Chapter 10
I sat in history with Mrs. Peters, reading over the chapter since she couldn't be bothered to teach us anything. I was falling asleep while reading about the Russian Revolution when started passing out our now graded tests from last week.
I wasn't exactly confident in my grade. I knew my performance wasn't going to be up to par. The night before the test, I had been exhausted from an overload of work. I decided to sleep for a bit then start studying. The problem was, instead of a nap, I ended up waking up at 5:00 AM. I only had a couple of hours to study which obviously wasn't enough. When I got the test, I only knew about half of the answers. I kind of winged the rest, but I expected to get at least a B.
Mrs. Peters handed me my test faced down. That couldn't be a good sign. I slowly turned it over with my eyes squinted out of fear. A giant D was written in red at the top of my paper. No. That couldn't even be possible.
When the bell rang, I directly went over to Mrs. Peters desk. "Yes Chloe?" she said with an adenoidal voice while typing away on her computer. How I wished I could break that computer!
"Umm…I have a question about my test grade," I said tautly.
She stopped typing and looked up at me with tired eyes. "Look. I'm as shocked about your grade as you are, but there's nothing that I can do about it. That's the grade you deserved. I really hope you don't make it a habit to get these kinds of grades in the future." With that, she went back to her typing.
I sighed and walked out of class. Ok, I thought. I did worse than I expected. But at least the test wouldn't count as that much of my final grade. Yeah. That kind of made me feel better. As long as my parents didn't find out about my grade, I could always bring my average back up.
I was still stressing out about my grade when I saw Wes waving at me across the hall. I waved back with a frown. He sprinted towards me and asked, "What's up?" with a concerned face.
"It's nothing," I replied. "I just didn't do that great on my History exam."
"Aw. First time Princess Chloe got a B?" He asked with fake sympathy.
I glared at him. "First, it was a D. Second, I don't even know why I'm talking to you about this." I turned to walk away.
"Wait," he said while grabbing my wrist. "I was just playing. Come on. Why don't we go to the park or something after school? You know, to get your mind off of things."
I really did need some time to relax so why not? "Fine," I replied.
Wesley's POV
Chloe and I sat on a bench across from a small pond with ducks and fish swimming in it. Her hair was blowing in the breeze as she looked around the park at the little kids playing on the playground.
"So why are you so stressed out?" I asked. "I can see it written all over your face and demeanor. I doubt it's just because of a bad grade."
She turned her head slightly to look at me then sighed. "You're right. It's not just about the bad grade. It's my parents. They put way too much pressure on me. I've been a good student and worked hard my whole life but now…I just can't really handle it anymore. Their expectations are too high for me. If I get a low A, they expect a high A. If I get a high A, they expect a higher one. I will never be good enough for them, and I don't know why."
"I'm sure they're just doing it to help you. They want to see you succeed in life. They love you." Almost as much as me, I added silently.
"If they loved me," she said, her voice starting to quaver. "they would know that enough is enough. I put in 110% of effort into everything that I do. As long as I do my best, they should be proud. But no. They are never satisfied. And you said they love me and want me to succeed, but if that's the case, why do they treat me differently than my siblings? My older sister Britney was never treated like this. She was naturally good at everything. It just came to her easily. She was the favorite until she moved to Chicago to study. Also, she is hot. Like seriously. They say there's no such thing as a beautiful and smart person, but Britney is a walking example. All the guys go crazy for her. But me," she said while tears started to stain her face. "I'll be lucky if I ever even get my first kiss. I have the lowest self-esteem possible and a lot of the reason for that is because my parents have never complimented me in any way, shape, or form." I wanted so badly to tell her how beautiful she really was but kept my mouth shut. She sniffled then continued. "And then there's Austin. He's the best brother I ever could have asked for, but I'm still jealous of him. He gets all of the attention. The good attention. As in, they don't bother him about his grades or anything. He can do whatever the heck he wants and get away with it. If I did half the stuff he did, I'd be grounded for life. That's the type of attention I get. The bad kind."
At this point, she was bawling. She was going to continue, but I stopped her. I grabbed at her and pulled her face on to my chest where she let out all of her emotions into my shirt. When her crying died down, I spoke. "You know, my parents are kind of strict with me and expect me to have good grades too. I have straight A's in school right now only because of them. If they didn't push me, I would've been a slacker for sure. The way I look at it though is that they are motivating me. I need to create a good life for myself and my future family and in order to do that, I have to succeed in school. I can't do that unless I get support form those around me aka my parents. So just look at it that way. They are encouraging you."
"I really can't," she said, wiping away her tears. "I want a good life for myself, but if they think they are encouraging me, they are doing the complete opposite."
"They probably don't think they are doing anything wrong though. You should talk to them."
"I should. But that's not happening anytime soon. I'm too angry with them."
"You're a stubborn one, aren't you?" I laughed.
"Totally," she smiled while sitting upright. "I'm sorry for bringing all of this emotional stuff onto you. It's not your problem."
"Don't worry about it. I'll always have your back."
She smiled. "So Austin's party is on Saturday. Excited to perform?"
"Oh yeah. It's gonna be dope!"
"So I'll probably come over early to help with décor and stuff. Is that fine?"
"Sure," I replied.
"Great," she said while looking off into the distance.
A/n: Sooo I probably won't update for two weeks... sorry in advance..
Remember to comment/follow/favorite :)