried green eyes, who paid attention to Sam's shaking desk.
"..."
Sheila stayed silent, her unmoving eyes carefully still on Sam, as though she was in the middle of analyzing him.
"... I just don't want anyone to--" were the words that Sam managed to give to her before a thud was heard behind him.
Sam saw that Nate Elfirm had propped himself on the chair behind him. Although he looked far more ghastly and exhausted than usual. His eyes were drooping down, with only a silver of white visible through the darkened eyelids.
Nate looked like he rolled around in a dirt pile. Whatever color was splashed on his pants and shirt must have faded away along with the creases patterned on each side of the pieces of clothing.
He could see some people staring at Nate's overall appearance, their eyes glued to every dirty detail.
Marlo Chen smirked and elbowed Bobby Belarus to turn his attention towards Nate. Bobby himself gasped terribly, with his hands on his chest and forehead as if a headache had struck him. The notorious Lucia Morgans, written on her notepad with her eyes scanning Nate on all sides.
With no other things to do, even though his homework was basically incomplete, Sam got worried and chose to turn towards Nate, intending to ask him how he was doing.
- - -
"Hey, you okay there, buddy? You look kinda like a dead guy."
A noise forming a slurred sentence had just reached Nate's ears as he began to process the environment around him.
Nate didn't realize how tired he actually was until he soon felt the effects as he entered Miss Jessica's classroom.
He probably wasn't that healed up during the Vivid Forest with Colten, and the adrenaline of knowing her was truly late made him run for the school before true consequences might be used.
Nate blinked and coughed.
"Ack. Sorry for making you guys worry. Just had some things that need to be dealt with at home. I try not to make it about her, but it was mostly dealing with Nallie."
"So... was that whole thing with your sister make you covered in mud or something?" Sam asked, his eyebrow raised.
"Heheh, basically. Nallie and I almost trashed the whole house before I reminded her of the time she was supposed to walk to school. And to be honest, I'm not sure I remembered why we were fighting at all; that must have slipped off my mind," Nate stated.
Sam shot a concerned look at Sheila, while she made a face that told Nate that she was itching to get back to the contents of her book.
"You weren't here for the first period. There was a ton of work and concepts that were needed to understand before the next lesson," Sheila pointed out.
"Yeah, and Cloey was so worried about you she almost had a heart attack. Try not to be late next time," Sam stated.
"I know, I know, next time I'll be on time, and I'll even talk to Cloey next time about what I did before."
Sam also glanced at Nate's clothes, with an odd expression on his face, his nose scrunched up, wrinkles appearing on his face.
"But first, you need to do something about those clothes," Sheila said, now back being absorbed in her book. "Perhaps go to the bathroom during the break between periods?"
"Uhhh..."
Nate looked down one more time and saw that splotches of brown were spread out in his front shirt. Torn leaves, a variety of warm colors, were just hanging by the thread of the shirt's material.
He was embarrassed by the fact that these were still there, and it presented to everyone in the class. Without a second to spare, he covered the dirt with his backpack to shield away the staring eyes.
Sam chuckled at the sight of Nate's attempt. "It's okay, bud, I think this period is going to be a walk in the park. The next period will arrive before you know it."
"Sam..." Sheila said, "you still got that homework to do."
"Huh?!"
Sam widened his eyes as he mouthed a scream that was supposed to be heard, but no sound came out of him.
"Oh man, crap! I totally forgot. I didn't finish my homework when I had the chance! Miss Jessica's going to be here any minute!"
"Oh, I see. Miss Jessica did say to work on these grammar questions for homework. Thankfully, I did..."
Nate reached out to his shriveled backpack and grabbed his green folder. After searching through the array of papers. He picked the right one and smiled at his completed work.
There may be a couple of mistakes, but at most, it will probably be graded as a B.
"Here it is," Nate proudly stated. "So glad and proud of the answers here."
Before he could proudly think about his work, he felt a nudge on his arm, warm to the touch... a bit too warm.
Nate turned to see Sam, his face rising with tomato red, and his eyes were filled with fear and discomfort. The paper next to him is completely blank, without markings of proper pen and pencil strokes.
"Ghirjiikckk... ugh u-ugh." Whatever Sam attempted to say came out wrong in so many ways. Guttural noises and rumbles mixed and matched came out of his mouth instead.
Sam continued to tug on Nate's skin. "Is it okay if I can copy your homework? I woulda done it myself, but there's no time right now, and the teach is gonna be here any second."
"My homework?" Nate questioned. "But didn't you say before that you wouldn't try to ask one of us for this again?"
"That's what I practically said too," Nate heard Sheila say in a low tone.
"I know, just this one time, please? I promise this will be the last time."
Nate viewed Sam's face with worry. He then sighed as he proceeded to hand over the homework.
"Okay, here it is," Nate outstretched his hand containing the paper to Sam. "Try to hurry before--"
Nate didn't finish his sentence because what he thought was plenty of time for a classroom to be unsupervised was drastically shortened.
The class immediately scrambled to their assigned seats, without so much as a worried reflex hindering their movement, as the doorknob of the entrance rattled quietly, the blur of the window showed a silhouette of a woman in the halls.
Oh shoot! Sam...?
Sam accidentally dropped his pencil as he knee bounced into the foundation bars of his desk. The rest of his writing materials escaped from the top and rolled onto the floor in every direction.
Nate's view is also flooded with the many fellow students doing many different actions in response to the arrival of the teacher.
"Geez, come on... and here I thought we would get a couple of minutes to ourselves for once," Nate heard Marlo complain. "There is gonna be so many things to do today, man..."
Bobby Belarus softly chuckled at Marlo's comment. "Oh, cheer up, my good man. Miss Jessica's a woman who is always trying to be on schedule and to give everyone in this class a well-earned education. Even to someone so academically problematic like Sam Davis."
Wow, Bobby Belarus. What a way to describe a friend like that. Or is it a friend of a friend? Maybe it's an acquaintance instead? I don't know, I think Bobby and Sam are just friends who know each other with little knowledge of their personal lives.
On the other side of his desk, Nate could see Lucia Morgans secretly handling a folder within her bag. The way she hid it seemed kind of suspicious, like it wasn't allowed in the class.
Nate's suspicions were soon proven true when one single paper swiftly fell out of the folder accidentally, showing the bolded text with yellow markings.
It was actually a teacher version of the homework, with all the answers for the first semester's work highlighted in a yellow tone.
What? Where did she even get this? Did she steal this from the teacher's lounge when nobody was looking?
Nate thought about confronting her and probably reporting trouble to the staff. Or, maybe he could ask for a copy of a student's complete homework page from her to give to the struggling Sam. It was not too far-fetched to think that she passed around those copies for a chance to earn big bucks.
Nate hesitated before shaking his head.
No... it was Sam's fault for not completing his homework, and he should learn from this mistake for the near future. Also, I don't think that Lucia is gonna budge from this, so I'll keep this to myself. Hopefully, everyone here will learn their lessons for this to be a normal class.
The door rattled like a rattlesnake until it was finally opened wide, with the teacher holding a stack of books in her arms, holding it like cradling a newborn baby.
"Good morning, class, hope you had a good night's rest, because we will propel ourselves into new material today. So be aware of the number of quizzes that will increase from this point on."
Miss Jessica announced when she plopped her things on her desk. The sight of the teacher caused a reaction in Bobby, with him putting his hands in the air like it was some big, important celebration.
"Good morning, Miss Jessica! We all hoped that you've been doing well," he enthusiastically announced.
Nate was taken aback by the booming voice of Bobby. Despite his small, chubby frame, he possessed a loud voice that could be heard around the school itself, and the place was quite big in particular.
Miss Jessica gave a warm smile to the class, the kind that really felt nostalgic somehow, liking through an old photo's contents. "Why, thank you, Bobby! Class, first order of business, let's go over last week's homework and then a pop quiz as a surprise."
Nate heard a symphony of groans all around him. Probably less than half the class groaned from this announcement.
As the English and Composition Teacher, Miss Jessica ranked quite high on the scale of difficulty in classwork. Her class was almost as hard as Mr. Mouch's class.
She was quite bubbly and always supportive of most of her students. But as Nate noted, the kindness she equally gave out is proportionate to the amount of work she passed to the class.
Although she meant well with her wanting the students of Standart High School to do well in school, so that they would achieve success in the future, and have unhindered access to opportunities.
As for Nate's opinion on her, she kind of likes an elementary school teacher who moved into the upper grades of high school. He can handle the moderate workload that gets pumped out often; the same goes for Sheila.
The class went through the participation of the attendance roll count, and all of the students were present; nobody was missing from their seats.
And then the time for homework checking arrived.
By the looks on Bobby, Marlo, Lucia, and the other classmates, they seem to be now unbuttoned by the homework now turned in, although the long wait for the actual scores to arrive may incur uncertainty among the class.
He could hear Bobby clap with awe as he handed Miss Jessica the paper. His hands were clapping so fast that it was blurring intensely in Nate's view, wondering how that speed didn't make his hands catch on fire.
When the teacher went towards him, Nate handed his homework to Miss Jessica.
"I'm glad you got those answers into this piece of paper..."
He raised his eyebrow in confusion as she said that.
Finally, I can relax for a bit knowing that there is one less paper needed to remember to turn in.
Miss Jessica moved to Sheila. She handed her paper to the teacher.
"I'm sure your work will be tidy and organized as always, Sheila."
Sheila only nodded in affirmation. She was very good at handling the workload that the class had to offer.
Then at last, the teacher finally arrived at Sam's desk.
"Sam..." Miss Jessica softly asked. "Do you have your homework paper with you? I don't see it out."
Sam looked like he tried to say something, but the quivering of his lips overrode his attempt to even let out a syllable or two. After a couple of seconds, he finally let his worries out:
"I'm so sorry, Miss J-Jessica! I didn't m-mean to not f-finish it," Sam blubbering out loud; it stirred a large reaction from the class, and Nate jumped by his emotional turn appearing out of nowhere.
Miss Jessica jumped at his sudden emotional turn. "Eh?! What?"
The class all looked at Sam. Most of them were confused, while some were chuckling in the comforts of their seats. Lucia even took a picture of him as she quickly wrote down some notes. It was astonishing to see how she managed to do two things at once.
"S-Sam! Please, it's nothing s-serious! It is only a missed homework assignment, and you have plenty of time to do it for late credit," she frantically tried to reassure, but Sam kept burying his face into his hands, and the sounds of weeping could still be heard as it went through his arms.
And the sniffling. Oh, the sniffling was also too much for Nate to take seriously.
Sam... hey man, do you really have time to be... all that in the middle of school. I know it is hard for you to show up to class with incomplete homework pages, but seriously, look around.
"Yikes, here we go again with this..." Nate heard Marlo beside him.
"Don't be too hard on him," Bobby responded to him. "I'll probably be the same as Sam if I didn't have my homework with me."
"Yeah, so...? It's just homework, that's all."
Nate turned back to Sam and Miss Jessica.
"I'm sorry, Miss Jessica. Because I, the sworn protector of this school, and by extension, of the grand scale of Standart City, I failed even the basic task to properly handle my academic works personally. I must have focused too much on my baseball duties; I should have balanced it all out, of course I had to make that one mistake that may have cost it all!"
"Whoa, even more words than ever, that Sam Davis," Marlo stated.
In response to this, Miss Jessica looked like she was about to cry. "Oh, please don't be upset, Sam. I know it's hard for you to handle the work in this class, but you must understand that the world out there is unforgiving to those without the knowledge to overcome its obstacles. I'll tell you what, though, maybe I can allow you to turn in the homework for late credit for tomorrow. That way, you will have time to work on it!"
Sam looked at her with his beady eyes.
"R-really, Miss Jessica? You'll really do that, even with the unforgivable sin that I have committed, and the action that made me betray everyone here I dearly loved and cared for?"
"Well, I wouldn't try to make it sound like everything is all your fault, but it was an honest mistake; nobody is holding that against you, Sam," Miss Jessica reassured.
Hearing this, Sam practically leaped in joy. He was like a happy dog getting his taste of dog treats as an award.
He yipped with joy as he hugged the teacher in return. The jump into her arms almost made both of them stumble down to the floor.
"Ahh, Sam! Let go now, I'm happy that you're happy now..." Miss Jessica said.
"Ah, sorry, my bad. Got a little emotional right there," Sam said.
"Maybe a little too emotional..." Marlo said as he rolled his eyes.
Nate sighed in relief when the whole ordeal with Sam's missing homework answers. Nate could tell most of the other people in class felt the same thing. Lucia, in particular, seemed amused by Sam's emotional speech, while Sheila was still absorbed in her reading materials.
Thinking about what happened earlier in the morning, Nate grimaced with seriousness.
He had now returned to the life of the ordinary, the city of the ordinary, with something sinister inside it.
The monsters called Fadens and the green crystals called Theomin... they're things that should be handled by professionals.
Whatever it was, he should focus on his schoolwork and the future that he hoped to be successful in.
Nate looked over to his backpack and pulled out his books for the current class. Lined paper on one hand and a pencil on the other, Nate reaffirmed his focus.