Close to the Covert Rains **Book One**

Chapter 20 (Friday)

Something bounced off the back of Ana's head. "Oops, sorry."

Ana raised her head from her arms, yawning. Class hadn't started yet, so she was taking a nap. Well, a five minute nap. Well, she hadn't actually fallen asleep yet... "Huh?"

Rielle coughed from behind her. "Sorry, I just dropped something and...never mind."

"Is that your pre-assessment?" Dryda, seated beside Ana at the table, pointed to the floor. Ana twisted around on the wooden bench.

Rielle rose from the ground, smoothing out a crumpled paper. She shrugged, backpack straps swaying. "Yeah. Mrs. Sarai wrote a lot of comments. And I'm still..." she shrugged again. "Trying to get better."

Ana frowned. Her pre-assessment paper lay buried somewhere in the stack of returned assignments on the edge of her bedroom desk. "Did you miserably fail that thing too? Mrs. Sarai gave me a hundred percent, but I had no clue what she was asking me to do."

Rielle nodded. "I don't think I ever learned any of the moves in series seven."

"Wait, she asked me to do series three," Dryda scooted closer. "And said it started off with Olympic Warrior. I don't even know what that is!"

Ana's jaw slowly dropped. "She scammed all of us!"

Rielle glanced from the paper in her hands to the two of them. "So we were supposed to fail? And she still gave us a hundred percent? But then, what about her comments?" she turned the paper, covered in loopy red ink.

Ana shrugged. "Maybe she figured out a lot by watching us make up nonsense."

"Or standing there and not doing anything," Dryda whispered.

"Or doing one of the series I actually knew..." Rielle folded up her paper and slung her bright red backpack off. "Wow. Did she ask you to do series ten after that?"

Ana nodded.

"Yes!" Dryda said. "And I knew that one, but it's super hard."

"Same!"

Ana yawned. "I haven't done series ten since the end of last year."

Other students began trickling in, and Rielle sat on the bench beside Dryda, pulling her knees up. "Remember that super hard English thing we had at the beginning of the year?" Rielle asked.

Dryda nodded, but Ana wrinkled her nose. English?

Dryda started talking about writing poems for hard letters of the alphabet, and Ana planted her face back on the peeling paint of the table and tried napping, waiting for Mrs. Sarai to arrive.

The bell rang and Ana jumped, blinking blearily up at the table lined with her classmates. Their teacher then swept into the room. Muttering under her breath, Mrs. Sarai glanced around at the weapon racks and the stack of papers in her hands before plopping them onto a stray stool by the door.

"Welcome to class everyone," she said.

They waited, fidgeting and whispering. Mrs. Sarai took off her coat and also set that on the stool, then walked briskly across the class into the target room. Sounds of their teacher rummaging around a storage room funneled through the open doorway. Ana yawned again.

Mrs. Sarai appeared with some bows tucked under her arms. "Could I get a volunteer to place these on one of the racks?" she asked. "Keep the lefty ones and righty ones separate, too."

Isaac hopped up and went over to fetch them. Mrs. Sarai returned to the back room, then appeared again with some quivers full of arrows. It took a few more trips to collect enough for their class, but she finally returned empty-handed and quickly silenced the buzzing conversations with a clap.