Cochlear | A Cobra Kai Fanfiction

34

"You sure you don't want me to carry your bag for you to class?" Jesse asked worriedly at the part of hallways, her hands fidgeting with her lunch box filled with empty containers to be cleaned. "I-I don't mind."

"If you walked with me you'd be walking to the other side of the school." Demetri responded with a roll of his eyes. "You'll be late and what kind of nerd would I be if I allowed my N.I.T. to be late?"

"N I T?" Jesse almost didn't want to ask as she recited the letters slowly.

"Nerd in training."

"... I think I liked padawan better." Jesse frowned and Demetri shrugged, a smirk growing on his lips.

"This way I can call you a nitwit."

"Demetri!" Jesse admonished with a grin, smacking his unhurt arm with her lunchbox a few times while Demetri cackled and half-heartedly tried to defend himself. During their laughs and smacking frenzy, the bell rang and Jesse looked down at the folder in her hands with a sigh, realization filling her as she saw the papers on top. "Oh, shoot. I totally grabbed your essay with mine... here." Jesse handed over the papers and Demetri dropped to the ground to put it in the proper folder for class.

"Go forth, nitwit. You've got class to attend." Demetri waved Jesse off and chuckled as he dodged another smack from her lunch box, muttering under his breath about loose papers.

Jesse had been walking happily to her next block until her mood started to drain remembering how the day had been going so far. The soft smile morphed into a light frown as she passed Yasmine who only rolled her eyes as they passed each other, a long shot from the amiable head nod they had given each other at the start of the day. They used to be friends and now it felt like there was a distance the size of the moon between them.

It was different than what she was used to and her life so far has been almost like a fever dream. To go from the top to who knows where she was now... in her mental musings, Jesse didn't realize she had paused just outside of her classroom, eyebrows furrowed and lost in a time that would never be again.

"Miss Park?"

"Y-yes?" Jesse's voice cracked as her eyes went into focus to see her teacher staring at her from inside the classroom with a frown. "Yes?"

"The bell rang, did you... did you hear it?"

"Oh, right." Jesse hadn't heard it, but she scrambled into the room anyways, ignoring the smirking red head who sat behind her whispering to the kid next to him. "S-sorry..."

Call it intuition, but Jesse knew something was wrong. Hawk didn't bother her at all during class, which pushed her anxiety through the roof, and had her constantly tensing up every time she detected movement from his general direction. It drove her up the wall, almost maddening, it had her squirming uncomfortably in her seat like she was sitting on tiny pebbles.

It wasn't until she got up did she realize why he hadn't been messing with her.

He already had.

And it wasn't pebbles.

Her skirt stuck to the chair for an embarrassing long time and a panicked pat on her bum confirmed her fear of multiple wads of gum creating a sticky web from her chair to the fabric of her skirt. For a moment, she allowed herself to shut down, a blankness on her mind as she slowly picked up snickering somewhere in the background of her hearing.

"What do you mean you didn't do it?! Do you know what that grade means!"

Jessica paused outside the janitorial closet door in the cove, hall pass in hand, before leaning down to take a sip from the water fountain and listened carefully to the noises in the closet. All she had come to do was have a break from the classroom and use the restroom, fix up her make up a little, but unfortunately Jessica was nosey to a fault sometimes and this sounded juicy.