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Jessie covered her mouth with her left hand, holding the positive test in her right as she felt silent tears, which may soon morph into earth-shattering sobs, making their slow, leisurely journey down each side of her face. She now sat on the lid of a toilet seat in a nondescript, generic school stall, with each passing second reminding her of how little time she had left, how she’d already missed half of her chemistry class and how the reason for her present predicament was just down the hall.
As that thought passed leisurely through her mind, an almost robotic sense of autopilot seemed to take over as she rose, wiping her tears absentmindedly with some tissue paper which had most definitely seen better days.
It occurred to her that she couldn’t simply discard the test in the trash can - not when it could so easily be found by some busybody snoop or some miserable cleaner - which meant she had no option but to simply restore it to its original box, stowing it away in her bag. With this done, Jessie flushed the toilet, unlocked the stall and made her way to the sink where she happened upon her reflection, perfectly displayed by an overhanging mirror.
Of course, courtesy of her crying, her outside appearance served as a wonderful insight into her current mental state. For the same reason, she couldn’t bring herself to care, instead washing her hands and unhurriedly making her way to class.
When Jessie had finally arrived outside of Mr. White’s class, a record breaking twenty-three minutes late, she took a deep breath before, on exhale, pushing the door open, silently cursing the creak of the old door and how it seemed to alert almost every face to her grand entrance.
“Miss Pinkman, how nice of you to finally join us,” Mr. White greeted as Jessie made her way to the back of the class, more than ready to claim her usual seat.
“Not so fast, Jessie. I think you should sit up front today,” Said just as she’d sat down.
Jessie uncharacteristically obliged without fuss, silently rising, pushing her seat in quietly and wordlessly moving towards the empty desk on the front row.
This seemed to shock Mr. White, almost startle him and although Jesse sat through the remainder of the double class without doing any of her assigned work, simply staring off into space, he seemed to simply let it slide.
That was until the bell rang and he requested she stay, resulting in the inevitable comments from her classmates, further cementing and driving home the sinking feeling already festering in Jessie’s stomach.
“Mr. White?” Jessie asked as the last horde of students made their way out.
The man in question opted to ignore Jessie’s line of enquiry for the moment, instead busying himself with righting the classroom. Picking up a gum wrapper here, fixing a table there, pushing a chair in…
“Mr. White?” But still no answer came and so Jessie mimicked her teacher’s behaviour, pushing seat after seat in, almost chuckling at the sheer ridiculousness of the “graffiti” adorning the abused desks.
After a while, which couldn’t have been more than ten minutes but felt at the very least quadruple that, Mr. White seemed to settle at his desk, gesturing for Jessie to sit down at the desk closest to him which to Jessie seemed redundant as they’d just spent the past however many minutes organising said chairs.
“Where were you today, Jesse?” Mr. White asked, question and tone seemingly light.
To Jesse though, the question was anything but light. She couldn’t exactly blatantly give him the truth and so she simply sat silently.
Nothing’s worse than an unbroken silence.
“Come on, Jessie. How hard can it be?”
“Listen, Mr. White, I’m gonna miss my bus…” Jessie said hesitantly after glancing at the old clock above Mr. White’s head.
“Then I’ll give you a ride home,” which led Jessie to sitting in the passenger seat of Walt’s car, the very car in which Mr. White presumably shared life with his family, her bag sat haphazardly atop her lap.
“So are you planning on telling me any time soon or will I have to work it out?” Mr. White asked, eyeing Jessie from the car’s mirror.
“Pull over,” and strangely, to Jessie’s surprise, he did.
Jessie got out, making sure to bring her bag along for the journey. She was promptly followed by Mr. White.
She plopped her bag atop the hood of Mr. White's car, feeling a spike of enjoyment at the subtle wince he gave in return, took a cigarette from the pack she always kept in her pencil case, lit it with a lighter she luckily happened to have in her pocket and kicked the bag towards her very bewildered teacher.
“Check the small pocket on the left and you’ll find what you want,” Jessie instructed as she was greeted by a familiar yet entirely different cloud of smoke.
She heard Mr. White’s nervous laughter and the crumple of the box’s cardboard when he eventually managed to find what she’d been referencing.
“Is this some kind of joke?” He asked, all the while inspecting the contents of the box, finding that to his utter dismay, it didn't seem to be a prank today.
“Is it mine?” Walt White forces himself to ask, cringing as he watches Jessie smoke, thinking of every other toxin Jessie may have subjected what could be his baby to.
She looks at him then, almost with tears in her eyes, and she doesn’t say anything but he knows. Knows and wishes desperately, more than anything, that he didn’t. Wishes, for what may perhaps be the first time in his life, that he’s wrong.
It had only happened once. Only ever been once. But as Walt now knew (and it had been a hard lesson to learn), once was more than enough.