We're Getting There

Chapter 9

After half a term of working on history projects outside of class and during the half term holidays (in some cases), the Year 10s' History teacher had graced them with one final lesson to complete their presentations.

Jenna moved to join the rest of her group grateful, at least, that Alex wasn't uncomfortably close like the last time. In fact, she noted looking around, he wasn't there at all. Lexi had taken his place on Jenna's left, Sammy was once again seated on her right and Jaxon and Liam—the iconic duo—were sitting next to each other on the opposite side of the table.

They all looked expectantly at her to begin so she dutifully pushed her glasses further up her nose, fluffed up her ponytail a bit, and spoke.

"It's nearing the deadline. Has anyone done work on the project?" she asked her group, arranging sheets of paper on the desk.

"Yeah, actually." Lexi said. "Liam, Sammy and I made a PowerPoint with the information you gave us." She put a USB on the table. "It's on there if you want to check it."

Jenna's eyebrows raised in genuine surprise. "Oh. Yeah, that's—good. I made one too but we can use yours. It's just, well, I already had a script for the presentation and it probably wouldn't match up with yours..."

Sammy dug some creased sheets out of his bag. Seriously, did this guy not own a folder to keep his sheets in order? "We did a script too."

Jaxon drummed his fingernails on the table which irked Jenna slightly, especially as she was trying her best to be civil. "I'd love to say I did something too, but I suppose I'm pretty useless," he muttered.

"You're not useless! You're working on the poster with Alex, right?" Liam was quick to point out. "Our group could hardly function without you," he added which made Jenna scoff. That was definitely not true.

"Never mind that, with all the amazing work you've done, it looks like we're finished. We'll use Lexi's PowerPoint, Jaxon's poster and my information. Perfect. Great." She took the USB off the table and wrapped it in her fist. Lexi wanted tell her to be careful—she didn't want the USB to break from Jenna's rage—but she refrained. "I'm going to go check this out in the computer room."

With that, Jenna went and asked the teacher for permission to use the computer room. When granted, she picked up her bags, without sparing her sorry group a look, and left.

"Doesn't look like she's coming back," Sammy said while picking at some dried Tipex on the desk.

"Oh, don't look so sad about that, Sams. She's probably going to edit everything so that it's just the way she wants it," Liam said, fanning himself with his exercise book.

"Jenna's a bit of a control freak, huh?" Jaxon said. Lexi wondered how long it had taken him to arrive at that conclusion. "Well, now she's gone..." He pulled a small notebook out of his bag along with a pencil from his pencil case.

"What's that?" Liam asked curiously. Sammy moved into Jenna's seat so he was closer to everyone, as he was just as curious.

Jaxon was flipping to the next empty page. "It's my doodle book."

Liam used this as an excuse to get closer, he pointed at something on a page. "Is that—a cow?"

"On a skateboard?" Sammy added, craning his neck to see.

"Eating a burger?" Lexi squinted at the page.

Jaxon pulled his notebook close to his chest. "Hey, don't judge my drawings. This is what goes on in my mind."

"Hmm. Interesting..." Sammy said skeptically, he glanced at Lexi who shrugged back at him.

Liam readily accepted the weirdness of a cannibalistic cow and laughed, although he thought anything Jaxon did was amazing, so that was hardly anything to go by. "Can I have a page? I want to draw something."