Revamped!

[I apologize if I forget to update but I don't have that many chapters left and I'm incredibly busy with real life at the moment.] [2020: Accurate about now.]

The Scarlet Letter: Part Three

The next morning, Scarlet stands at her locker and closes it once she sees her girls approaching. She didn't get back to them about yesterday after she left them at the mall since after an episode of crying on Wolf, she passed out on her bed and called it a day. She was happy not to have any missed calls or texts from them and although that might make them bad friends, Scarlet believes differently. They knew that she didn't want to talk to them now.

"How are you?" Cinder asks her, unsure if she should rest her hand on Scarlet's stomach or something like that. So, she keeps her hands at her side.

"Fine," Scarlet replies. "The pregnancy test and my period were both negative." She groans a little. "I want to eat a dozen cupcakes."

"Why not just one big cake?" Winter suggests.

Scarlet pauses, putting some thought into that logic. She makes a mental note to buy herself one big cake if she survives the school day. It sounds like a really, really good idea.

"Did you study for the test?" Cress asks her.

Scarlet's expression is both a bit curious and deadpanned. "What test?"

Before Cress could answer, Wolf sweeps in and wraps an arm around Scarlet's waist, pulling her closer so he could plant one into her hair. Cress finds herself swooning over their romance rather than answering Scarlet's question. She instantly forgot she asked something.

"Yeah, there's a test today," Cinder tells Scarlet.

"What?" Scarlet asks. She looks up at Wolf. "Did you know about that?"

Wolf shakes his head, laughing. He laughs even more when he sees Thorne and Kai approaching them, mostly because Thorne's panicking over an opened textbook and a flood of questions for Kai. Clearly, it was evident on who studied and who didn't.

"I don't know anything!" Thorne sings as papers spill out of his textbooks.

"You're scared which means you care, Thorne," Kai says as he helps him clean up his mess.

While he's on the ground helping Thorne gather his papers, Kai feels Cinder's hands running through his hair. He smirks as he stands again and Cinder's hands fall down to his shoulders. He gives her a quick kiss as well before giving Thorne his papers back.

"Why don't you compliment me?" Cress asks, poking Thorne's arm as he fumbles with his papers and textbook.

"Because you turn my brain to mush," Thorne responds.

"I think you're confusing me for tectonic plates."

Thorne can't think of a clever enough response since his brain is the equivalent of a marsh at the moment. Cress just poked at him for not knowing anything about geography (especially tectonic plates). Everyone laughs as the bell rings and Thorne only groans since that means it's the start of the dreaded test.

-o-

The classroom is so silent that the only audible noises are pens against the paper and the ticking second-hand of the clock. The teacher sits up at the front with her eyes on her desk, not looking at the students to make sure they weren't cheating because she's intense. Her glance alone could shrivel parts of the students that they preferred not to be shrivelled.

Thorne takes a breath as he turns to the next page of the test. Then, he winces a little at the questions. "I don't need to be perfect, just passable."

Scarlet coughs into her arm. "Unrealistic." She covers it up with a second cough.

She can't turn back to look at him but he knows that he's giving her a dirty look so she smirks in a snarking way. He knows that she has that look on her face.

Winter blinks back into reality once her thoughts finish and she instantly remembers that she's in a test. She crosses her legs in her seat as if she was doing yoga and sees where she left off. Winter's lips form a confused circle when she sees that she left off mid-sentence before she tuned out and forgets what her thoughts were back then.

"Oh, blessed stars, please be with me now…" Winter prays as she picks up her pen and continues writing something that maybe makes sense.

Thorne slouches in his chair, wishing that Winter would pray for him as well since he's beyond screwed. The stars won't help him but maybe they'll listen to her. He fiddles with his pencil and sees that from his seat, he saw Kai's test and unlike his own, it has answers on it. Were they the right answers? He wasn't sure but writing something was better than nothing. And hey, the teacher was distracted so maybe he wouldn't get caught.

"Some things are worth getting in trouble for," Thorne mutters to himself as he tries his best to peek subtly.

"We're a couple of misfits that fate brought together…" Winter sings softly and randomly to herself as she continues writing. Nobody wonders what that has to do with geography but if it gives her some answer then props to her.

"What part of the test did you write that for?" Cinder whispers, smirking to herself.

As Thorne stretches his neck upwards, he suddenly feels something like a pen thwack him from behind. Thorne jumps a little before turning back and seeing Wolf waving at him with a grin. Wolf points at his own eyes and then at his test, telling Thorne not to cheat. Thorne gives him the finger and looks back at his blank test miserably.

"Yo," Scarlet softly calls. "What's the answer to question 5?"

"27," Thorne replies.

"Why is your answer a number?! We're in geography!"

"...I tried factoring the map of the world," Thorne responds jokingly.

"Even then, it wouldn't be 27," Cress snaps back.

If they could laugh at the moment, they would. Instead, they can only smirk and bite down on lips to hold back. Thorne couldn't believe his Crescent Moon was outsmarting him so much today. He's impressed.

"Didn't you study?" Kai asks.

"I've had more important things to deal with than types of soil," Scarlet replies sharply. "Let me cheat if I want to."

"That's my girl," Thorne says before another pen from Wolf hits the back of his head.

"Good luck on the essay," Kai murmurs to Scarlet and Thorne as he turns back to his test.

"There's an essay?" Scarlet and Thorne question as they turn the page and see that there is an entire essay to write and barely ten minutes left.

"Well, spades…" Wolf murmurs defeated. "Gotta channel my inner Cress for this."

They glance at Cress who's suddenly napping on her desk. Her test is turned over and at the corner of her desk. By lucky guess, she finished the entire test about fifteen minutes ago. Did that much time pass already? Apparently so. Scarlet and Thorne gawk at her before looking at their blank essay pages.

They look over at Cinder and notice that her hand is cramping, and so casually and smoothly, she just throws her pen in her other pen and continues writing. Again, they're all surprised. Nobody except Winter knew about Cinder's double dexterity.

Kai coughs. "Cyborg." He coughs again to cover it up.

Cinder doesn't even look up from her test to give Kai the finger with her free hand. He smirks, shaking his head.

"Think she could write my essay with her free hand?" Thorne asks hypothetically.

In response, he gets the same gesture she gave Kai.

-o-

The bell rings and as the class hands in their tests and files out, Thorne's test had to be ripped out of his hands because he was using it as a tissue during the last five minutes since he had no answers. Scarlet handed hers in like everyone else, having written her essay in point form since she just needed something on the paper that wasn't tears. Winter handed in her test with Cinder's, Cress's, Wolf's, and Kai's since Cinder had to wake Cress from her nap, Wolf had to pick up the pens he threw at Thorne, and Kai had to drag Thorne away from his desk that he was clinging onto.

"I failed!" Thorne cries once he enters the hallway, falling onto Kai. "I have no future now!"

Kai pushes Thorne onto Winter who lovingly wraps her arm around his head and pats it, consoling him. She rocks him back and forth.

"I'll take you in," Winter tells him. "Being dumb is okay. It means you've checked with your ego and are okay with the fact that you're not the best at something."

"You're a true friend."

Winter smiles at him.

"Please tell me there's not another test today," Cinder begs, shaking her hands.

"I got chemistry during last period," Kai says.

"We do?" Thorne exclaims before wailing on Winter's shoulder.

Kai stares at Thorne for a bit, pitying his poor friend for not studying for anything. He swings his backpack around to his front and pulls out his chemistry textbook. Thorne's eyes brighten as Kai opens the pages.

"Time for a crash course in organic chemistry," Kai says as he leads Thorne towards their second period.

"I'm off to run the pacer test," Cinder says, spinning on her heel and heading to the gym.

"C'mon, Cress," Winter says, linking their arms at the elbow. "Time for mixed media."

"See you guys later!" Cress exclaims as the bell rings.

Left behind are Scarlet and Wolf who take their time walking down the hall to their next respective classes. Scarlet feels her phone vibrate in the hem of her skirt and she pulls it out to see the test. She stops walking when she sees that it's from an unknown letter and the text is in French.

Unknown: As-tu reçu la lettre ?

Wolf turns and sees Scarlet staring at her phone like a deer-in-headlights.

"Scarlet?" Wolf questions, walking up to her and lowering her phone so she'll look at him. He sees that she looks more scared than Thorne did when the teacher screeched that there were five more minutes left for the test and all that he was positive he got right was his name. "Babe, what is it?"

He looks at her phone and reads the text message.

"Did you receive the letter," Scarlet translates.

"What letter?" Wolf asks.

"Can we skip class?" Scarlet asks hurriedly. "I just - I can't sit through a lesson with that in my mind."

Wolf nods, opening an arm towards the door. "Anything for you."

[Admittedly, I'm a mix of Cresswell and Winter while writing tests.]