Sarah, two short stories

Sarah, part 2

Holy crap, it's tenth grade. Holy crap, I am scared.

The reason for me being scared would be that I had to give all of my CAIE finals. I had some flaws which were the usage of the most expression and knowledge for. Although my knowledge was more than sufficient, my expression was terrible. That became my undoing, which gave me a C on my tests and assignments. Even though I studied hard, there was no indication that I was improving.

My dad, the pep talk of my life, told me to lay off and said, 'Knowledge is better than grades', and my mom begged to disagree, by saying, 'Your grades tell how much you know.' Also, I'm proud to say that since I got Cs in my assignments and tests, they stopped pushing me as hard as they did last year. 'C is better than U', they said, but it didn't stop me from studying hard.

During this school year, I met Rose, Cynthia, Serenity, Felicity, Anna, and Bianca. Rose was shy and quiet. She was so quiet that her voice ceased to exist in my head. Cynthia reminded me of how a grandparent would talk to their grandchild. Serenity was a logical person, but despite this, she had amazing quips, which set us all laughing. Felicity too had a sense of good humor, but she was more a whining type. She whined about pretty much anything, and she also argued with teachers about her marks. Anna was unassuming and quiet. She was also very straightforward. Bianca was good-natured, and a good friend.

Because our homerooms and classes were different, I never saw Ava and Jade again. However, the new group was more appealing, I had chosen to hang out with them. Freya, the speech-giver, left school and another school, from where she was expelled after she got into a fight.

This year of school was all in all boring and busy. We had to study for our CAIE, so we did not have the amount of fun we wanted. As we progressed to the end of the year, we had verbal jokes to keep us company. We also had playing cards with us to keep us company. Of course, we weren't allowed to bring them, but we loved the challenge of not being caught.

There were no exciting events, except our mocks. Everybody scored pretty decently, though Felicity complained to teachers to increase her marks. This was unsurprising to all of us.

Then the dreaded month of April arrived when students take time off from school to study. Our first exam was on the thirtieth of April, and I cried on the way there. Because, why not? Despite the stress of the exams, everything went smoothly. Our results were taken out on the fourteenth of August, and to be honest, my mom was not in high hopes.

The morning of the release of the results, I vomited my breakfast out. Yeah. I accompanied my dad to pick up the photocopied version of the result. At first, the result didn't register to me, when a teacher gave it to me. When I saw my dad react happily towards it, I knew I had done it. Three As and five B's.

We got home and celebrated.

"True happiness cannot be found without hard work."