"Wanna be partners?"
I woke up from my daze when Praina disturbed my daydream. She was leaning over my seat with her dyed-green streaks of greasy hair looming over my head. She pushed up her glasses.
I evaluated whether I wanted to be partners with Praina or not. Praina is not the nicest girl in my grade, nor is she the smartest. However, I only had a second to think before she got offended.
"Uh, sure," I stammered as I glanced up to the projector to see the Math problem. The Math problem was about dancing pizza and other useless things.
I have gotten used to holding in my scoffs whenever I see what things Mrs. Floral, the Math teacher, made us do. I would also like to add that she has never given us a Math test and she'll only reluctantly give us a worksheet and even then, won't let us independently work on it. She loves group work so much that if it was a person, she would divorce her husband and marry it. Mrs. Floral is the kind of teacher that doesn't really love what she does to put it simply. She tries to make Math fun. Wake up, teacher. This is not some sort of summer school for kids who didn't pass 5th grade.
I know why Praina wanted to be partners with me. Actually, a lot of people like being partners with me when it comes to pretty much any subject. I'm just good at things and I get good grades and I'm a nice—and at minimum—decent person. That, of course, is enough to get all the annoying kids magnetizing toward me. I try to take it as a compliment, but it feels like a curse. These people are usually shallow, drama-addicted, distasteful and all sorts of things.
We both did the problem, though I finished much faster than she did. Praina tried to stealthily peek at my answer. I looked back at her paper and tried not to let my jaw drop. She scribbled a bunch of garbage on her paper. Praina was probably hoping for me to shout out the answer and she'll nod her head like we're on the same level. Not even close, sister.
Politely, I smiled and gently tried to explain all the different ways she did it wrong.
She pointed an accusatory finger at my paper and fumed, "Mine is wrong? Like, look at yours! It doesn't even, like, make any sense. Like where did you get, like, those, like, numbers from anyway? Where did, like, 32, like, come from? Like... Yeah."
I took a deep breath. "Praina. I got 32 dollars from adding the totals of the two pizza party spendings together, so we can figure out the total cost. Then, I used the discount and did 80% of 32 and—"
"Where did 80% come from? Huh?" Praina rudely interrupted. Even though her voice sounded pointed and fierce, but she didn't look ok. She was fiddling with her hair like it was her only thing that was stopping her from having an emotional breakdown. Utterly pathetic. I take my eyes off Praina for a second because they are probably brimming with sympathy.
"Think about it. It's a 20% discount, right? So, you would have to discount it from the total spent or $32, correct? Wouldn't it be smarter to just do 80% of $32, so you wouldn't have to subtract it out later?" I counter.
"Uh, cool. Like, let's just, like, go ask Dina and Ashuna if we can, like, check answers? Praina said, changing the conversation so she wouldn't be in the spotlight.
I followed and stopped paying attention. I knew we weren't going to do anything useful.