The next morning both Derek and Casey woke up feeling satisfied with their six word memoirs; Derek even more than Casey because he didn't have to do any work for his assignment. He had, so it wasn't so obvious that he'd taken her ideas, but his own spin on the memoir, but he'd changed like one word so that hadn't taken much effort at all.
Actually, Derek thought, it was more work to pay Ed to steal the memoirs in the first place.
Later that day, when Mrs. Harris called on Derek to read his memoir to the class, he was ready. Derek stood up, dramatically cleared his throat, and read proudly, "Hockey means happiness because I'm good."
Casey gaped at him. How could he do that? she thought. He stole my memoir from me!
Derek saw the look of shock on his step-sister's face and smirked. He figured she was probably fuming at him for stealing her idea, but he didn't know the half of it. She was so angry at Derek that she couldn't even formulate words. It wasn't until after Mrs. Harris congratulated Derek on a "job well done, self-centered though it was," that Casey fully realized what Derek had done.
She shot out of her seat and said indignantly, "Don't congratulate him! He doesn't deserve it!"
"That's a bit harsh, don't you think Casey?" Mrs. Harris asked. The teacher had heard all about these two and was prepared to let the whole thing slide when Casey grabbed her paper and thrust it into the teacher's face.
"No, look! He stole my memoir! I had three written down last night but when I packed my things for school this morning, I couldn't find them so I rewrote the one I picked. See? 'Dancing means happiness because I'm good.'! That's almost exactly like the one Derek said!"
Derek turned in his chair to face Casey and smirked at her again. "You need to relax Case," he said casually. "And I'm actually a little hurt that you think I'm not smart enough to come up with my own memoirs. Although, the fact that you liked mine so much that you wrote it down and tried to claim it as your own is very flattering."
He grinned at her annoyingly, and Casey snapped. She lunged at him, hands outstretched to claw his pretty little face off, but she wasn't fast enough, and Mrs. Harris, fed up with the both of them, sentenced Casey and Derek to detention with her after school.
She told them testily, "I have plans for tonight, but I will keep you two in here until you can come up with two," she looked at Derek, "individual, six word memoirs." Casey and Derek opened their mouths to protest, but both quickly shut them when they saw the look Mrs. Harris was giving them.
"Now I'm sick of having you two disturb my class. There's fifteen minutes left; I want you both to go sit in the principal's office until class finishes. You can even start working on your memoirs. Now go!"
This time, not even Casey bothered to argue. She resignedly grabbed her stuff and made her way out of the classroom, head held high. Derek followed her out of the room, flashing a quick smirk to Emily, who, after witnessing the whole exchange, shook her head knowingly at Derek and rolled her eyes.
School was finally over for the day, and Casey was so ready to go home. Today had been an awful day. And then she remembered: Detention. Mrs. Harris wasn't bad as teachers went, but Casey was so not in the mood to deal with Derek and his annoying antics.
Derek was equally unexcited about detention. He'd had to tell Coach that he wouldn't be at practice that afternoon, and, though he'd blamed Casey for this unfortunate event, it did nothing to appease Coach's anger that his star player would be missing practice two days before the first game of the season.
They both slowly made their way to the English classroom, stopping along the way to greet various friends and complain, to everyone, about their unfair detention time. Even those who weren't in the class had heard about the latest Casey and Derek episode and most of them thought that some time together to work out their issues would be good for the pair. If either Derek or Casey had heard this from anyone, that person probably would have regretted it later, but they were both blissfully oblivious, too wrapped up in their own angers over the detention to care what other people thought.
When they finally made it to the classroom, Derek pushed Casey out of the way to get through the door first. She just glared at him and Mrs. Harris, catching all of this interaction, simply sighed. This was going to be a long detention.
"I've got it!" Casey said exultantly. She and Derek had been in detention for little more than twenty minutes, and Mrs. Harris was already at her wits end with the two of them. But she had threatened them with a long detention if they didn't behave and she intended to hold true to that, no matter how much she wanted to throttle them, or, like Emily, lock them in a closet.
"Okay, let me see that Casey. What about you Derek, have you got anything yet?" the teacher asked.
"Yeah, I thought about what you said and you were right. So, I decided to write something about my life." Derek replied.
"Suck up!" Casey said, under her breath. Derek smirked at her.
"Let's see then," Mrs. Harris said. She took both Derek's and Casey's memoirs and read them out to both of her students, "Derek's: 'Dad got remarried; now life sucks.' Casey's: 'Life was perfect; then Mom remarried.'" After hearing each other's memoirs, Casey and Derek glared at each other and started bickering again.
Mrs. Harris almost cried; this was going to take a lot longer than she thought.