KAYLA'S POV (continuing):
Adoptive mom called him. He picked up and answered.
"Yeah… I'm coming…"
His backstory left us speechless. Theo was looking down at his hands, his expression blank, maybe remembering his mother when he mentioned her. I looked at him; he avoided eye contact and drove silently. I saw tears at the corners of his eyes through the front mirror.
Now I understand why he's always so stern and cruel. But even then, he should have been atleast a more loving and caring father to his son. My thoughts turned to Theo. He has always been an abusive father to him, constantly torturing him mentally, never caring about his son's mental health.
His backstory still doesn't justify what he did to his only son. Maybe he's projecting the way his parents treated him onto Theo. Or even worse… maybe he sees his first wife in Theo, the woman who, in his perspective, betrayed him and tried to run away from him at his worst time.
---
Next day at school,
Exam day. I hadn't studied anything. I was deep in thought all night.
Annie came over.
"Did you study?"
She shook her head.
I asked Sevi, who was sleeping. I patted his head.
"Hey, idiot! Did you study anything?"
He shook his head and went back to sleep.
Oh God… who's going to help us now?
I had an idea. I whispered it to Annie. She chuckled and nodded.
We went outside to the ground ten minutes before the bell rang and quickly started writing chits from the book. We made many chits, even though we could've learned something in those ten minutes, but who does that hard work? Just write it down on paper and copy it again in the exam.
Aya was passing by. She saw us and her eyes widened in shock.
"Are you guys cheating?!"
"Hey! Lower your voice…"
I whispered dangerously, threatening that if she opened her mouth, I'd bury her alive in this ground.
"Okay, okay but why are you cheating? It's bad…"
"Everything is fair in love and war."
"It's an exam."
"Yeah… and it means war."
As the exam started, the teacher made Theo sit right in front of him as always. The teacher knew Theo was the only one in our class who actually knew the answers and would help his friends, so the evil teacher separated him from everyone.
While the teacher was busy checking papers at his desk, I intentionally dropped my pen and bent down to pull out the cheating chits from my socks.
I opened one, nothing related to the exam.
Opened the second, nothing.
Another. And another…
I looked at Annie. She was already looking at me with realization in her eyes, she had opened all her chits too.
The realization hit us hard.
Oh God… the chits we made were from chapters that didn't even come in the exam.
Why? Why us? What will we do now?
I kept clicking my pen on and off for a while, then randomly circled answers based on gut feeling and handed the paper to the teacher.
What else could we do except accept our fate?