Note: This is the sequel to another one of my stories, The Bikelock and the Bitch.
"Oh my God, Becca. No one cares about your damn cheer practice. We have a lab assignment to finish," Marie reprimanded her seemingly air-headed lab partner.
"Show some school spirit, Marie. Our school's cheer team is going to nationals for our amazing routines. Not everything is about you and your GPA," Becca replied.
Marie truly couldn't stand her lab partner. When she had walked into her chemistry lab on the first day of classes sophomore year and found she would be paired with the captain of the cheer team, she knew this semester was going to suck. Becca was only here to drink, party, and win cheer competitions. Marie, on the other hand, desperately wanted to go into medicine, which meant the two could not have made worse lab partners.
"Just hand me the pipet. We're almost done here anyway, and I'm ready to get this over with."
"Well, that's something I can agree with," Becca replied as she handed her a pipet, just about the only thing she had contributed to the lab project.
Thankfully, the two finished on time and left. Marie began walking to the local Starbucks to hang out with some of her friends. Marie was just glad to be away from Becca. To be fair, the two had started on the wrong foot. Marie's first real encounter with the cheerleader was when her best friend Kelly bumped into the girl and spilled food on the girl's outfit. Though Becca certainly had room to be angry, she had overreacted and blown up on the poor girl, yelling at Kelly and storming off.
More importantly, though, Marie wanted to support her friend. After that day, Kelly had nothing but disdain for Becca and the rest of the cheerleading team. Though her reaction seemed a little overblown, Marie obviously took Kelly's side, and defended her when the cheer team bitched about her.
Of course, that whole day had been bad for Kelly, Marie remembered. After being verbally abused by Becca for a simple mistake, Kelly had run off from the swim meet that would have placed her in nationals and later that night, posted tons of nudes on her Instagram page before deleting them just hours after. She had never told Marie - or her other best friend Katelyn - what happened that night or why she ditched the swim meet.
That night held a certain significance for Marie as well, though. Though she hated to admit it, she secretly held a crush on her best friend. When she had seen her nudes pop up on Instagram, she had masturbated to them, thinking of how lovely her friend's body was. She felt horrible afterwards, and she assumed Kelly had posted them on accident considering the posts were deleted shortly after. Marie knew the photos weren't meant for her but she wished they were.
Once she got to the Starbucks, she saw Kelly - and today, a few other friends of theirs were there as well. At least she could count on some nice coffee and some down time after a stressful day.
*****
When she got up the next morning, she checked her phone and received a message from Becca. Apparently there were problems with their data, and they would have to run the entire chem experiment again or risk failing the lab experiment. Fuck! She called Becca back immediately.
"Hey, Becca, I got your message. What are we going to do?"
"It's okay. I talked to our chem teacher and she said we can come in early before school starts and finish it up then and she won't take off any points as long as we finish it and can get it turned in by class."
She realized that meant that she'd have to skip her early morning soccer practice to finish the lab in time. She didn't want to miss a practice this close to the first competition, but if she didn't get all As this semester, she'd miss out on her perfect 4.0 GPA.
Marie groaned and replied, "Fine. I'll be at the school as soon as I can. That'll give us a good hour and a half to get this done, right?"
"Yup," Becca squealed, a hit of excitement in her voice, "that'll work just fine."
Marie hung up the phone and hurried to shower and get dressed. Today's outfit was a cute pink tank top tucked into a pair of blue jean short shorts. She wore dark translucent footed leggings under it with some black ugg boots. She also wore her favorite pink headband to keep back her golden blonde shoulder-length hair.
When she was ready, she headed onto the school's campus. She was wracked with nerves the entire way there. All throughout middle and high school, she had gone years without ever getting a single B, but now that was in jeopardy.
When she got to campus, she rushed to the chemistry building and went to their normal lab room. For a second, she was surprised to see the lights on. Her chemistry teacher was a well known alcoholic who rarely came into class without a hangover. This was perhaps the first time she had seen the teacher's room open before noon, much less before the first classes started at 8am.