Big Shot: Tag Team (Fanfiction)

Ch. 1

~Nandi~

Bella has been my ride or die since the womb. We're twins; she was born five whole minutes before I was. We're not identical twins, so we don't have the cliché switching places hijinks you'd see on Sister Sister. We still end up having out own fun especially at Westbrook High School for Girls, where our mom is the principal. It's an all-girls' private school and we're on the basketball team.

At our school the whole selling point is women empowerment and raising the leaders of tomorrow but, that doesn't mean that the whole curriculum is a meditative kumbaya session. Especially not classes with Ms. Grint. She is the textbook definition of pretentious.

Don't think that because we're Sherilyn Thompson-Kim's daughters that we get kissed up to. Quite the opposite, Ms. Grint thinks it's her personal mission to make sure we don't become a pampered, spoiled, entitled young women who ride of their mother's coat tails.

So, one day, we taught her to not come for us. She was going on about how frivolous life was without a proper education in a field that contributes to society.

"The pillars of our society are not paid their due. No, that privilege is for the divas of society. The actors, the athletes all entertainers who only distract people from their realities."

"I wish someone would distract me from this reality," I whispered to Bella as I twisted a black girl.

"You and me both. She knows that we want to be WNBA players or an actress or film moguls," She whispered back with her textbook upright to block the view of her mouth.

Unfortunately, Grint had the hearing of a bat.

"Ms. Kim, would you care to elaborate on your comments concerning our lecture?" Grint asked poised like a cat ready to pounce on a small bird.

Bella and I looked at each other and we knew we were going to take the L on this one because it was just one of those days when you have no craps to give.

"Yes. Entertainment is a commodity that provides people with much more than escapism. It gives them joy, stress relief and excitement," Bella said with her honey suckle brown dyed pompadour defiantly pointing back at Ms. Grint.

"Oh, is that so? Would you care to offer your thought as well Ms. Kim?" Ms. Grint's icy looking hazel eyes were on me now and her nose looked like a hawk's beak as she closed in on me.

I thought to myself, "What the heck?" I looked Ms. Grint in the eye and said, "Yes. The aspirations you just deemed frivolous teach the principles of positive reinforcement. It teaches that you can obtain what you desire most if you sacrifice for it and work hard."

"I see. So, my two degrees from Harvard and extensive education as a whole has amounted to nothing, but a measly position as an instructor at a private school?"

"You said it was measly not me," I said.

"Yeah, some peoples' idea of success is different than a Harvard education," Bella chimed in solidarity.

Ms. Grint practically had steam rising from her perfectly pressed and curled black hair. She pointed to the door and we both knew what that meant.

We gathered up our bags and stuff then headed to our mom's office.

She looked at us like Evilene from the Wiz as she stared down from her polished dark wood desk. Omma was tapping her heeled foot on her carpet and her manicured hand on her desk. "You know, when I was pregnant with you two and felt ya'll gangsta walking in my belly, your daddy said it was just probably indigestion. I had no idea you would be cutting like this. See, that's what those 4D ultrasounds don't tell you," she said rolling her eyes and shaking her head.

"Omma what had happened was, Ms. Grint was singling us out again," Bella started out.

Omma was busy texting with her acrylic French white tips, but said, "I'm texting Appa now. We will be discussing this when we meet for lunch today."

"But Omma, she's always had it out for us because she thinks we get preferential treatment," I tried to explain.

"Some people will think that because of our situation. You will be given a hard time for one thing or another in this life. You must know how to pick and choose your battles. As your principle I say that you have merely expressed your views but as your mother I must chastise you about letting her get to you. Now, I'm going to have to penalize you with an after-school detention which penalizes me because I have to stay here with you, so you will be helping me with some work to make it even," she said firmly.

We spent two hours after school helping mom around her office. I got the task of helping her organize files. She had online files and knew how to use the internet well enough, but ever since she experienced her computer crashing, she made sure she had paper files.

"Omma don't you worry about giving yourself papercuts from these huge piles? "I'm sure I have two already?" I said stacking papers into stretched out manilla folders on her carpet.

"Nice try. Pretending to be a hypochondriac isn't going to get you out of your punishment. You know very well that I like to have a back up plan in case the first one falls through," she said typing on h desktop rhythmically without even looking over at me.

"Appa said that when Y2k was approaching halmeoniwa and hal-abeoji built in a bomb shelter attachment to their basement," Bella said as she cleaned out mom's cabinets and portable drawers.

"Yes. It's still there. They actually showed me how to get in should there be another crisis," Omma said pointing one of her fingers in the air.

"How come we never got to see it?" I asked Omma as I organized another stack of papers chronically.

"Probably because we would have shown it to our friends, and they knew that," Bella said as she casually polished a cabinet.

"Yeah probably," I said shrugging.

"Put some elbow grease into it," Omma said looking over her shoulder at Bella who frowned and began to wax more vigorously.

Bella's phone rang and she quickly denied the call. The phone rang again, and she texted to furiously her wavy brown hair was a blur. She was a texting ninja.

Omma was quiet but I knew that she was wondering who she was keeping a secret from her. She was very perceptive and aware, but she never asked Bella who was calling her.

I knew it was Lucas Krezinzky. He and Emma had been broken up four weeks, but Bella hadn't told anyone but me that Lucas was seeing her. Emma and Lucas seemed to be nothing more than a fling, but all the same Emma was our teammate and girl code wouldn't allow Bella to become a thing with Lucas without seeming like a backstabbing slut.

Bella hadn't kissed him yet, but they definitely had been texting under wraps. For the next few minutes, she never looked away from the cabinets behind mom or the metallic drawers to the right of her desk.

The rhythm of Eomma's typing changed and I could see her expression become pensive and calculating like she was figuring out how she was going to deal with the situation.

Later at dinner Appa was the first one to ask, "So how was work today my girls?"

"Oh, funny you should ask it was very eventful," Omma said sharpening her look at us with a forkful of brisket on her way to her mouth.

"Ohh…?" Appa asked leaning in towards our direction. His eyes were patient behind his square Buddy Holly glasses.

"Ms. Grint decided to single us out and we challenged her for picking on us," Bella explained as she put a forkful of broccoli.

I backed her up as I did in the class, "She was making a thinly veiled statement about how the things we like are careers that are overpaid, so we challenged her claim and instead of accepting our right to rebuttal, so she sent us to Omma's office."

"Ms. Grint may have a bone about what privilege she thinks my daughters get but I had them serve detention accordingly, even more so because they spent it doing menial tasks for me," Omma said cutting into more of her brisket.

"You two are good at making your arguments and convincing people. Maybe you'll make good lawyers." He said in his off hand calm manner.

I watched our younger brothers Jayden and Skyler happily eat their baked mac n'cheese without any Ms. Grint's or other people giving them crap because their parents weren't the administration. They were twelve and thirteen, they weren't old enough to attend Westbrook's brother school where Appa was principal.

"Grint is a waste of a good rebuttal she likes hearing her own self speak, it's easier to ignore her, unless she is very obviously out of line which in that case, I'm perfectly capable of handling her girls," she said punctuating her words with a fork in hand like it was a conductor's baton.

If only Grint was the single problem of the week. The next day when we were in Ms. Berrycloth's class Lizzy Steinbeck, who was the most self-righteous know it all in the whole school. She was the literal worst and during third period history she was texting something to her brainless bushy eyebrowed friend Bekka Thompson.

I watched Lizzy snicker as she got a text from back in the room where Bekka sat.

Lizzy was sitting in the row right in front of us, but I was directly behind her and tried to read her screen. She was texting back Bekka to quickly for me to read her phone.

On GP I felt like narcing on her for all the times she gave us crap for talking to each other in class, the little hypocrite. But my sister and I weren't narcs, so we didn't bust her out. Then I saw it, a picture of Lucas and Bella siting on the beach together with his hand on her shoulder.

I wrote down on a piece of notebook paper "She has a picture of you with Lucas on her phone. They're talking about you."

Bella wrote on the same sheet, "How's that possible nobody else was there."

"Maybe she was on one of the cliffs," I wrote back.

Then all of the sudden there was a text that came in that said, "I guess basketball girls pass around boyfriends too lol." At that moment Lizzy cut her eyes and looked back at us semi discreetly and then smirked.

Bella and I both saw it.

I wrote to Bella, "You gotta tell Emma because if this gets out, she might assume that Louise knows too."

"I know. I was hoping that I had more time to find out how to tell her."

In passing period on our way to the courtyard Lizzie bumped Bella with her shoulder on purpose and Bella spun her around like a fidget spinner and bumped her chest on before saying, "Wanna go?!"

I pulled her back and said, "Not like this Bella, she's not worth it."

"Yeah, Bella why don't you go to your little boyfriend," Lizzy said with a snarky tone.

With that comment I fake sneezed in Lizzy's face then said, "Sorry allergies, ugly redheads give me flare ups and then walked away with Bella while Lizzy stayed their disgusted and furiously wiping her face.

We made our way to a table where Mouse, Louise and Olive were sitting.

"Hey double threat," Louise said playfully as she looked up from her phone.

"Hey, Lou," Bella said sitting down with an irritated look on her face.

"What's wrong?" Olive asked looking at both of our annoyed faces.

"Lizzy Steinbeck. She hasn't fallen off the face of the earth yet," I said putting my backpack down with a thud.

"She is a proverbial thorn in everyone's hip," Mouse said in her Type A voice.

Just then Bella and I both got calls to our phone.

It was Omma. "My office now! Come straight here!" she yelled.

Oh! Snap!

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