Scott and the Cardinal Sin

Closing my locker door, I turned and my skeleton nearly jumped from my body as I found an extremely angry Kaylee glaring at me. My initial thought was, ‘Fuck,’ followed immediately by, ‘What did I do now?’ A brief second was spent trying to figure out what I’d done recently to piss her off. She’d already reamed me a new one after finding out about Liam and me cruising around the outer belt until one in the morning. Stupid Liam had to mention it during lunch when she was sitting with us. That was a few days ago though. Other than that incident, I was at a loss to what had her wound up.

“Um… Hello?” I tried, giving her a weak smile. Her expression didn’t so much as budge, eyes glaring up at me.

Shit.

“Is it true?”

I blinked, waiting for some sort of elaboration as a cold sweat broke out. “Uh… Maybe?”

“Are you failing Ms. Huber’s class?”

I let out a breath of relief, sinking my shoulders.

Wrong move. Definitely the wrong move.

She swatted my arm with the book she was holding. “Ah!” I cried out in surprise. More repeated swats as I did my best to block. None of it hurt of course, but it was stupendously embarrassing with the scene we were making.

“How could you be failing her class? Her class is easy.”

“I…I haven’t been doing the homework and that last test didn’t go so well for me…”

“Homework? You haven’t been doing homework? Scott Hoffman!” Her nostrils flared as she stomped her foot. “Come with me,” she said, storming off. When I didn’t follow fast enough, she looked over her shoulder. “Now.” That tone lit a fire under my ass as I darted off after her.

That was when I found myself profusely apologizing to Ms. Huber for not giving her class the attention it deserved and begging her to allow me to turn in missing work, all while an extremely angry Kaylee watched over me with her arms crossed. As embarrassing as it was, I think Ms. Huber was more amused by the situation than anything. In the end, I had until the end of the week to get my missing assignments in.

Thanking her, I followed Kaylee out like a scolded puppy.

“You’ll have those missing assignments in by tomorrow.”

“But—”

“Tomorrow.”

I pouted at her. That wasn’t fair. I still had three days. It wasn’t like the work was hard, but there was a decent amount of it. My plan was to work on it during other classes tomorrow—

“If I leave you alone, you’ll just do them in your other classes and fall behind in those as well.” God damn it. Why did she have to know me so well? She stopped, turning to face me. “Actually… Show me your grades.”

My heart skipped a beat. “Um…”

Her eyebrows raised ever so slightly. “Oh?”

“R-right. Grades.” I dug out my phone. Opening the school app, I navigated to my grades. Besides Ms. Huber’s class, I was sitting pretty with mostly C’s and a few D’s. Government was higher than the others, sitting at a B+. In my defense, it wasn’t like the content was hard or anything, but I’d been pretty bad about doing homework ever since the start of third quarter and my grades were, unfortunately, starting to reflect my lax attitude. In fact, you could almost blame her for the reason I wasn't doing homework. All of my “do homework” time had been converted to “hang out with Kaylee time.”

Giving her my best shit-eating grin, I held out my phone for her to see. “See? Passing just fine.”

It looked like she was going to be physically ill. The color drained from her face as she held a hand to her lips.

Her eyes met mine as she straightened. “Oh my dear, sweet, Scott.” Venomous honey dripped from every word. “Tonight, you’re coming to my house, and I’m not. Going. To. Let. You. Sleep.” Each word, she walked a finger up my chest.

Grabbing at my shirt collar, she dragged me after her.