Survival Of The Fittest

Homonyms, antonyms, synonyms, homophones, conjugations, conjunction function, and, ugh. This was all making her brain hurt bad. You had your nouns here, your verbs here, your subject pronouns there. Oh! Erase that one, you mixed up your pronouns, dummy. Lavender Heart's eraser was down to metal from one too many mistakes. How was she supposed to know Ms. Gussie was going to actually assign them classwork for once? The whole week had been spent doing group work and lame Jeopardy games, not desk work. The point of her pencil was way blunt. Her English teacher had warned her specifically not to get out of her desk because of an incident last week when she got up to sharpen her pencil. Clumsy her, she knocked into the cheap desk in front of her. It caused a domino effect for the rest of the desks.

She'd been let off with a fine of three hundred dollars. Her parents were raged beyond belief. Supposedly, one of the desks had crumbled in from its weight times twenty plus. It, along with a staggering collection of minor damage to school equipment, came to a cost of three hundred to replace. The money from her parents had come out of Lavender's college fund.

Even so, she couldn't help but to snicker.

"Something funny over there, Miss Heart?" Ms. Gussie's sudden interruption made Lavender jump.

"No, ma'am. I was just wondering if I could, maybe, sharpen my pencil?"

"Need me to remind you of what happened last time you wanted to use the sharpener? That was exactly seven days ago, Miss Heart." The woman smiled. Her smile was the tell-tale sign that Lavender was about to get owned. "What? Should I lead you there myself with a leash? You're staring at me like a wet rat, get up and do what you have to do before I call you down to the principal's office."

She fought back the overwhelming urge as the room filled with laughter to spit back 'you is hype as what, yo'. Lavender Heart got out of her seat and strolled over to the pencil sharpener. Ms. Gussie returned to grading papers, not caring any longer whether or not the class was talking as they finished their English packets.

((Continued from: The Hallways of Bathurst High))

((Meh, screw it. It'll all work out.))

John glared at the teacher at the front of the room, noone should talk to a lady like that. Not even another lady. His eyes went to Ms. Gussie and then back to Lavender Heart. Most people were mystified by Ms. Gussie as why she didn't have a husband, but when she got angry she could be a real bitch.

Now John, that's no way to think of a lady

The voice in the back of his head reminded him. It was right as always, be nice and the world opens up to you. Something his mother always told him, and something he tried to live by. But every so often he'll let a little Karma flow.

John's eyes went back to the paper that sat before him, he had finished a short while ago. He always had a small knack for english and it was where his highest grades lied.

Glancing to the clock John let a smile hit his face, it would be break time soon. For about twenty minutes probably.

Raising his hand John posed a question to Ms. Gussie.

"Ms. Gussie, what should we do with our papers once were done?"

His english paper was full of doodles. Little stick men with guns and shades, the odd drawing of a noose and razorblade littering the page. His feelings about this lesson were made clear through his drawings. Seth had finished his paper a while ago due to not caring and giving short half asses answers. Didnt matter really he was never going to be a novelist was he?

He sat back in his chair near the back of the room and looked up as the teacher started bitching at that lavender girl. The rest of the class giggled and laughed and allowed a small smile cross his face. He really didnt get that girl. She practicly painted a target on her face and told the teacher to tak a shot, stupid really.

The other boy spoke so he knew that the lesson was almost over. It was time to roll, He reached inside his coat pocket and took out a small cigarette tin. The contents were carefully emptied onto his lap, being careful that Ms. gussie didnt see. He took out a rolling paper, a filter tip and some tobacco and proceded to turn it into roll up cigarette. He enjoyed the occasional smoke and rolling it outside would take up to much of his precious time. He rolled the paper with the tobacco inside and licked the sticky bit of the paper before folding it over. The cigarette was placed behind his ear and the contents of his tin were put back and shoved into his jacket pocket.

Then he sat there. Wondering what goings on would happen today. It was just about every other day that he got into a fight of some kind, be it verbal or psychical he was there.

"The answer is..." he mumbled, barely looking up from his work to notice the teacher embarrassing his classmate.

Johnathan had chunks bitten out of his eraser as he jotted down the last answer on his packet and rushed up to the front to turn it it. His whole posture was shot, leaning forward like he was eighty years of age, when in fact he was still fairly young.

As he returned to his seat, he couldn't help but shiver at the sight of his tormentor, Seth, rolling up another cigarette. Was it just him or did he almost always manage to find a way to piss him off?

Looking at him could do it, in most occassions, which is why as soon as his eyes ventured towards the rolled up cancer stick stuck behind Seth's ear Johnathan violently turned forward again, rigid and silent.

((Continued from: The Hallways of Bathurst High))

Mariavel was standing otside of the classroom, boared as hell. She left in the middle of her History class, knowing her teacher wouldn't do anything. She waited and waited for the bell to sound, so that she could speak to her best friend Lavender.

"God! why does this stupid bell take so long to ring!" she yelled to herself. sliding down the wall into a seated position, not caring who saw up her miniskirt.

"Lavvy! I really need to talk to you." she said resting her head against the wall.

Jack lay on his desk, head in arms, turned facing, eyes wide-open, directly out of the window, as though focusing on something out there which no one else could see, but was absolutely facinating to him. He, like most others by now, had finished his paper with time to spare, and had now resigned to passing the remainder of this period staring out of the window to the left of his desk. He momentarily turned his head and flicked his eyes upward when Lavender Heart found herself being barraged by a verbal torrent of violent abuse from Ms. Gussie, and had smiled and sighed midly at the plight of the poor girl.

English language was not an issue for Jack, he had a very open mind on the subject. First person subject pronouns, common concrete non-count nouns, past proggressive verbs and modal auxiliarys, all these things came simple to him. He knew unto whom he would be passing his paper and exactly who they were. Grammar was no issue. So he knew only too well that he had passed the paper, which now lay beneath his folded arms, with flying colours, and had no need to re-check it, or check it one should say, as it was as he had not so much as glanced once at anything he had written since the start of the test. There was simply no need, he was sure.

So he turned his head back to the window after taking mild-amusement in the reprimand of Lavender Heart, he saw no harm in it, and continued his day-dreaming.


OOC:This might have been better, only I have little time as I have my final exam of the year today, and have to prepare. Still, just sticking him in the situation.

He rolled his eyes as Lavender got up to sharpen her pencil. It was all about keeping your head down. Staying inconspicuous. He was already attracting enough attention, the mysterious British kid who'd suddenly transferred for no reason...

Classes didn't matter to him. He wasn't expecting to graduate to be able to use any of the lessons he was being taught, and if things were up to him he'd just skip them all together. But that would only mean more questions, more attention- and he couldn't afford that. He had to blend in with everyone else. He couldn't afford to be discovered now.

Gazing blankly at the paper in front of him, he scribbled down a few words absent mindedly. Back at his old school, he'd enjoyed English. He'd been one of the best in his year. But now he didn't want to be the best... he had to be just another kid.

Writing the odd spelling mistake here and there, he sighed quietly.

As it happened, Tanesha Lexx had missed the entire incident that had occurred when Lavender Heart had attempted to sharpen her pencil.  Instead, Tanesha had been in the bathroom, fiddling with what seemed to be an ever-growing blemish on the tip of her nose.  Even now, she was standing before the mirror in the girl's restroom, squeezing and squeezing, but all it seemed to do was make the blemish appear even larger and more red.  Sighing in frustration, Tanesha's eyes wandered to the other blemishes unfolding on her already acne-scarred face.  Why'd it always happen to her?  The pretty girls never got zits, never.

Then again, there was nothing pretty about Tanesha.  Not in her eyes, and probably not in anyone else's, either.  Staring in the mirror a moment longer, Tanesha made a mental note that her braids were looking rather... "nappy", was a good word to describe them.  They'd have to be redone soon.  Maybe she shouldn't even bother, not like anyone was looking anyway.  Aftre taking a moment to splash a bit of the school's luke-warm water across her face, Tanesha finally opened the girl's bathroom door with a squeal and headed back down the hallway, toward Ms. Gussie's room.

As Tanesha waddled down the hallway (and waddled was a good word, considering the girl clocked in at nearly 300 pounds, it didn't make walking very easy) toward the classroom, she noted the big-chested blonde bimbo slumped down in the floor in front of her room: Mariavel Varella.  Mariavel personified everything that Tanesha Lexx wanted to be... pretty, popular, and the object of attraction for many.  Of course, it was then that Tanesha took into account the fact that Mariavel was also a total slut.  So she'd heard, anyway.

And I don't want to have to resort to that to get attention from guys.  I want them to just... like me for me.

Casting another glance toward Mariavel, Tanesha also noted that her panties were plainly visible for everyone in the hallway to see.  Tanesha knew little of the girl and didn't care to, but that fact alone pretty much sealed her thoughts on Mariavel Varella.  Pushing past her without uttering a word, Tanesha turned the doorknob and entered Ms. Gussie's room again, huffing the word "Slut" under her breath as she entered the class.

Looking warily around the room, Tanesha bypassed a few of the students as she made her way toward her seat near the back of the room.  That new British boy, the quiet one, seemed pretty disinterested in his homework.  Tanesha smiled lightly as she passed him.  He was cute.  Then again, somebody like him would never give Tanesha Lexx a second look.  Casting her eyes to the ground as she passed by Seth Mattlock, she made every effort to avoid eye contact.  She'd heard some troubling things about that one.  Finally locating her empty seat in the back of the room, Tanesha sat down, causing an audible creak in the chair, and proceeded to return to staring at the nearly blank sheet of paper in front of her.

She hated English.

OOC: Now I have some free-time I will finish my earlier posts by adding in my other two characters.

Once again Panom had entered the English class of which he was not a member (he was meant to be in social studies at the present moment) and taken up a seat nearby, though this time not actually besides, Elizabeth.

Some time had passed since he had struck Jack and still nothing had happened in response. Panom did not fear Jack coming after him himself, even if he did have a lot of friends to support him and even if he was regarded (supposedly) to be quite a tough customer, because Panom knew when it came to physical contest, no one in this lazy-yank school would be able to match the skills he had developed back home in Thailand. He did however fear what would happen if the school discovered that an immigrant student had been assaulting local schoolkids. He wasn't smart but Panom guessed no good would come of it.

Still, nothing had happened to either extent and such time had elapsed that Panom no longer concerned himself with the matter, possibly because keeping such information in his head, with his very small mind capacity (most of his head being filled with his extra thick skull) was too much of a struggle, and he had thus forgotten the issue all together. And so here he was, back in the wrong classroom, now sitting behind Elizabeth, starring at the back of her head, imagining what the front looked like right now.

Jack didn't even appear to notice, he was busy gazing out of a window.

***

Elizabeth wrinkled her nose somewhat as she reached yet another tricky question. English was not her weak suit, but it wasn't exactly her strong one either. Ordinarily she got high marks, but only with much struggle through examinations such as this one.

It was important to her, though she didn't admit it, even to herself, that she got higher marks on the paper than Jack. Ever since they had known eachother they had been at competition over just about everything, and whilst they were pretty much mutually agreed that of the two, Jack was the muscle and she was the brain, the one place this was untrue was right here, in the English classroom, the one place he could excel her and the one place she was desperate to change that fact.

She glanced, though she didn't even realise she was doing it until it was done, at Jack. He was finished, of course, and away with the fairies as he all too often was. She furiously returned to scribbling away answers onto her own test sheet.

Mariavel clenched her fists. That fat-ass bitch just called her a slut... A SLUT! How dare she even think that word about her?! It was true that she slept with a few guys for cash here and there, but that was a nessesity. She gets no money and has no time for a job.

Mariavel stood and walked to the door peering through the glass. It seemed as if they were taking a test or something. Then it hit her... that class held a group of people. Seth was there... and so was Jack... and John... and Lavvy... and Elizabeth... and Panom! too many controversies were going to happen.

Then the bell rang...

Upon hearing the bell ring, John brought himself up from his seat and slung his backpack over one shoulder. Walking up to his friend Jack, he waved and sat in the empty desk infront of him.

"Ah! Listen to that bell tool, it means freedom!" John said, a smile adorning his face.

"So, what shall we do with our free time?" John questioned, they were given half an hour breaks between classes after some student had a nervous breakdown.

Good 'ol Twitchy McGee...

Jack sighed and lifted himself lazily up from his desk, a contented expression on his face. He didn't know why he felt in such a good mood today, but something was influencing him and he just felt so at peace with everything. It didn't even bother him to see Panom enter the classroom and take a seat right behind Elizabeth, and he felt espescially good when the lesson finished and he did not go up to talk to her, and nor did she show him any particualar interest either, he noticed. All in all, he felt good and things seemed to be going good for him in return.

John sat before Jack and asked him what he wished to do with their half-hour break. The truth was all he wanted to do was go outside and sit on the grass and stare at the clouds, so mellow did he find himself. Of course, Jack would never admit to such a thing:

"Go and cruise around the school, find some fit birds and invite them back to the home room, of course!" He smiled and winked.

In his present state he reeked pure confidence, and he was going to use it to make the very best of what he saw as a fine day. Then, outside the door he noticed Mariavel, and his stomach churned. He had not spoken to her since the day Panom and he had had their little falling out, and he had little desire to relive those events.

He had not told anyone about that day, and so it had gone completely unoticed. His wounds had been superficial and healed fast and when asked about them he insisted he was hit with a football, he even made jokes about it, always careful to do so out of reach of any of the three people present at the time.

In light of Mariavel's presence Jack swiftly changed his mind:

"Or perhaps just hanging out here would be better man."

As soon as the whirring of the pencil sharpener began, the bell chimed. Lavender groaned. Her packet sat unfinished on her desk, a pile of erase marks mountaining on its corner. Page three and onwards were filled to the brim with blank spaces. Page one was the only page truly complete. Page two was a slop-job. She knew that more than half of those answers were wrong. The packet wasn't finished because she was a lazy, good-for-nothing. It was just that she was so stupid. The reason she had gotten into a high level English class like this one was because of Mr. Gromstrum's lenience in the grade before. I'm going to fail.

Then again, there was always the chance that she didn't have to finish the packet. There had to be atleast seven other kids that hadn't done the whole thing. The first kid she glanced to was Johnathan. That freaking nerd. In the time it had taken her to do two pages, he probably could've done fourty gazillion-billion. Seth... Boy, was he crazy. The guy had a cigarette and his packet was full of violent images. Nooses, 'blades, bloody murder, who know what else? Lavender shivered, the thought of him and Mariavel crossing her mind. Why did Mariavel hang out with someone like that? It was horrible times one hundred.

Next, her eyes fell on Tanesha's papers. Almost blank, cool! Maybe Lavender had a chance.

"Hey, Ms. Gussie, did we have to finish the English packet?" She placed it on the teacher lady's desk hopefully.

"If your initials are L.H., then yes." Those were Lavender's initials. Ms. Gussie had her smile on again. "How far in it are you?"

"Um," Lavender mumbled. "When the bell rang, I was on page three."

Her eyebrows knitted. Uh oh. "Miss Heart, see me for the first ten minutes of lunch."

"No, you fat cow! I'm not going to see your cracked up face any longer than I have to, porkface." She knew as the last word had come out of her mouth that she'd made a huge mistake.

"Afterschool. Today, Miss Heart!"

Whatever. Fueled by that, she stormed out of the room, making sure to give Ms. Gussie the bird on her way out. She hadn't picked the right moment to do it, unfortunately, the teacher caught sight of it out of the corner of her eye. Before the bat could do anything about it, Lavender zoomed down the halls. Her expensive sneakers screeched to a stop.

"Mariavel, over here, quick!"

Mariavel saw that Jack had noticed her... but he seemed set on not talking to her since the incedent.. Why?

"No, you fat cow! I'm not going to see your cracked up face any longer than I have to, porkface."

Mariavel looked with wide eyes at her best friend. as Lavender left the room she gave her teacher the bird and then started sprinting down the hallway.

"H- hey! Wait up!" Mariavel yelled as she ran after her. She was glad she didn't wear heels today.

When she finally caught the running girl she said, smiling, "Lavvy, Lavvy, Lavvy. I thought I was the bad one."

"Agh, you're right. Miss Varella, you're such a bad influence!"

Lavender stuck out her tongue at her best friend. Thank God for losers with problems. Some guy's breakdown had allowed the split between last period and the next to widen to thirty minutes. Every other period had breaks of three minutes, still.

"So, how are you Mariavel? It's been forever." She was exagerrating. Forever was always the time when she was away from Mariavel, no matter if it was three minutes or five hours. "I think Ms. Gussie's gonna fail me, that freak-witch." Lavvy stopped herself there, not wanting to run off at the mouth for too long. Once the girl started to rant, there was no end to it. She smiled back at her friend.