TUTORING LUCAS HALE

MADELINE REYES' POV

"Yes!"

The scream was so loud it physically jerked my head away from the test results in my hands.

Beneath tugged brows, I scanned the room, sweeping past classmates in navy blue and white uniforms until I landed on the blonde jumping in the middle of the crowd. Steffany Williams. The Aldrich School of Arts principal's niece.

Her hair was a vibrant, spun gold, and her aesthetic was so perfectly curated it could blind any mediocre person from a five-mile radius. Ponytail packed high, blazer ironed, pedicured fingers and I swear she smells like bubble gum if you stepped close enough to take a whiff.

But that wasn't the problem.

The problem was the math.

Steffany and I were arch-enemies, yet for the past three days of mid-terms, my grades, the only thing keeping me at Aldrich, had flatlined. A 19 in Math. A 32 in Biology. A 29 in Chemistry. And every day my failing grades arrived, Steffany, a girl who couldn't tell the difference between her right and her left, stood in the center of the room screaming about another perfect score.

My fingers trembled around the crumpled paper in my hand as I watched her.

"A fucking perfect score!"

One of her friends took a peek and gasped sharply. "No way."

"Yes way!"

"No—"

"Shut up, yes!" she gushed.

The friend, Clara, that I knew from one of my classes, pulled away. "How did you do this? I never knew you were this... smart. Or had it in you."

Like a predator watching prey, I studied her, waiting for what she would say or the slightest slip-up. She was so giggly and frantic she looked like a six-year-old handed candy. My fingernails dug into the edges of my test paper until it wrinkled.

"I studied," she said simply.

Clara didn't look convinced. "Haven't you been hosting parties back-to-back?"

"That doesn't matter."

"Really? For you? How?"

"I make time to."

"No way," Clara laughed, shoulders trembling.

"Yes… why are you doubting me so much?!"

"It's just—"

"It's just what? I studied, I promise you I did."

"We spent the entire weekend together, remember?"

"Doesn't matter, I DID ST—"

Steffany stopped talking.

She'd caught my gaze across the room. Her blue eyes locked directly onto mine. And right there and then, I caught the sly smile stretch across her face. The bitch. She wasn't even trying to hide it. If the assumptions I was making were true, and somehow she'd tampered with the results or switched them through any means, she wasn't trying to hide that.

Nothing but anger simmered in my veins. If I could, and Aldrich wasn't so against physical fights, I'd have flown across the room and ripped the botox off her lips. Her looking perfect didn't help soothe the anger. It just made it flare up even more wildly because she could smile at a stranger in public and he'd hand her his kidney without a second thought.

If I didn't know her, if she hadn't been at war with me ever since the first day I stepped into this school with the second-hand blazer my mother had gotten from a thrift shop in seventh grade, I might have fallen for her charm. But I knew she was a monstrous, sweet little girl, perfect at hiding her ugliness beneath all that act.

With our eyes still locked, she raised the paper in her hand, flashing the score to my face. A hundred. Before mouthing, very softly, the word, "Failure." I caught it. Which was weird because she wasn't supposed to know my score.

She turned and walked away, her friend tagging behind like a mindless puppy.

The moment she left the class, I turned around swiftly and yanked my bag off the desk.

"Madeleine, wait!" Wren, my best friend, who'd stood on the side watching the scene unfold, called my name.

I didn't want to wait, but I turned around to honor her call.

"What?"

"What are you going to do?" she asked in a hushed tone. "Go after her?"

I shook my head. "No. There's no point in that."

"Then what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to find out what is happening."

Wren's eyes were wide. She was a scholarship student just like me and she knew the implications of failing tests consecutively as a student on scholarship. If I went on failing every test through the midterm, I won't even be around until the exam before I get kicked out. We've been enrolled for two years and all through my stay in the school, I'd watched people get booted out more than they were accepted.

When I first met Wren, there were eight other people on the scholarship with us that had passed the entrance exam and had been enrolled. And over two years, I'd watched them get sent out one after the other over the most trivial things. Failed tests, nonchalance, acting out of character, a bad social media image, anything, everything could make you lose your position in the school if you were not careful enough.

I was just three months to graduation, and looking forward to the university scholarships that were on the line for me. If I lost this, I lost everything.

I couldn't afford to lose anything.

It'll kill me.

It'll kill…. Mom.

Even though the class was almost empty, Wren was very conscious of the words she spoke.

"Are you sure about this?"

I could barely stand in one spot.

I shuffled from one foot to another. "Am I sure about what?"

She looked over her shoulder. "That she did something to the results? She couldn't possibly—"

"I would never score below an 80, or a 90… you know that." My teeth gritted.

She nodded, treading the path gently. "I know… I know… It's just…"

"Wren…" I took in a deep breath, trying to calm myself. It was barely working. I could feel my heart rioting against my ribcage, and even though I stood here, exchanging words with her, I was out the door and navigating my way through the hallways in my head already. "I don't have much time…"

I didn't.

Thirty minutes ago, while my legs bounced through history class and I watched Stef like a hawk, the principal had announced a sudden meeting for the staff. All the teachers had to be present, because according to him, it was a serious situation. That had been my cue to carry out the plan that had kept me awake all night long.

Sneak into the office, find out if Steffany had only tampered with the physical scores I had on paper or if they were also recorded as fails digitally.

The only way I could know was if I used this time to find out before it was too late. I didn't have all the time in the world to be here. "We discussed this last night…. Why are you being—"

"You could get caught—"

I didn't let her finish. "I'd rather get caught than lose this scholarship. You know I cannot afford that…"

I swung my backpack over my shoulders and headed straight for the door without looking back even once.