Disclaimer: I don't own anything.
Summary: Which makes it fifty-fifty, and I don't like those odds. I want it; because I think that I deserve it.
Type: David drabble; modern day. One of those fun little modern-day romps where the boys go to school and whatever. For kicks and giggles.
A/N: Just something wrote up to put the cherry on top of my year of my ridiculous day/year in class. Enjoy!
There was no clock in the classroom. When David Jacobs was in the mood, he liked to think this absence was far more symbolic than lack of funding. Entering the classroom was like entering a portal to hell: a hell with void, monotonous walls and the twisting, dank smell of dog-eared stacks of papers and dehydrated pens.
And at the front of the room, excess skin dripping off of an old plastic chair far past retirement sat what David thought of as Satan's mistress, or Dr. Death, if he was in the mood. She was a dumpy, fleshy woman, with a long tangle of mouse-brown hair. The skin on her face hung like Spanish Moss off of trees, damp and heavy, dangerously drooping from her cheekbones and chin. Thin, pursed lips (that would probably crack if she attempted a smile, no doubt, David though contemptuously) revealed crooked, gapped teeth yellowed from years of cigarettes. Her eyes were the color of burned grease, half-hidden under her age-sagged eyelids. The fatty flesh hung from her neck in folds, loose of her bones, in a fashion that constantly made David think of a turkey. Her spine seemed permanently bowed, like a sapling wracked by a violent storm. Her arms were thick, heavy with lumps just under the skin; they reminded David of his own arms when he wore the oversized sweater his novice-knitter sister had made for him last fall. The teacher's voice always managed to machete through the congealed lassitude of the room: horribly nasally and authoritative, condescending and rushed, as if she were constantly terribly bored. And why shouldn't she be bored? David mused, he certainly was. She shut herself in that deplorable classroom for seven hours a day, five days a week, nine months out of the year for 29 years, frustratingly working Algebra II and Pre-Cal AP problems in front of irrespective students who just sat there and stared.
She was not an attractive woman, inside or out. All of David's personal judgments aside, the collective opinion of Mrs. Dyling was that she was an abhorrent woman.
Given, David had never been spectacularly talented at math. He could fight the semester pretty well, and defend himself in the chronic uphill battles, but math simply didn't flow to him the way language did. Language was an easy current that he could follow and ride, but math was an incessant strain against the spate. History came easy enough to him; he absorbed and digested it, fascinated. He liked the reading assignments in English class, capturing another's imagination and decoding the underlying intentions in the author's work. He liked doing that himself- he just had a thing with words. He liked the way you could twist and braid them together; he liked the way that they always gave you a chance for redemption. Not like cold, unforgiving math, where everything was (ironically) simply: hit or miss.
David knew that the absolute worst thing about math was that it just didn't come to him. It wasn't easy like everything else. David was no stranger to challenge or effort, but everything hard eventually became easy to him; or, at least, relaxed into a routine effort. But math; Pre-Cal AP, just stayed hard.
And there David sat, in the carved-in desk, sketching out the first few words of his next story in his notebook. Two girls to his right giggled, scribbling incoherent numbers on their Pre-Cal semester exam reviews and hurrying them to the front of the classroom. Where David would have normally rolled his eyes and choked out an irritated sigh, he smiled. The next day would be his last day of school, the iron curtain between him and a hot, uncomplicated summer, with Jack Kelly in the days and his own writing in the evenings. His last day of school would hold nothing but videos he'd seen too many times and the same message signed in everyone's yearbook, and then it'd be over. Less than 30 hours to go. He and Jack had started counting down the days until the end of school, starting seven weeks ago. And now, David simply had to endure 30 more hours. He'd finished his only required exam last period: history. The comprehensive portion had satisfactorily uncomplicated, and he had an adequately good feeling about the essays. Even though David didn't have a textbook's knowledge of the "gunpowder empires", he'd been able to bullshit his way through well enough, incorporating enough higher-level syntax and intricate words to impress his teacher into a low A. In what would pass for a complete thought, David was in a hell of a good mood.
He pulled his own semester Pre-Cal exam review from his over-stuffed binder, scribbling his name on all three pages and admiring the complicated pattern of numbers and letters that swam across the page in a way he didn't care to unlock again. He'd finished it ages ago, the first weekend the class had gotten it, leaving the hour-and-a-half blocked period scheduled to finish the review gloriously empty, waiting for David to fill it with quiet imagination and lethargic scribblings. Out of habit, he glanced around the room, searching for a clock to tick off the seconds of the seemingly-endless length of class. He sighed when he failed again (most certainly not for the first time that year) and turned his eyes to the blank notebook in front of him, and his mind to the unproblematic summer that stretched in front of him, relishing the excited, electric spark that coursed through to his fingertips.
Several minutes later, he felt another hot jolt course through him as Dyling spoke his name, "David." Her voice was pierced with its usual cold and severity. He smelled her before he even saw her: the blunt, floral smell of Softsoap and panty hose. He covered the first few words on his notebook with a paranoid elbow and looked up at the corpulent layers of Dyling's neck, speckled with unshapely brown spots. Her head was cocked at a strange angle, as if her neck had finally given out and her skull simply rested upon it. She looked at him expectantly, and then fingered his review papers, "Where've these been?"
David's scattered mind quickly came together as he straightened his shoulders and watched her heavily-lidded eyes scan his paper, "My binder." He answered in a more defiant voice than he had intended.
"Just your binder?" Her eyes were wider now, and David could see the snarled patches of veins in the whites of her eyes.
Almost confused, almost irritated, David managed to nod. He swallowed and tried to gather up his faux respect, "Yes, ma'am. Just there."
"That's funny," Dyling remarked, tracing her brittle fingernails along the squishy-looking skin beneath her eyes, "It looks like Katherine's work matches yours."
Katherine? Katherine who? He glanced to his right, at one of the giggling girls, who now sat silent and rigid. She was no doubt an attractive girl, but her wide, alerted eyes somehow made David assume stupidity. He didn't assume in a mean way; more in a way that the girl would've acknowledged herself, had she ever spoken to him. Dyling lifted David's paper to her face, and then another that she had held in her free hand; a paper David assumed belonged to Katherine. Dyling brought each paper into the light from the ceiling, holding the two against each other like lab experiments, "The work's the same." The teacher concluded, pressing her chin into the folds of her neck, "Why's that? Did you share your answers?"
David felt his face flushing as slowly, the other 22 pairs of eyes in the room drifted towards him. Normally, he wasn't embarrassed when people looked at him. But then again, normally, people didn't accuse him of cheating. He stiffened his posture and his face, and looked straight into Dyling's fleshy, unpleasant face, saying tightly, "No. I didn't give it to anybody."
Ignoring his defiance, the teacher turned her back to David and began to step towards the front of the room, setting each paper on her desk. She stated over her shoulder, "Somebody copied off somebody."
He glanced at Katherine, who simply shook her head at David, mouthing, "I didn't, I swear." Anger flared up in David's chest and he snapped his forgotten writing shut. Dyling's rapid and absurd accusation stunned him. Why had she been so quick to accuse him? He was a good kid. He had always done satisfactorily in Dyling's class: he didn't get tardies, his pants always complied with the dress code, and he certainly never got accused of cheating.
"I was surprised with her work when she turned in her paper," Dyling continued from the front of the room, her crooked fingers shuffling the review papers, "It's interesting to see how alike it is to David's."
"Why me?" David flexed his fingers in aggravation, annoyed and confused at how quickly Dyling had accused him. Was it not sixty seconds ago he didn't even feel like he was in the same room? Why him? So Katherine probably did copy off somebody, but it hadn't been him. David was a prude with his work: for these exact reasons.
"No fucking duh," Tony Higgins muttered sleepily behind David, poking him gently in the shoulder, "the problems are the exact same. Bet they match mine, too."
After tucking the papers safely within her folder, Dyling returned to the side of David's desk, crossing her thick arms in front of her sagging chest, "You're the only one who hasn't turned in your review yet, David."
He simply stared at her incredulously, taking a moment to comprehend her words, "It's just been in my binder," He said lamely.
"You haven't passed it to anybody?"
"I didn't copy!" Katherine whined, her wide eyes glassy. David almost felt sorry for her. If fact, he would have, had he not been so angry.
"And I don't cheat," He gritted his teeth, quickly flipping his pencil in his fingers.
"I'm glad to hear that," Dyling retorted, her tone carrying a false sense of delight. She quickly extinguished the flame in her voice and it turned back to ice, "but you can't explain why these two papers match. Looks like I'll just grade it and divide it in half"
"Really," Tony muttered to David again, reburying his face in his folded arms. "It's the end of the year. Let it go."
David didn't know if Tony was talking to him or Dyling. He would have let it go- he even wanted to, for the sake of saving any other kind of stress right before summer. But in that moment, he was too insulted by Dyling's sudden and ridiculous accusation. He was tired; tired from the long year, tired from studying for his history exam, and tired of Dyling. He frustratingly swiped at his forehead. All manners forgotten, he spoke up again, "Listen. I don't know why they match. I just didn't give it out."
Katherine nodded her head enthusiastically, as if David were her teammate who had just scored a point, rather than the boy whom she had ignored for nine months. She flicked at the paint on her short, over-filed nails, anxiously waiting to see if David could talk them both out of their doomed 50 as their review grade.
Dyling settled her weight in her desk chair, shifted her seat until the excess flesh folded comfortably. She uncapped her pen and pulled one of their reviews to her face before saying, "I don't know, then."
"No, I do." David was suddenly plagued with the thought of the Saturday afternoon he had spent on his bedroom floor, agonizing over the problems that just didn't work for him. He thought of Jack knocking on his window, asking him to come along to wherever his adventure took him that day. And he thought of the chapfallen look in Jack's eyes when David had to tell him no, he couldn't, he had to finish his Pre-Cal review. And finally of the sick, heavy disappointment that had weighed down David's heart, making it that much harder to finally push through the 48-question review, "Listen, I did that work. I sat there and did it at home. I did it all by myself. I didn't give it out to anybody, and I don't know how she got her problems done. But it wasn't me," he flinched at Katherine's hushed gasp, trying hard to concentrate on his own will, "Sorry if it matches. We all learn the same stuff."
Tony hazily muttered something in agreement, but the blood in David's ears was pounding too hard for him hear it, his palms wet with anxiety and disgruntlement.
Dyling sighed, pushing the loose skin around her eyes with her fingers, "We'll discuss it tomorrow morning."
"I don't have an exam tomorrow morning. I won't be here," David interrupted, working to relax his taut shoulders.
"Then the grades are being split."
Katherine let out another short, sharp gasp, and David's sigh was right on beat with her. He ground his fingernails against his pant leg, watching his teacher's smug expression with narrowed eyes. He answered slowly, "I guess I'll see you tomorrow morning, then." When Dyling shuffled their reviews within another folder and looked away, David quietly cursed under his breath.
"Mmm," Tony lifted his head from his arms, looking at David through drowsy eyes. "Whatcha got to lose?"
"Two extra hours of sleep." David muttered to him tightly, absently-mindedly cracking his tension-clogged knuckles.
"Nah," Tony replied, "I mean with the review. I mean, if the bitch manages to get up on the right side of the bed tomorrow, maybe you can talk her into taking it easy on the whole class. Whatcha gonna lose? It's hit or miss."
"Hit or miss. Meaning that if I miss, I fail Pre-Cal."
"For the six weeks," Tony's speech yielded to a tired yawn, "you'll pass the semester."
David glanced over at Katherine, who had resumed doodling in her notebook, either apathetic or unconscious of the situation that had just unfolded. He turned back to his friend, "I want to pass if I deserve it."
"Did Kate over there cheat off of ya?"
"No," David answered coldly, a sour amusement rising in his throat that only a few minutes earlier, he had been in an exceptional mood.
"'Kay, then." Tony settled his face back into his arms. "Go in there and tell Dyling that you did the work."
"What if she doesn't believe me?" David edgily chewed at a hangnail, watching slumber relax Tony's features.
"Hit or miss." His friend repeated.
"So, my chances of passing are fifty-fifty."
"Yeah."
David sighed, a deep scowl dominating his face, "I don't like my odds."