Cabin Fever | ✓

(17) Surrender

Thursday morning, Marley felt like a zombie, leaning against Gabby's shoulder in the shower line. She hardly got any sleep last night, and that combined with having to get up at six am this morning to do their laundry - wasn't a good outcome.

"Okay, I think I'm ready. Shoot."

"Um...what's the third step in preparing a specimen for the microscope?" Marley asked on the top of her head, watching Sarah's frown lines appear.

"Skip."

Marley held back a small laugh, "What are the three types of cells found in common algae?"

She watched Sarah recoil as if Marley was speaking Mandarin, "Can I phone a friend?"

"This isn't Jeopardy. This is Biology, and a quiz today you're going to fail," Bree snickered as the shower line shortened and they all moved foreword a few steps.

Sarah whacked her with her toiletries bag, "Not all of us are natural born brainiacs," shooting a pointed look at Marley, Bree and Gabby.

Gabby glanced up from her phone, where she had been texting her Dad, "We're not natural born brainiacs. We all studied together last night, for hours."

Sarah huffed, pushing some of her curly red hair away from where it had been falling in front of her face, "Not my fault that my volunteer hours at Shady Oaks retirement village were more interesting than this BS."

Bree rolled her eyes, "If you didn't spend so much time listening to Travis Scott's new album and gushing about it, you would've actually absorbed some of Marley's very informative lesson. Which included helpful diagrams and point form summaries. Thanks for that, by the way."

Marley smiled tightly, thinking about how she had spent her sleepless hours the night before making those exact notes, after she had transferred her nightstand lamp to a shelf on her bunk. At least she did something useful with her time, right?

"You may be a well-rounded student and an awesome tutor, Marley," Sarah began bitterly, digging the toe of her plastic flip flop into a hole in the gravel beneath their feet, "but did you have six figures when you were only four?"

Marley blinked in confusion at the last part of her sentence, "Did I have what when I was how old?"

"That's what I thought," Sarah grinned smugly as if she won something, but her words had gone over everyone's heads.

She yawned loudly, blinking away the fogginess, or trying to, at least.

"Did you finish the questions?" Gabby asked quietly.

"All of them," Marley confirmed tiredly.

"Which confuses me, Mar. You didn't have to."

"Well, I did. You don't have to do those logic books all the time, but you do them. Mental stimulation."

"More like denial with a side of avoidance," Gabby grumbled under her breath.

Marley decided not to respond to her words to drag on that topic of conversation any further, "How's Gavin?" She asked, referring to Gabby's thirteen year old brother, whose been in military school for over a month now.

For the last year or so, he's been having problems with his school and delinquency. A lot of it has to do with Gabby and Gavin's parents' messy divorce. Mr. Collins is a great guy and father - now married again and provides a happy household - but their mother fell off the rails and hasn't been the same since. It's hard for the both of them because they have to stay at their grandparents on her visitations, she doesn't have a stable place to live between her hookups and flings.