anonymous ? multi

|november 12 2019
northwestern high school
10:25 am|

"today seems like a wonderful day for you all to take a pop quiz," mrs. arroyo announced, only to receive an array of groans and mumbled curses from the teenagers in the room who had up until that point not been paying attention to the lesson, instead wasting time on their phones or talking about how they can't wait for thanksgiving break.

"how we supposed to take a pop quiz if we barely know anything you been teaching us? you setting us up to fail miss," a boy from the back of the classroom protested, followed by a wave of voices agreeing with him.

mrs. arroyo didn't budge. "now taymor, if you don't know what i've been teaching that's your fault, you've been in this class for 2 months now, correct?"

taymor didn't respond. all he did was shake his head and mumble something about school being very hard.

"i agree with tay. if we're going to have a quiz on something as difficult as calculus you should at least let us study for it first," kimetrius piped up, only to get  completely ignored by the teacher.

right before the short cuban woman grabbed the copies of the test and passed them out, there was a knock on the door. she got up from her desk and answered the door, which revealed the school social worker along with a new student, a slender, brown skinned girl with neon green hair dressed in an all black outfit.

"i would like for all of you to give a warm welcome to our new student, maria kelly. she came here all the way from maryland. i expect you all to be welcoming and polite to her"

the other students couldn't be more tuned out as mrs. arroyo continued to introduce the girl to the classroom, and maria was just as disinterested as everyone else was.

the two women stood side by side at the front of the classroom. the hispanic woman excitedly introduce maria to a room full of teenagers who weren't paying the slightest bit of attention to her spiel, and the teenager, flipping her bone-straight lime green weave and pursed her lips together with a sigh obviously feeling awkward and othered being forced to be the center of attention to a group of people who weren't even paying attention, and was just waiting for mrs. arroyo to stop talking already so that she could sit down somewhere.

"aye, why do teachers still do this shit?" whispered jahseh to his best friend, symere. the two of them were sat in the back of the classroom, phones out and not really giving a fuck about what mrs. arroyo was talking about or about the new girl.

symere shrugged his shoulders in response. "i don't know, like obviously nobody cares that there's a new girl...like no offense to her but what am i supposed to do with this information? obviously i can see that there's somebody that i've never seen before in the class so clearly i'm going to make the connection that she's fucking new, y'all don't need to introduce her like this is kindergarten or some shit."

the caramel skinned teen let out a wheeze of laughter at his friend's comments before taking a peek back up at the front of the room, where it seems that mrs. arroyo had finally stopped her introduction and had let maria sit down. "i'll say one thing, at least the new girl is pretty. i like her hair, i might dye mine that color. i've always wanted to try green."

"ehhh. pretty is a stretch, but i like her style," symere commented, looking the new girl up and down as she found a seat and noticing that they had a similar gothic style.

 she wore heavy black makeup, pitch black skinny jeans with a chain hanging down from the pockets, and a ramones t-shirt with a long sleeved black and white striped one underneath. it wasn't really a practical way to dress in the middle of south florida, even during the fall, but everyone knew that emos didn't care how hot it was, they were going to dress like it's the dead of winter in siberia regardless