━ DENOUEMENT ( jerome clarke. )

07 ⊳ HOUSE OF INTRUDERS.

"What?"

Oh no.

Upon realising her mistake, Sydney's eyes had significantly widened, before she regained her composure and decided to act like she didn't hear Jerome, slipping into her seat casually and getting out her textbooks, not looking at the boys as they went to their own seats, confused looks on their faces as they shared a glance with one another, wondering what the girl had meant. Knowing that the pair could easily tap her on the shoulder and ask about it, Sydney prayed that Mrs Andrews would arrive faster – which was something that she'd never wished for in her entire life, as that meant class started sooner.

However, it seemed as though luck was on her side as, fortunately, the teacher entered the room and caused everyone's conversations to come to a halt, the chatter in the room becoming significantly less as she made her way to her desk.

"Morning, everybody." She greeted, getting the same greeting back to her from all the classmates in unison, before she continued, "I have your French test papers to hand back here."

Nevermind – maybe Sydney didn't want Mrs Andrews to arrive earlier afterall.

It seemed like Sydney wasn't the only person who didn't want their French tests back, as the blonde-haired girl noticed Mick lower his head, wincing slightly as he prepared himself to see the letter 'F' on his test paper – little did he know, that he'd get one of the highest scores thanks to Mara Jaffray.

Upon having his test paper handed back to him, he picked it up, expecting the worst, until he saw the letter and stared at it, confused, for a few moments, "I got an A? I got an A!"

Letting out a loud cheer, the jock quickly jumped out of his seat and hugged Mara tightly, presuming that he managed to get such a high grade due to her tutoring, whilst the nerd told him, "I knew you could do it."

As Mick had his arms wrapped around Mara, Sydney turned to see Amber Millington's reaction, knowing that she wouldn't be rather happy about her boyfriend hugging somebody who had a crush on him.

Sydney's assumption was proved to be true, noticing that the fashionista had a scowl on her face as she watched the pair, before speaking up herself, "What's going on?"

"I got an A." Mick announced happily, returning back to his seat and turning around to face his girlfriend, who got up from her own seat and grabbed the boy's test, examining it whilst he continued, "I'm sure I didn't get all of these, but maybe I just did some really good guesses."

"Stranger things have happened, eh, Mara?" Jerome stated with a sly tone to his voice, whilst Sydney let out a small chuckle from behind him – that was enough to make Amber Millington even more suspicious of Mick's weirdly high grade.

Due to her suspicions, the fashionista quickly turned in an attempt to grab Mara's test paper so that she could compare the two test papers, having a strong suspicion of what could have happened (and being absolutely correct with that suspicion), but the nerd quickly grabbed her test and hid it before the blonde could manage to get a glimpse of it, thus keeping the secret for even longer.

Considering that the nerd wanted to keep the tests a secret, that meant that she still had to complete all of the tasks that Jerome told her to do in order to keep him quiet, and that's exactly how Mara, Jerome, and Sydney ended up in the drama hall within their break, with the nerd scraping tons of gum from Jerome's shoes, whilst the two pranksters seemed rather relaxed. Jerome had his feet up on the table and his hands behind his head, whilst Sydney was sat beside him, partially resting against him as the two of them watched the girl scrape the gum off his shoes.