After swimming lessons were finished, Saturday was spent poring over notes for crim. Brandon and I had come up with a great system to be ready for it: the two of us would spend today individually reading notes, as well as preparing a practice multiple choice test for the other to do. On Sunday after lessons, we would exchange our tests, and then go over any doubts either of us still had. I felt fairly confident by the time I was walking in to lessons on Sunday, and from the look on Brandon's face I could tell he did, too.
"All set?" he smirked.
"Try me," I grinned. "You finished making your test?"
He nodded. "Added the last couple of questions this morning. 75 questions, just like the real one will be tomorrow. I'm assuming you made the same?"
"Of course," I said. "I'll give you my exam after lessons are done, right now I have to get in the mindset for something more pressing."
"Something to do with Carrie?" he asked with a grin.
I smiled, and shook my head. "I'm at work, man," I said, "and for the next four hours, I have a job to do. Starting with the monster." I pointed in the direction of the kids waiting for lessons, where Carson Platt was already standing. Brandon chuckled.
"I forgot about that," he admitted. "Yeah, go deal with that first, and if you haven't lost your mind by the end of lessons, you'll be able to handle my test with no problems."
I grinned as I opened the door to the pool deck for the start of lessons. "You overestimate your paper, I'll be able to handle it regardless of what Carson Platt says or does!" He mock-scowled at me, but both of us laughed before I left the office.
Lessons went around the same as they always did, with Carson seemingly doing everything in his power to get on my very last nerve, but I was more used to him now, so it was becoming easier and easier to deal with his tantrums with every passing week. As usual, none of the other kids in my lessons caused me any trouble.
"Alright," I said to Brandon after lessons were over, "are we studying at my house?"
"Sure," he replied. After grabbing some lunch from Subway, we went back to my house and set up our laptops in the rec room. We agreed to do the practice tests together, and time them so as to ensure we weren't taking too long.
"Okay," I said after an hour had passed. "I'm finished with your test." I glanced at him and burst out laughing; his cheeks were puffed and he was frowning in concentration. "Are you struggling with something?" I asked with exaggerated politeness.
"I'm blanking on this one question about the Criminal Code!" he answered, looking annoyed.
"Well, you still have twenty minutes to go, so no rush," I said, leaning back on the couch and relaxing. "Worst comes to worst, guess an answer and move on to the next one, I did that for some of your questions. Then if I had time at the end, I went back and focused on the tricky questions at that time."
"I wish I'd done that for this test," he grunted. "I still have twelve questions to go because if I got stuck on a question, I just kept trying to figure it out before moving on to another."
"Try my way, it might help," I suggested. There was silence again for the next ten minutes, and finally a sound like air being let out of a balloon came from him. "Were you holding your breath?" I grinned.
"I just finished this test," he said. "Alright, let's check our answers." We compared our answers with the solution keys we had also made; I had gotten six questions wrong, while Brandon had incorrectly answered eight. "That's good enough for me!" he said cheerfully, and I nodded in agreement.
