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There you sat, in your first class of the morning. It was math class. Your eyelids fluttered, threatening to lock closed and never open again, and your head buzzed tiredly. The teacher's voice explaining polygons sang to you like a lullaby. You had drunk a cup of strong coffee that morning, hoping it would keep you awake for the day, but it didn't seem to be working the way you wanted it to. You were so tired because you'd barely gotten enough sleep last night. You were trying to finish homework, but since it was too complicated to comprehend you'd gotten nothing done, and had wasted four precious hours. Your eyes half closed, Mrs. Lipinski's words floated into your mind freely. "Everyone, look at this shape. This is a square. It is can also be called a rectangle, or a quadrilateral..." Quadrilateral, the caffeine in your brain said. That's a funny word. Quadrilateral, quad, quadriceps, quack! The caffeine blabbed nonsense on and on in your head. Your eyes were open, but you were completely gone. You saw patches of colors in front of you, making a pattern like embroidery on a cloth. What if tricycles were quadcycles? It would be a square. A quadrilateral is a square. Hey, pentagon. Ha ha ha. Shut up, you wanted to say to yourself. You wished you had never had that coffee. Suddenly, everyone around you started to shuffle their papers and binders, and zipper sounds came from across the room. You blinked, and the teacher spoke in a different tone. "Okay, you still have one minute. You don't have to hurry. Problems 1 through 40 are assigned and are due next class. Don't worry, they're easy, once you understand these formulas." The bell rang, and Mrs. Lipinski raised her voice. "And don't forget to do the class work if you didn't finish them during the time you had here. I'll be checking that too. See you Wednesday." You stood up slowly, picked up your backpack, and headed out the door. On to the next class. In the hall, you saw your friend, Bob. He looked pretty stressed. You could relate. All the homework you had that you could never finish on time... and your stomach clenched up, so you stopped thinking about that. "Hey, Bob," you greeted when he came nearer. "Hey William," he replied glumly. "How's it going?" you asked dispiritedly. He didn't look up. You looked closely at his face, and to your horror, he was crying. "Oh God, what's wrong?" you asked, and stopped walking. He leaned against the wall and took a deep breath and wiped his eyes. "Donnie died," he said weakly. You didn't know what to say. You were shocked. Bob was crying. And who the heck was Donnie? "You know? Donnie Jameson?" He looked at you, a little annoyed. "The singer of the best band in the world? Come on, Will, Donnie died." "Ooh," you said. "I see. He died." "Aren't you shocked?" "I sure am," you replied convincingly. "But cheer up. You don't have to cry about it. You have all their CDs, so you'll be okay." He grunted. He seemed very annoyed now. "Well, I'll see you at lunch, I guess," he said. You walked on and went into the next class, Social Studies. You felt a little more awake now than last class, definitely. As you sat down in your usual seat, you remembered. The speech was due today. Your stomach clenched violently and you swallowed hard. You didn't write the speech at all. You'd written part of the introduction, and you read it over once you got it out of your binder. "Hi. I'm going to tell you about the Civil War." That was all you had. You had something else written after that, but it was scribbled out. You tried to breathe normally. It was a big deal because you were usually a good student, A's and B's, but recently you had checked your score and it was a D. After this speech you would've had a B, but you didn't have it done. Darn, the caffeine said. You're doomed. And you agreed with it. Your friend Rhonda walked over and waved. You waved back. She asked if you were ready for the speech and omygod she wasn't ready at all, and in reply you handed her your paper with the introduction. Rhonda read it. "Where's the rest of it?" she asked. "That's it. That's all I have," you said dully, pointing at the sentences. "Oh," she laughed nervously. "Well, uh, good luck. Wait, you aren't giving the speech today, are you?" You took out another sheet of paper, covered with notes you had taken about the Civil War a few weeks ago. "Actually, I just might give it today. I have the information for it." "Wow, then good luck, again." She went back to her seat across the room from him. You took out a blank sheet of paper, and started to organize your notes in chronological order. That's what you did after the class started, then during the first two speeches, and then you were more or less done with rewriting your notes. There was a lot of information missing, but you could fill in the holes with stuff you remembered. You had a good memory. After the next speech, the middle-aged teacher, Ms. Komatsu, called your name. It was your turn to give your speech. Whoop-de-doo. You walked up to the front and stood there and waited until Ms. Komatsu looked up from her paper and said, "Go ahead." Not even a smile. She just looked at you. You started out, "I'm going to tell you about the Civil War." Crap, I forgot the Hi. You panicked. But another voice inside said, But that was dumb, so it doesn't matter. Carry on. You carried on. You read the little notes on the paper, and added details here and there. But every time you looked up from the paper to look around the class, as you were supposed to do in a speech, your eyes always met the unfeeling eyes of the teacher. She didn't smile, she didn't wink, didn't give a little wave or anything. Just stared at you judgingly with her mean, ugly face. You started to stutter and your arms and knees shook. Embarrassed about your shaking voice, you went through the main points of your speech as fast as you could and said the conclusion, "I hope you learned something new about the Civil War," and walked offstage and crumpled down into your chair. The audience clapped as they were told to at the beginning of class, then it was stone silent. Ms. Komatsu called the next victim. You didn't listen to his speech, because you were too busy coaxing your knees to stop shaking. You were very, very tired again and it was easy to zone out. You sat there for several minutes until something small and hard suddenly hit the back of your head. You whirled around, and Rhonda waved and excitedly gestured to look down. You looked down and saw a tightly folded sheet of notebook paper. Looking warily at Ms. Komatsu, you reached down and got it. Unfolded it. "Nice speech," it said. "I could tell you were nervous. lol! I was too, especially since I barely knew what my speech was even about. Isn't Ms. K freaky????" Yes. She was. You got out your pencil and started scribbling about Ms. Komatsu, comparing her to a moth and to a zombie. You've had bad experiences with her before, so you had plenty to write about. You folded it up, and looked at the teacher. She was in a position where she couldn't see you at all unless she turned herself 100 degrees. So you threw it. Unfortunately, the speech giver at that moment was watching the whole thing, and as the note flew in a nice arc to Rhonda, his eyes flicked around in his sockets. Ms. Komatsu noticed that movement as an owl would notice a hopping mouse. She turned around the full 100 degrees to face you, and you froze with your arm still halfway up. Your stomach started up again. She interrupted the speech giver and said in a grave voice, "William, you can stay here when the bell rings. May I have the note?" You looked at Rhonda, who looked truly scared. The teacher walked over past you to Rhonda, and took the note from her hands. "You can stay after class, too." After about twenty more torturous minutes of dreading the talk with Ms. Komatsu, the bell rang. Everyone stood up and shuffled to the door, a few kind souls looking back at you with sympathetic expressions. You knew your face was probably white. You had never gotten in trouble yet that year. You looked at Rhonda, who was scratching her desk, and she just looked a little indignant. The teacher, still at her desk, sighed and stood up. She still had the note in her hand. Did she read it? "I haven't read it yet," she answered your thought. "But I want you to know that passing notes while someone is giving a speech is not only disrespectful to me, but it's very disrespectful to the speaker. And passing notes can distract the audience." She paused. "Do you understand?" You and Rhonda both nodded silently. "I want you to promise me that you'll never pass notes again." Wait a minute, did she say never? you thought, but nodded with Rhonda. "I'll read this note, all in good time. And if it's interesting enough, I'll give it to the superintendent." You raised your eyebrow. That's going a little far, don't you think, Ms. Komatsu? "If you read the syllabus I gave out at the beginning of the year, it explained clearly about how note-passing is one of my biggest pet peeves. My biggest. That's also why I'm giving you two some extra homework." No, anything but homework! you moaned inside your head. Ms. Komatsu created a paragraph while you and Rhonda dictated it on your own papers. "You will copy that paragraph thirty times, in handwriting." She then squinted at her watch. "You can both go now." You and Rhonda both stood up and were out of the room as fast as you could go. You had lunch next. "Bye," you said, and Rhonda waved. At lunch, you sat with Bob and Justin. Bob had his eyes closed and he was listening to his Walkman CD player. "What took you so long?" Justin asked. "I got in trouble... I was throwing a note to one of my friends, and the teacher caught me. And you know what I get for punishment?" You showed him the paragraph. "I have to copy that thirty times." Then you remembered again that she was going to read the note, and that you would probably get into worse trouble once the superintendent found out. You took a big bite of cafeteria sub sandwich and chewed. "Aw, that sucks." Justin looked at Bob, who still had his eyes closed but was nodding a little to the music. "Bob's got issues." "Yeah, I know. He told me this morning, and he was crying." "The poor guy." You ate your food in silence. It didn't seem the same without Bob talking with them. You finished eating your sandwich, so you looked at Bob. His eyes were still shut, but he was leaned over now with his head was on the table. "Bob," you said loudly. He didn't move. You called even louder. "Bobby? Robert? Robbie? Bobbers? Bob-bob?" You reached over and tapped his head. Nothing. Justin pulled off the headphones and smacked him on the head, and Bob woke up. "What?" he shouted at Justin. "Nothing, you were asleep. We were yelling at you, and you wouldn't wake up." "We thought you were dead," you added. "Oh," he frowned and stopped the CD. "I'm not dead." "That's good," Justin said. The bell rang. You said goodbye to Justin, and walked with Bob to your next class that you had together. It was a computer graphics class, and the teacher was a young lady in her twenties, named Ms. Nolan. "Hi!" she grinned and looked all around the students and computers. Most people smiled back. Everyone wondered why she was in a good mood. Usually she was quieter, and got straight to the point with what they were doing that day. She smiled some more, looked down, then looked up. With a slightly pink face, she made her announcement. "I'm getting married!" Everyone clapped and whooped, and her pink face went red. "Thank you. My boyfriend just proposed to me yesterday, and I just wanted to share the excitement with you today. I brought cupcakes, and today we'll just be having a party!" People cheered. You were very surprised. You'd never seen this side of Ms. Nolan before. Your class turned out to just be "free time" that day, and no homework -- plus cupcakes and soda and suckers that the teacher brought out of a shopping bag. She put on some pop music, very loud, and danced to it, to many's astonishment. You ate and drank and talked to Bob about your day. You told Bob all about the note-passing incident in Social Studies, your speech, and how much homework you still had. Bob told you the touching story of how he found out about Donnie. "It was this morning," he yelled over the music. "I turned on the radio, just from habit, and I heard my song, so I listened to it, and then the DJ told the name of the song, you know, and then he broke the news and I almost choked to death when I heard." "I'm so sorry about him," you hollered. You grabbed another cupcake. There seemed to be an endless supply of sweets. The room was getting pretty loud, with everyone having sugar rushing around in their veins. One of your sort-of-friends, an acquaintance, came up to you. "Hey Will." "Hey Rosie. What's up?" "Nothing much. Come over here." She pulled you over to a quieter, more remote place. She looked around, then declared, "I love you." You raised your eyebrows. "Hey, I love you too." "No, I really like you." "What?" You started to get nervous. You felt really jumpy. You had way too much sugar. "I really like you. Will you go out with me." You laughed. What? To tell the truth, you were such a loser that you had never been asked out before. But you barely even knew Rosie. Why was she asking you out? Rosie looked at you, because she was waiting for an answer. You couldn't think, though. Too much sugar. "Will you go out with me?" Rosie repeated the question. BANG. The door flew open, and the superintendent stood in the doorway, a dark shadow. "What is with this music? I can hear it from down the hall! Please turn it down!" Ms. Nolan jumped and turned it off immediately. She smoothed her skirt, and with very big eyes apologized to the superintendent. You felt deeply sympathetic towards her. The two of you were in the same boat, getting in trouble. Then the superintendent cleared his throat. "Is a William Schultz here?" Ms. Komatsu. The note. She had tattled on you. You remembered it all, and you got the same sick feeling in your stomach that you kept getting, but it was worse this time. Then for some reason you remembered how you felt when you were giving the speech. Then how you felt during math class. You remembered how much homework you had to do. You remembered the three cupcakes you'd had, and saw the container with even more. "Ooo William," you heard Rosie say softly behind you -- and you threw up. "Aww," the superintendent groaned, disgusted. "Ms. Nolan, what have you been giving these kids?" "I'll call the janitor," she replied. The man took a last look at the class, then walked out of the room. He was probably hurrying back to his office. Thank goodness, at least for now. You straightened up, your ears and cheeks burning and a horrible taste in your mouth. "Excuse me." You awkwardly stepped out of the classroom. You went straight to the bathroom where you rinsed out your mouth and washed your face. It was cool and quiet in there. Bob came in, and he had a huge smile on his face. "That was smooth," he joked. "Thank you." Looking into the cracked mirror, you rubbed water in your hair and mussed it up. Bob thought for a few seconds, then offered, "Hey, did you know that sugar is a kind of alcohol?" "I'm pretty sure that has nothing to do with why I threw up." Your friend looked at you with a quizzical expression. "So... what did Rosie want with you?" "Oh, her. She told me she loved me," you furrowed your brows, "and then she asked me out." You tried to keep a straight face when he pretended to gasp. You were a bit embarrassed. "And what did you say?" You frowned as you tried to remember. "I don't think I answered." He nodded. "Yeah, all you did was throw up." You laughed with him. You planned to apologize to Rosie for that. "Wait," you said suddenly. "What am I going to say to Rosie?" Bob was silent, so you looked at him. He shrugged. "Do you like her or not?" "Well, I don't know. I don't know her that well." "Then tell her that." "All right." There was a long pause, while you looked at yourself in the mirror. Your face was still flushed, and you felt tired and a little bit weak. Right before Bob started to say something, you spoke your thought. "It's been a really weird day." He considered that. "Now, that's true. That's the truest thing." The two of you pondered your statement, then walked out of the bathroom. It's been a really weird day. |