((I'm still in this y'all))
"Well you get decent grades. And you're involved in theater and all that. You could probably do a lot of things." Carter tried to be encouraging but couldn't hide the flatness in her voice. Everything seemed to come back to Keely and that frustrated her. She sighed and dropped the butt of her cigarette, crushing it under her shoe just as the bell rang. "Well, see you in Mr. Grey's class." She said to Aaron, slapping his shoulder in a friendly way as she adjusted her bag and turned to walk into the school.
Other students were walking hurriedly to get to their classes as teachers could be pretty strict towards students without tardy passes, even on the first day. Carter, however, just didn't quite have it in her. She felt sluggish, bogged down by the memories that rushed back to her as she walked past classrooms, thinking of the times when she sat there secretly texting love notes to Keely or the empty study rooms where the two of them would go to kiss or just be together in secret. The pain radiated. She used her suppression method by thinking of other things, studying the floor tiles as she wandered along. The late bell rang and she watched a girl she'd never seen before walk as quick as she could into the classroom. Carter's classroom. Integrated math.
Her advisor had been frustrated when she chose to be transferred into it. Carter wasn't exactly a genius but she could do better than Integrated Math, surely. Carter knew, however, that she only needed one more math credit to graduate and it was the class where she was least likely to run into Keely. So maybe she was a genius in her own way.
Carter also knew a thing or two about the teacher, Mr. Duey. Like how he was a total hardass and how he went to refill his coffee cup exactly two minutes after late bell every day. She'd learned to look for these ticks in teachers as they helped her avoid being marked late after her secret rendezvous with Keely. She leaned against the wall in the girl's bathroom across the hall and waited the two minutes. Then she heard Mr. Duey shout, "Alright, I'll be right back so I don't want a single bit of dicking around while I'm gone, you hear me?" She gave it ten seconds to account for the time it would take him to walk from the classroom into his adjoining office and then strolled casually into the newly teacher-less classroom. She ignored the resentful looks from the other tardy students, jealous of her seeming luck. She slipped her letterman's jacket off, revealing a simple white boy's tee and sat down at a desk in the back of the room where Mr. Duey would think she had been all along.
She looked at the girl next to her, the new girl, and noted that she was copying from the board. Carter followed suit and Mr. Duey returned seconds later, suspecting nothing.
