13th March, 2018: An Entry For FoxTales#16 Fiction Contest 'SMART IS NOT ENOUGH'

The classroom atmosphere was tensed up, or maybe just for her. Ceci had never felt comfortable in it. Being a transfer student only made matters worse. Her classmates avoided her like a plaque.

Ceci's parents had assured her she could easily make friends in her new school and she had partly believed that to be true. It would be easier to do that if she participated in extra curriculars, Ceci thought to herself, but was discouraged to on her first day at school.

Today, in this irksome class, she doubt she made the right choice of transfering. She was smart, very smart. Most times in class, she'd answer questions that shocked her classmates. But they never liked her. One boy who had failed all questions in an English test, once called her a 'mental bully'. How he came up with that still baffled Ceci. But it never bothered her, she'd heard a lot of names lately:- 'Redhead', 'Know-much', 'Geek-skunk'. So this was like adding another feather to her cap.

The teacher held a piece of paper behind an empty glass of water. Written on the paper, in lower case, was the word 'now'.
'So', the teacher said, 'when light passes through a medium, it bends'. She poured in water into the glass. Immediately, through the glass filled with water, the words behind inverted to 'won'. The class gaped with awe except for Ceci. She'd seen this experiment for too much it began to bore her.

'This bending of light is called?' The teacher asked. The class became eerily quiet. If no one answered, then pop-quiz was to follow and they were ill prepared for that. Instinctively, they all turned to Ceci. Her expression was nonchalant, indifferent. Deep down, she fought the urge to grin wide with self congratulation.
After waiting about a minute for an answer she did not get, the teacher told them to put their books away and prepare for a pop-quiz.

This news was received with a sigh of sadness by all but Ceci. She had never been this happy. She mentally figured the name they'll call her, 'BRAT?'

With a smug glow, on the back of her note, Ceci wrote 'REFRACTION'.

image credit:- @vermillionfox

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