A scowl formed on Jocelyn’s expression at the sound of an unfamiliar voice, her head turned to cast a glance at the boy behind her. Glaring at him, she let out a soft ‘hmph’ her nose turning up at him. “Don’t worry yourself about my mouth. It’s not your concern.” She chided coarsely, her tone sharper than she had intended it to be. She got enough flak from teachers, the last thing that she needed was to get it from her classmates as well. Letting the boy pass by her, Jocelyn moved to the opposite side of the hallway to put some distance between the two of them. He took off to his next class, and she remained where she was, pausing to increase the distance between them even further.

Jocelyn was in no rush at all to get to her next class, in fact, the soles of her shoes drug against the tiled floor of the hallway as she moved from one section of the school to the next to reach the chemistry lab. Science was definitely not a subject that she was interested in, not that there were many subjects in school that she could claim to be a fan of other than art class. School was nothing more than a social club, one that Jocelyn did not fit into, nor did she care to. The girls all dressed as if they were trying to be featured on Playboy magazine, while the boys were either jocks, or sci-fi nerds who could talk about little else besides Star Wars and the latest superhero film. She considered them all to be idiots, and like anything she believed was unworthy of her time, she avoided forming any type of attachments to them. She was in school only because her aunt would stress herself senseless if she did not attend, and it unfortunately was the law.

Entering the classroom, the redhead glanced around the room, taking note of where the new boy was seated. Shooting her teacher an annoyed glare, she heaved a heavy sigh of annoyance but made no sarcastic statement that would just get ignored anyway. She made her way to her seat, weaving through the tables to get to her usual seat in the class. Dropping her bag down onto the floor, she kicked it closer to the table with the toe of her shoe and sat down, intentionally ignoring the new addition to her lab table. She would have grumbled under her breath about him if she wasn’t positive he would have some sarcastic comment to make about her mouth, or even better, her attitude. She already knew what the drill, it had been the same way all year. Her teacher would force someone to sit beside her in hopes that she’d play nice, and eventually they’d get tired when she would do her own thing and avoid interacting with them at all. They’d request a new lab partner, and Jocelyn would smirk behind the back of her hand while they would move across the room to a new station.

“Don’t get too comfortable. You won’t last long.” Jocelyn chirped with false cheerfulness, earning herself a sharp glare from the teacher that she responded to with a smirk. She gave him two, three days tops before he’d go the same route as everyone else and find another person in the class who actually cared about their grades to pair up with. All she needed to do was pass, and that was the bare minimum for her, and all the effort she would bother to put into the class and her work. Science was not her forte, and forcing her to learn the subject was pointless, but as with everything, she had no control on the matter. She was bothered by the fact that she was once more assigned a lab partner, which she honestly did not need. There was not much about Chemistry that she needed to know once she was outside of school, and the complexities of high school Chemistry weren’t all that complicated. It wasn’t like she was making complex solutions, or trying to create something complex. She worked well enough on her own, and wanted to keep it that way for the remainder of the year.

The bell rang and Jocelyn was forced to remain silent rather than continuing on with her taunts to her new lab partner. She didn’t bother pulling out her books, and the moment the teacher began to speak, her attention was already on the windows and the world outside where she wished she was rather than sitting in a classroom listening to her teacher drone on as if they were doing something that would impact the world. If there was one thing that bothered Jocelyn about school, it was the fact that each teacher acted as if they were teaching something that would help them in their adult lives. She’d never need algebra if she had her way, and she doubted any real job would require her to know off the top of her head when the War of 1812 ended, or who the fifteenth president was. The whole high school thing was overrated, and other than getting into college, she saw she could easily learn everything the teachers were trying to teach online if she wanted to. 

Sighing softly to herself as the teacher continued to speak about the different elements, Jocelyn let her mind drift away from the classroom and onto more pleasant thoughts, mostly going home to relax outside on her back porch with her book. ‘Only 4 more classes to go, that’s all I need to get through, and then I can get the hell out of here.'