"Tessa, are you alright?"
It would have sounded sweet if it wasn't for the smirk that played upon his lips. His eyes locked with hers and she felt her blood begin to broil. There was a moment of tense silence where the two glared at each other and his friend, Archie, pointed and laughed as he walked off to class. The traffic in the hallway died down and the few stragglers ran to class. The bell rang and the hallway was suddenly empty. It was just the two of them in the quiet.
"Screw you, Brown," Tessa muttered. She started to start to pick up the papers and sighed as she shook the coffee off of them; her five page hand-written homework assignment for math was now ruined thanks to the idiot in front of her. She found that her right hand tinged with pain when she used it. She must have sprained it when she used it to break her fall. She gingerly tried to wiggle her fingers and bit back a gasp of pain.
The boy, Ronan Brown, was her least favorite person ever to exist on the planet. He loved to brag about himself to anyone who would listen and, unfortunately, a lot of girls had the guts to stomach him thanks to his admittedly good looks. Not that Tessa would ever say it out loud, but she sometimes silently admired his bright green eyes and his intellectual mindset. But his other qualities were what threw her off; his ability to talk about himself for what seemed like an infinite amount of time would be impressive to a fellow Narcissist, but to Tessa it was undesirable. He was annoying and rude and unable to view Tessa as something other than a child even though they were the same age of seventeen. Their birthdays were a week apart, Brown was older, and it was something he never let her forget when the month of October came around. He was as obnoxious as a small child without a filter.
She knew that it was wrong to hate someone but it was hard not to when she was around him. Brown always brought out the worst qualities in her: they were both in all-honors classes with a few AP classes mixed in and they competed for the top grade in every class. He was an ass to every girl he "dated", if it would be even called that. He would take them out on two dates and then dump them (he did it to Robin back in ninth grade) and then ignore the poor girl even when she tried her best to talk to him. Brown knew how to push Tessa's buttons and he rubbed her in the wrong way every day. They were like total opposites.
The boy frowned and started to help her pick up the papers. "No, I really am sorry. I should have been paying attention to where I was going. It was my fault and now your homework is ruined and your coffee stained your sweater and—was that June's sweater?"
His tone, arrogant and sarcastic at first, suddenly sounded softer, like he knew that the sweater meant a lot to Tessa. Tessa cast a sideline glance at him and nodded. He swore under his breath. "Sorry, Tess. Didn't mean too."
Tessa stood up with soggy worksheets in her arms and a scowl on her face. She glanced down at the ugly brown stain on her white sweater. The whipped cream would be a bitch to try and get out and get it to not smell like rotten milk.
"Save it, Brown." Tessa scowled. "I know that you were too busy bragging about hooking up with other girls to pay attention to where your clumsy feet where going. Do you know how hard it is to get coffee out of wool? Particularly white wool?" She glared at him and he took an involuntary step back. "And don't call me Tess."
Brown frowned and he stood with sticky papers. "Tessa, I'm just trying to help." He tossed them to her. "And maybe next time you shouldn't listen in on my conversations because you would know that I didn't do anything with that girl." There was an awkward silence for a moment. Tessa glanced down and noticed that his fists were clenched like he was trying to contain himself and his breathing quickened. She knew that she made him mad (and vice versa) on a daily basis but he never touched her, ever, but she felt like he was scarily close to losing his temper one day.
Tessa shoved the worksheets into her ripped bag after the moment passed and said lamely, "Maybe next time you should watch where you're going." She picked up the edges of her hair and noticed the whipped cream in the tips. "I'm going to smell like sour milk by the end of this period. Thanks." The sarcasm was evident in her voice and it dripped with venom. He threw his hands in the air and let out an exasperated noise.
"I said I was sorry!" Brown motioned to her hand, where Tessa was massaging her wrist, and said, "Did you fall on your—"
"Hand?" Tessa interrupted him and hitched the bag farther up her shoulder. She held her hand out and noticed it turned a light shade of red. "Obviously. What, are your eyes not strong enough to see out of your big head? Is that why you wear glasses?" she scowled and started to walk away from him. He grabbed her hand, the one that wasn't injured, and pulled her back. She was forced to turn around, her face inches away from his. Her brown eyes stared into his green ones; her breath caught in her throat and a ghost of a laugh painted his lips. She felt her blood broil and her face grew hot (from either anger or embarrassment) and she pushed him away from her.
Right when Tessa opened her mouth to say something nasty to him, a teacher stuck her head out of a classroom and frowned when she saw the two standing there. Her blonde hair swung forward and her glasses almost fell off her face as she peered nearsightedly at them. "Ronan? Tessa? What are you two doing out of class? And what was with all the yelling?"
Tessa glared at Brown and shoved him away from her again. She hadn't noticed how close he had gotten to her in those few seconds. She scowled and said nothing. The silence in the hall grew and grew until the boy next to her said gruffly, "We were having a disagreement, sorry, Mrs. Zimmel. We'll be on our way now. Come on, Tess," Brown took her hand and dragged her down the hallway. After a few unbearable seconds, Tessa was finally able to yank her hand out of his as soon as they turned a corner. She slapped his hand away from her with her injured hand and she immediately winced. He chuckled and stuck his hands in his pockets.
"You should go to the nurse for that hand." He whirled around and started off to class. "It looks like it hurts." A set of keys in his pocket jingled. Another annoying thing about him: he liked to rub in her face the fact that he received a car for his sixteenth birthday even though he knew about her opinion on driving and cars. It was petty and stupid so of course it meant it was a perfect way to fire her up.
"And you should get better comebacks!" Tessa called lamely after him. A passing office aid gave her an odd look, clearly judging Tessa's own comeback. Brown waved his hand and turned the other corner, disappearing from her sight and presumably to their shared first period. Tessa sighed and walked into a nearby bathroom to try and clean the coffee out of her sweater. As she stripped her sweater (luckily she had a tank top on underneath it) and attempted to scrub the coffee out of it, she stewed and fumed over the latest encounter with Brown. He always did this to her—he said things that made her want to flip a table and then whack him in the head with something heavy. He was a smartass and a nuisance and just plum annoying and he made Tessa want to gouge her eyeballs out with a dull knife.
One time, when they were in middle school, Brown slipped a worm into her can of sugar-free soda. Of course, she couldn't tell there was anything in it until she finished the soda and was tipping her head back to drink the last few drops. When it fell into her mouth, and after the vomit was cleaned up, Tessa attacked Brown and gave him a black eye. Another time he had managed to embarrass her was when he invited her to his bar mitzvah without telling her it was a semi-formal event—he actually told her it was a pool party. She showed up in a bathing suit and shorts and her father wouldn't take her home to change, so she waited out the entire party in one of the stalls in the bathroom. It was miserable, just like Brown's plan to single-handedly make her life as difficult as possible. Ruining her mother's old sweater was a definite low blow, even lower than the time he pushed her in the way of a spraying skunk.
After a few more seconds of helpless dabbing she gave up, her favorite sweater ruined, and stormed out of the bathroom in a huff. She walked to her locker that was thankfully on the same hallway and grabbed a spare jacket and zipped it all the way up. Tessa took a moment to compose herself before she walked into History a minute later to a hubbub of noise. Luckily the teacher didn't see her walk in late. She sat in a desk at the back of the room next to a quiet girl she hardly knew. The girl smiled at her and Tessa gave her a half-smile back. What was her name? Tessa tried to place a name to the petite girl next to her. She wasn't able to remember by the time Mr. Lee called the class for attention.
"Good morning, everyone," Mr. Lee stood at the front of the room. Mr. Lee, a slim, balding man with black hair and wide-set eyes, was one of Tessa's favorite teachers. It was probably due to the fact that he adored Tessa and favored her above all of his other students. Everybody always hated the teacher's pet, and Tessa had very few friends in that class.
The students grumbled back a half-hearted response and Mr. Lee grinned. He grabbed his clipboard from his desk and held it up with a smile. "I'm going to call roll. If you don't answer in a cheery voice then I will kick you out of class and make you research the history of polite greetings in different cultures. Any questions? No? Excellent. Ethan Anchor?"
"Here."
"David Abraham?"
"Here."
"Ronan Brown?"
"Present."
At the mention of Brown's name, Tessa scowled at his snarky response. She still smelled like coffee and her pride was still hurt. She had a theory about people who answered with "present"— they were ignorant jerks who spilled coffee on unsuspecting people. Not only that, but they were the type of person who said "present" when the roll was called. If that wasn't horribly irritating then Tessa didn't know what was.
"Bright and chipper— I like it." Mr. Lee smiled at Brown. Brown glanced over at Tessa with a smug grin, rubbing in the fact that he was praised by the teacher, and she rolled her eyes and mimed gagging herself. Brown made a disgusted noise and turned around in his seat. Tessa laughed under her breath. Tessa, 1; Brown, 0.
"Cassie Cane?"
"Here."
"Avis Demmy?"
"Here."
"Zoey Jenkins?"
"Here."
Mr. Lee continued to take the roll, his happy and bright voice slightly grating to Tessa's ears. She desperately wanted to go home now that her day was ruined by none other than Brown, but there was no way she could ruin her perfect attendance record. She rolled her eyes and wistfully thought of the coffee she didn't get to drink. The strong taste of the coffee, along with the creamy milk and the sweet dash of cinnamon alluded her. She wasn't sure if she would be able to keep her eyes open in the early class without the usual caffeine in her system. Call her an addict, but Tessa liked her coffee. She liked it even more when she wasn't still wearing it.
"Tessa Matthews?"
"Here, Mr. Lee," Tessa said. She masked her annoyance and faked a smile. Mr. Lee, pleased that his favorite had a smile on her face, beamed at her and continued with the list. As soon as he looked away the smile slid from her face. The girl who sat next to her hid a smile and Tessa smirked. She traced the edge of her desk until Mr. Lee finally reached Nelly Zeena and put the roll list down.
"Excellent," he said, rubbing his thin hands together. "A full house. A packed stadium. A— ah, I'm running out of comparisons. That's no matter, because today we're going to talk about the Puritans!"
The class groaned. Mr. Lee frowned and said, "Wait, I thought everyone loved talking about the people who escaped an oppressed society to a land of freedom? Who made history when they stepped on those three famous boats? Who started over in a terrifyingly new world that was foreign and alien to them?"
Tessa glanced down at her desk. Usually she loved it when Mr. Lee jokingly chastised her classmates, but today she just wasn't feeling it. Brown laughed at his joke and Mr. Lee brightened.
"Ah, someone appreciates my sense of humor! Anyway, we're finished with the Puritans for now. I have a new, even more exciting topic to cover today. Who can tell me something about the Brothers' Grimm?"
Everyone perked up. This was a quick change of topic—wasn't this more of an English thing? Tessa tentatively raised her hand. Mr. Lee nodded at her.
"Well, they were famous for collecting German folklore," she said. "The two brothers had somewhat of an obsession with stories and such. The original fairytales we all know today were surprisingly violent."
"Yes, exactly!" Mr. Lee almost jumped up in the air. Brown turned around in his seat and glared. Mr. Lee grabbed his cup of coffee and started to walk around the room. Tessa instantly felt her mouth water at the intoxicating smell of coffee as he approached her direction. "As Tessa cleverly said, the brothers were obsessed with collecting folk tales. It was more than a hobby; to them, it was a lifestyle. Their father died when they were young and threw the family into poverty. When they discovered their love of stories, they turned to the hopes that maybe they could earn a few bucks by publishing old stories."
Mr. Lee had everyone's attention. The class thought they would be getting another lecture on the boring old Puritans, and now they were getting a treat. Besides the treat, most English classes were covering fairytales, so this was giving more background information. Mr. Lee tended to do this: follow up with other teachers and see what they were teaching, so that way he could do his own research and give the students the history behind whatever they were learning in other classes. It was a brilliant way of helping the students succeed.
"There's a reason why the two brothers had to reprint their volume so many times: they kept discovering more and more folktales. From what was originally seventy-five stories, their collection grew to over two hundred tales. Two hundred! As historians, we can tell a lot about what the culture was like from stories such as these."
Mr. Lee was one row over from Tessa. She watched as he picked his way through the rows, side stepping the book bags and purses that littered the aisles. He tended to roam the class as he lectured to make sure students weren't using their phones, but he also claimed it was his way of remembering what he had to say. He started on Tessa's row and slowly started to work his way to the back where she sat.
"This doesn't just go for German culture either, folks. We can tell a lot about a people group by the stories they told each other as entertainment. Most stories were parables, or lessons told in story form. They most likely had a hidden meaning that was supposed to teach a valuable piece of information. As we continue to discuss this, keep a few things in mind: sometimes stories can be real, real enough to—yes, Ronan?"
Tessa glanced up at the sound of Brown's name and scowled. Sure enough— Brown was sitting in his seat with his hand raised patiently. Mr. Lee waited for him to talk, almost like he wanted to see exactly what was so important for Brown to interrupt his very intriguing lecture.
Brown lowered his hand and said, "I thought the Grimm brothers didn't start to collect the stories until later in their lives?"
"Well—" Mr. Lee started, clearly thrown off of his teaching groove. He thought for a moment. "They were in their twenties, definitely. They had a friend who asked for their help with collecting some local folktales and storing them in an organized manner. See, what they would do was rather fascinating— they would interview the original storytellers and transcribe what they heard, often embellishing and adding more detail to it. They had quite the reputation for speaking with peasants and trying to get their stories, and we have Hansel and Gretel and Sleeping Beauty to thank for that."
"Didn't they change a lot of the original stories though?" Brown leaned back in his seat. "Take away some stuff, added dialogue, and made the tone seem more rustic?"
Mr. Lee frowned. "Where is your point, Ronan?"
This was a constant battle between the two. Mr. Lee would always be adorably excited about whatever they were supposed to learn about that day and Brown would always try to make the history seem like it was written from the "hero's glorified vantage point of privilege and inherited rights," something that he seriously said last week when they were talking about John Winthrop, one of the "leaders" of the Puritans when they arrived in America. Brown had a personal vendetta against heroes who were heroes for the wrong reasons.
"They took something that wasn't theirs and made it their own. They plagiarized more than two hundred stories for their own personal gain. It's unethical."
Mr. Lee snorted. "If we want to talk about unethical things, let's talk about how my Starbucks coffee cost me five dollars."
The class tittered at his joke. Brown turned slightly red and opened his mouth to try and deliver his next attack, but someone else beat him to it.
"Brown, why don't you just shut up and let Mr. Lee talk for once?"
Everyone turned to look at Tessa, shocked that she would say such a thing. The entire school knew about the feud between Brown and Tessa, but Tessa was not the type of person who would speak out like that— especially during class. She was sure that their surprise was mirrored on her own face but she tried not to let it faze her.
Brown turned to glare at her, his cheeks bright pink now.
"Thank you, Tessa!" Mr. Lee said proudly. She smiled sweetly back at him. Embarrassing Brown was one of her favorite pastimes. He frowned and tried to spit something back at her.
"Yeah, but the people who try to be—"
"Ronan, do you have a masters degree in Education and a specialization in World History, with a minor in Ancient History?" Mr. Lee asked innocently.
Brown blushed. "No."
"Then don't try to undermine what I'm trying to teach. There's a reason why we only learn one side of history: the winners wrote it. It's a flawed system but there's nothing we can do about it. See, when the losers finally win, the higher ups tend to rewrite everything to make it in their favor and—""
Tessa, who was tracing the edge of her desk again, looked up to see why he had stopped talking and was immediately doused, once again, in hot liquid; Mr. Lee must have tripped on her book bag in the aisle and spilled his drink. The entire class was deathly quiet, afraid of how she would react. Tessa's jacket was soaked in coffee. Again.
She felt her eyes well up with tears at the sight of the brown stain spreading on her clothes. She glanced up at Mr. Lee and saw a flash of silver behind his glasses, though maybe that was from the glint of the overhead lights on the lenses. Tessa didn't stay long to figure it out; instead she reached down and picked up her book bag, without permission, to go and clean herself up for the second time. Ignoring Mr. Lee's calls of apologies, Tessa rushed down the row to get out of the classroom as fast as she could.
When she reached the door, she made the mistake of looking back at Brown. He sat there, stunned, and looked at her with a twinge of sorrow behind his glasses. Tessa huffed; she didn't want his pity, or anyone else's for that matter. But then again, pity? From Brown? Unheard of. It was laughable. She scowled at him in response, too busy with the burning coffee on her chest to worry about him and his newfound conscience, and yanked the door open and let it slam shut. She hurried into the hallway and all but ran back to the bathroom, cursing under her breath.
Tessa vowed to steer clear of anyone carrying something that even slightly resembled a coffee cup for the rest of her life.
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The picture is how I imagine Brown to look like, only in the story he's part Hispanic so his skin would be a little darker. Hope you like the story! Vote if you liked it!