Cassidy opened the door to the gates of hell, sticky and sopping wet but able to slip inside without leaving too many doughy footprints. She waited awkwardly beside the door, avoiding as much eye contact as possible until her teacher looked up from his paperwork.

And dropped his coffee all over his desk.

He swore loudly, his slick, black hair becoming undone by the second as he rushed about, trying to clean the stains of the desk. Satisfied with his attempt, he smiled bashfully before becoming solemn faced once again.

"Sorry, sir." Cassidy said, in a small voice. "I didn't mean to scare you."

He nodded, gesturing towards the seat in front of him before deciding against it.

"I understand. Please, come in, Cassidy."

Cass winced a little at the use of her full name but played it off as simple embarrassment until she stood a respectable distance away from his desk.

"Trouble in Home Ec?" he asked, suppressing a smile at her dough covered uniform.

"Something like that, sir." she replied goodnaturedly, not wanting to point blame towards the schools star pupil.

It would certainly cause more harm than good, especially with the amount of trouble she was already in. Mr Arch was her history teacher, a surprisingly well liked one amongst her classmates, who certainly had the looks to cause quite a few girls to have crushes on him. It was a shame he was engaged to the Wicked Witch of the West.

"You wanted to see me, Mr Arch?" she said at last, not wanting to dwell on her current situation any longer.

He sighed, gathering his slightly stained stack of papers before gingerly placing them on his desk, placing one on the left and one on the right.

"Tell me what you see here."

Cass shuffled forward, peering down at the two documents as she tried to scan the details without getting any water on them from her wet, dough covered hair.

"Two reports on Napoleon Bonaparte, sir." she said, simply.

Mr Arch raised an unamused eyebrow as Cass fought the urge to look away.

"And?"

"They seem..pretty similar." she replied, deciding to stick to her methods of stating the obvious.

Mr Arch leaned back in his chair, reaching for his coffee cup before realising it was empty. He rubbed his tired eyes in an attempt to get rid of the tension before gesturing back to the two papers in front of him.

"They are exactly the same. Word for word."

Cass tried to hide her shock but it was no use, her hands shook as she tried to form a well measured response to this accusation.

"I don't understand, sir. I wrote my report by hand as requested..."

Mr Arch caught her hesitation and used it to fuel his theory to his advantage.

"Yet your sister did exactly the same thing. Same handwriting. Same paragraph structure. The only difference is the signature."

A cold chill passed down Cassidy's neck, not from the earlier water balloon but from a sense of dejavu.

Mr Arch turned the page over and revealed the etchings of her backwards signature half indented in the report. Whereas her sisters had no such mark.

"That's impossible, sir. I wrote my report and handed it up two days before she did." Cass said, bordering between annoyance and confusion.

Mr Arch nodded in response, ignoring Cassidy's tone as he continued on with his explanation.

"I thought so too, until I checked the data logs. The report you handed up was your sisters, not yours."

Cass was stunned into silence, unable to speak.

"I don't know..." she began but soon trailed off as she stared at the floor, now covered in flour.

"I think I do. Either one of three things happened."

"You both wrote your reports together and staggered the hand in times, causing the reports to get mixed up and forcing Tiffany to hand up yours and vice versa. One of you wrote the report, the other copied and in your panic you copied over the wrong first name. Or, one of you wrote both reports and simply changed the name. Either way, it's still plagiarism."

Cassidy gaped up at him, surprised there was someone so smart hidden amongst a herd of idiots.

"I'm sorry, sir. I don't know what to tell you." she said, trying to piece together the situation in her own mind.

Mr Arch sighed bitterly, running his hand through his slickly gelled hair.

"The truth, would've been nice Cassidy but since you decided to ditch class this morning, only your sister was able to do that." Mr Arch said, his demeanour changing instantly.

His gaze was cold, calculating as if about to interrogate a prisoner. His hands folded on his desk in front of him, rigidly still as a slight smirk still lingered on his face. In his eyes, Mr Arch was now judge, jury and executioner. His word was law.

"What?!" Cassidy blurted out, completely off guard.

Mr Arch raised another eyebrow, matching the other in surprise towards the no longer timid little girl. Leaning forward a fraction, he raised his chin and made sure to make his voice heard.

"You heard me. Tiffany explained how you begged her to copy her work and simply signed your name instead of hers. You got them mixed up, giving poor Tiffany no other option but to hand up your crudely done forgery." Mr Arch said, shaking his head as he shuffled the papers back into his desk.

"And you believed her?" Cassidy exclaimed, resisting the urge to bang her fists on the desk like a judge.

"Who am I supposed to believe? The student who arrives on time to my class or the one who arrives late covered in rubbish?" Mr Arch smirked, his eyes no longer friendly towards the lazy student in front of him.

It was then that Cassidy finally saw his true colours. He wasn't a genius disguised by idiots. He was just as blind as the rest of them and only saw what he wanted to see in his picture perfect world.

"I..I don't understand. My other reports..." Cassidy said, trying to convince him despite knowing what the outcome would be.

"Are only worth 15% of your grades. They were practice for the main report. This one is worth 70% of your grade. You knew that."

Cassidy gaped at him, torn between fighting her corner or simply accepting her fate until the door behind her burst open with a clatter. Mrs Snider stood, unceremoniously clutching her lunch with a cheesy grin on her face.

"Oh, Archie-kins! You ready to have lunch early with me?" Mrs Snider called in, opening the door like an over excited chimpanzee.

Her smile turned into a horrified scream as she finally set eyes on the badly replicated Marshmallow Man from the Ghostbusters.

"Dear Goodington, what in the blazes are you doing here Miss West?"

Cass didn't respond, trying to make herself as small as possible as she shuffled from foot to foot.

"It's just a silly accident with some classmates, dear. No harm done." Mr Arch said, donning his friendly facade once again.

He smiles sympathetically at the pitiful excuse for a student in front of him but Cassidy was too busy attempting to make herself invisible through sheer willpower alone to see. Mrs Snider, however began to blush like an overfed pig before blazing ahead with her tirade.

"No harm done? No harm done! She's ruined the floor, all because of her constant incapabilities to communicate with others!"

Cass' face went bright red which was quite an achievement considering how well her face and hair was plastered in flour.

"Oh, I've told you for the last time Miss West, your lack of proper dress code is astoundingly awful. If I had any authority left in this school then I would suspend you right here and now!" Mrs Snider said, holding her nose with her free hand despite there not being much of a smell to the watery dough mixture.

Cassidy had reached the point of no return, deciding ultimately to say nothing and become a recluse as the two teachers continued to dictate her future at this school. It wasn't like she wanted to be here but she knew her parents wouldn't want to go through all the trouble of sending her to another school especially when one of their kids had already settled in at her current one. It would be a waste of their well earned time and energy to deal with her, just like always.

"Come now, dearest. Let's not be so hard on the poor girl. She's been through a lot today I'm sure." Mr Arch said, smiling earnestly at his wife.

Cassidy blinked twice to clear the utter shock from her brain. Did he just say he wanted to cut her some slack?

"Miss Cassidy West." he addressed her formally, causing her to wince once more.

"For your apparent disregard for the schools code of conduct, on punctuality, dress code, cheating, lying and most importantly plagiarism. I am assigning two weeks of detention, starting today where you will rewrite not just this report but your previous two history reports. Ten thousand words each."

Cassidy's jaw dropped.

"Ten thousand? But that's..."

"More than capable within the time limit, I'm sure." Mr Arch interrupted, fully aware of the complications.

"But, sir. Finals are in two weeks." Cass pleaded, dough dripping from her slick wet hair.

"I am well aware. You'd best get cracking then, won't you? Those reports won't write themselves." Mr Arch said, chuckling at his poor excuse for a joke.

Mrs Snider giggled alongside him, clapping her hands together as if it were the funniest joke she'd ever heard. They may have used separate last names to hide their relationship but Mr Arch and Mrs Snider were both as bad as each other.

"Yessir." Cassidy muttered, her hair still dripping globs of dough down her face.

'Now then. Why don't you run along early to your next class? I'll be taking PE since Miss Bletchley is off with the chicken pox. I'm sure the showers will be open so you can freshen up beforehand." Mrs Snider said, sweetly.

Slowly reaching into her pocket she produced a small key trapped within a crude keychain of the school crest, a sickeningly gold and white blob of a thing.

"Here's the key, just in case."

Cassidy reached out robotically to take the key, despite Mrs Snider's visible disgust at the thought of such a mess being mere metres away from her but she soon snatched the key back and pointed an accusing finger at her as if scolding a small child.

"Ah, ah, ah. First, as a little favour...I'd like you to give me your raincoat."

Cass stumbled, almost tripping over her words and her feet at the sudden change in situation.

"I'm sorry? I must have misheard you...Miss. Why do you want my raincoat? It's a bit small for you..."

Mr Arch laughed, coughing at the sight of Mrs Sniders withering glare.

"I know that, you foolish girl! I just think it would be better suited somewhere else, don't you think? There are those much less fortunate than you and I'm not really supposed to give this key to students..." she said, failing to suppress her wicked grin.

Cassidy sighed, clutching her already ruined backpack as if it were her only friend. Nestled inside the front compartment was her sky blue raincoat, the one she had bought out of her own pocket money when the winter storms got too harsh. Either she could go around looking like Flour Girl until both class and her newly assigned detention ended, raincoat still hopefully intact or give up her raincoat forever for the chance at getting rid of the sticky, clumps of flour which still clung to her skin. Either way, Snider was not going to let her leave without getting her way.

"OK, Miss. You can have my raincoat." Cassidy said, too tired and mentally frazzled to fight any longer.

"Excellent! The Children of the Future will be so...delighted with your donation." she unsurely exclaimed, handing Cass the key with as much enthusiasm as a limp handshake.

Mrs Snider watched beady eyed as Cass opened the stained white and blue backpack to reveal her raincoat as her wonderful homeroom and substitute PE teacher blocked the exit until the 'abomination' was in her greedy claws.

Cassidy didn't look back as she halfheartedly thanked the two teachers and headed towards the showers, ignoring the sniggers of 'Flour Girl' as her backpack shifted around on her back, feeling considerably heavier despite the key clutched in her sticky hands. The last thing she saw before they slammed the classroom door in her face was her beloved blue raincoat being dramatically dumped in the nearby trash.