Revamped!

[There will be another double update today mostly because I only have two chapters left.]

The Scarlet Letter: Part Nine

The group sits in class the next morning at Lunar Academy. Their teacher stands at the front of the room with a stack of papers in her hands, handing them out to different students depending on whose name is on the paper since she's distributing the geography tests they wrote a few days ago. With all the real life that hit them recently, they forgot they wrote those tests, despite how much fun they had during the test.

"Excellent job, Crescent," the teacher says as she puts her test on her desk.

Cress picks up her test and smiles at her mark. Her friends give her (jealous) glares since she slept when she finished her test and she still got the best mark out of them. She probably had sweet dreams in scholar-land.

Winter receives her test and claps to herself, happy with her result. Cinder is satisfied with hers as is Kai. Wolf shoves his test into his backpack without looking at it. Did he do well, did he fail? He'll never know and he really doesn't care enough to find out.

"Is Scarlet Benoit coming?" The teacher asks them.

They shake their heads and the teacher puts her test at the bottom of the pile before continuing to distribute. Scarlet texted them all in the group chat about staying home to take her Grandmère out-of-town before coming back on her own.

Thorne receives his test without one look from the teacher. When Thorne sees the perfect score circles at the top of his paper, he's a little bit amazed, stunned, especially since he doesn't remember writing the essay at all. Maybe the stars blessed him with the right answers and an essay. Maybe factoring the map got him bonus marks … until he realizes that it's not his test in his hands. Thorne groans to himself as he gives the test to the right person and the teacher puts his failed one on his desk.

That's more reasonable.

Although he saw that coming, it still hurts. He just hates studying because he has better things to do like enjoy life. The only science he does is his chemistry with girls (pre-Cress); the only math he does is calculating his dates with girls (again, pre-Cress); and the only geography he does is finding out places to take out the girl he has chemistry with after doing calculations on dates (again, pre-Cress).

Basically, Thorne has reached that point where the teacher's voice became white noise.

"Maybe growing up means disappointing the people we love," Thorne says about his failed test.

"And who are you disappointing?" Kai asks.

"Myself."

-o-

At lunch, they sit in the cafeteria, staring at the food they bought from there but not eating it. It's not that the food was bad since they could tell that the hamburger was a hamburger, it was bland and the lettuce was wilted. That statement applied to basically everything the cafeteria had to offer.

"Lucky Scarlet isn't here," Cinder mutters, pushing her burger away from her. At least she was somewhere with edible food, hopefully.

"Can we go out and get real food?" Winter asks.

Wolf glances at the time on his phone and does some mental math the see how much time it would take for them to drive somewhere, buy food, and get back in time for class. There were variables such as traffic and lineups since it was lunch hour for not only them but the entire city of Commonwealth, but he didn't care if he was late for class. The others, maybe (except for Thorne and maybe Cinder).

"We could make it," Wolf says hopefully.

They get up, leaving behind their burgers and heading out to the student parking lot. Before they make their trek towards the cars, they stop. There were four cars in question - Cinder's (and Winter's since they carpool), Kai's, Thorne's, and Wolf's. Cress knows how to drive but usually walks to school.

"Why have we never carpooled before?" Kai asks rhetorically because of all their cars.

"Whose car is big enough?" Winter asks because they're six in a situation where they only have five-seater cars on them.

"Cress can go on my lap," Thorne suggests, wrapping his arm around Cress's waist.

"Or you could go on the floor," Cinder suggests, unlocking her car with her keys before throwing them over her shoulder for Winter.

They head over to Cinder's car. Winter takes the driver's seat since Cinder threw her the keys and starts the engine and because it was their car, she got to sit shotgun. That left Thorne, Kai, Wolf, and Cress for the backseat. By default, Cress went in the middle because she's the smallest. It was left to the boys to decide who sits where.

"Screw both of you," Wolf says, sitting down beside Cress and closing his door.

That left Kai and Thorne to decide who gets the last seat and who gets the floor. Being the bigger person, Cinder gets out of her shotgun seat and is run over by Thorne who takes her seat and slams the door. Cinder so saw that coming which is partially why she did it. She looks at Kai and offers him the last seat which, unlike Thorne, he refuses like a gentleman.

"I insist," Cinder says, "it's my car thus my floor."

Winter honks the horn. "Will you both take a seat already?! I'm hungry!"

After Cinder's kick to his behind, Kai ends up in the seat and Cinder on the floor. She crawls in and Kai closes the door behind her. Winter starts driving as Cinder shifts her position. She sits with her back on Wolf's side of the car seat and puts her feet on Kai's lap. She so planned this.

"I'm begging no cop stops us…" Winter prays for as she pulls out of the school parking lot.

-o-

They made it back to school on time with no cop interruptions on the way. When they walk back into school with their takeout bags and takeout cups, they see the principal coming towards them. Now in their eyes, they did nothing wrong since students did have a right to leave school property for lunch just as long as they came back in time, which they did.

"And what are your situations?" He asks.

For a moment, they think that they're late for class but it's not that. They still had plenty of time to lap around the entire school if they wanted to. The principal was referring to the following non-uniform items in sight: Wolf's leather jacket, Cinder's white sneakers, and Winter's oversized jean jacket with random iron on patches.

"We just got inside," Wolf replies bluntly and honestly.

"From lunch," Cinder adds.

"And we're heading to our lockers," Winter finishes.

"But you're now inside the school so you must obey the dress code."

The principal exits and the group just watches them go. Sure, there were dress code rules that had to be followed but in all realness, they took maybe three steps in the school from outdoors.

Cinder marches loudly purposely to show that she couldn't care less about the rules. "They're supposed to be black running shoes but I don't run in them so much that they turn black from the ground so screw him."

Wolf keeps his jacket on. "If anyone harms my leather, I'm killing them. He could've ripped it off of us if he wanted to but that'll cause a lawsuit which will ruin his precious suit."

"And Levana will suffocate him with our own aced lawsuit."

"If he rips my jacket, you can rip him for me," Winter says. "I'd rather get suspended because at least I can wear whatever I want from the comfort of my own home."

They figured that Winter had a point there. Why bother with a lawsuit when they could just be forced not to go to school? That was anybody's dream now.

"How does Scarlet get away with wearing her red sweatshirt here?" Thorne asks. "Does it like blend in with her curls or something?"

"She starts taking it off when teachers pass her in the hallways but once she's behind them, she puts it back on," Kai explains.

Cress laughs a little. "She picked a good day not to show up."

[This was probably the most normal chapter in this whole story so far. That stuff with the dress code has actually happened to me. Like those were the real conversations in it.]