Fionna tapped her pencil nervously on her desk as she stared at the unanswered questions of her trigonometry test. She'd only transferred last week, and hadn't even been at this school long enough to learn anything of substance, let alone trigonometry.
Damn, and she was usually so good at math. Subtly, her eyes wandered around the classroom. She'd never been in a real school before until now, and hadn't realized how distracting it would be to take a test with twenty other students. The cacophony of scribbling pencils plucked at her nerves, and the ominous slow ticking of the clock grew louder as the seconds slipped by.
"15 Minutes." Mumbled the teacher from behind a newspaper. She was a cold character, who seemed to always do odd things. At this moment Mrs. Petri was not reading the newspaper as she appeared to be, but scouring the pages for pictures of faces, which she collected and collaged in a strange notebook. When Ms. Petri was actively teaching, she put on the perfect picture of normalcy, but at leisure, she was downright strange. Seeing that Ms. Petri was occupied navigating a safety scissor through the page, Fionna's eyes took the opportunity to wander. She wasn't a cheater, but she couldn't help wonder if the other students were just as baffled as she was by these triangles. She looked over to her front, then her right, and then her left. Each student scrawled away at their papers, preoccupied with completing the work. Finally, she turned her head to look at the paper on the desk behind her. She did so with a pretense of fixing her hair, and saw with astonishment that there was at least one other student who was just as clueless, if not more so than she.
The paper was completely blank, with the word 'farts!' written in large letters over the entire span of the sheet. She looked up to see the author of the work, the creepy guy that sat behind her, leaning back comfortably in his chair with his hands behind his head, emphasizing today's weird shirt selection of a duck on the electric chair. 'Duck the System!' The shir announced. He always wore some shade of black. At least, the last five days she'd seen him he'd worn black, paired with other silly decals and bands. The black shirts matched his long black hair, back eyes, and dark skin. He wasn't dark like her sister Cate, more coffee than chocolate, and his hair was straight instead of tightly curled. He was the picture of aloofness and stared blankly at her, arching one eyebrow in question as to why she was pretending to fix her hair, then saw she was looking at his test. His face split into a mischievous grin as he turned the paper for her to see and shrugged. He would be no help to her.
"Mertens!" Cried the Ms. Petri as she spotted Fionna through a cut out rectangle of her newspaper. Fionna jumped, as well as several other students at the teacher's shrill voice. "If you're going to cheat on your test, I'd suggest you choose a better victim. Now, if you're done flirting, I expect your eyes to stay on your paper."
The sound of snickering replaced the scribbling, and Fionna turned back around, trying to make herself as small as possible in her chair.
She tried not to cry, or at least cry quietly while the clock cruelly ticked slower. In defeat, she turned her test paper over and began doodling a sad crab with no friends. That's what she was. Sad, with no friends, and crabby.
The bell rang and the students sprang from their seats. Fionna waited for them all to leave before having to take the embarrassing walk to the teacher's desk to drop off her unfinished test. She slipped her test paper underneath the stack of the other's to hide her shame. Then, to her utter surprise, a hand yanked her paper from the pile. She turned to see the creepy kid that sat behind her with her test in his hand. He was quiet, with his voice at least. His face was a constant show of expression and sarcasm. To her horror he looked at her test and tsked, before showily taking out a pen from his jeans pocket and clicking it open. He scrawled something on the paper and she leaned in to see what it was.
"Beans!" He exclaimed, showing her the word written on the paper, accompanied with a smiling emoji and fart cloud. She chuckled as he put her paper on the top of the pile, then placed his over it.
"Farts." She read, chuckling at the silly words.
"Beans, and farts." He said pointing at her, then at him. She giggled, feeling her previous dread float away, as he cackled. "Don't sweat Petri's class." He said. "There's always extra credit at the end of the quarter." He ruffled up her blonde hair, setting her bunny ear headband askew. She'd never been touched by a boy before, having lived a sheltered homeschooled life, and she righted her headband with her guts in a flurry. By the time she'd fixed her hair he had slung his backpack over his shoulder and turned to walk away.
"Wait!" Fionna called. He turned around, and Ms. Petri angled her newspaper down to see what the commotion in front of her desk was. Fionna tried to remember what her adoptive sister, Cate, had told her about making friends earlier that week.
"Just say hi, and ask for their name." Cate's beautiful voice had spoken over Fionna's shoulder. Cate had been elaborately braiding her hair. Being the only white person in the family, Fionna had always felt excluded when Momma Cat would take hours singing to Cate and tightly braiding her black curls. When Fionna had complained about this to Cate, her sister had claimed she was lucky. It hurt an awful lot and your butt got numb after sitting in a chair that long. But Fionna wanted desperately to fit in, so Cate had taken the time to braid Fionna's long blonde hair in a variety of styles.
Fionna fingered the fat braid over her shoulder which was interlaced with three other smaller braids. Her sister had taken half an hour to make her beautiful today.
"Just say hi, and ask for their name." Fionna recalled again.
"What's your name." She finally said after a couple seconds of awkward silence. His smile turned crooked and he scoffed playfully.
"Farts, I've just told you." He replied. "Beans, right?" He continued, chuckling to himself again before turning out the door to go to his next period. Fionna looked at the empty doorway blankly.
"What a weirdo." Said Ms. Petri to herself more than to Fionna.
"Who is that anyways?" Fionna asked. Ms. Petri looked up from her paper as if noticing Fionna there for the first time.
"Marshall Lee Abadeer. King of the idiots." She said before flicking her paper upright again.