A Little Death
Preface
"Sk... Sky-ELa.... Mart-eye?" She stuttered out making a long 'i' sound at the end. She was squinting down, through her glasses, at the brown clipboard that was contained her hand. The clipboard had included the class roll call, substitute teacher instructions, and other completely random white papers.
I slowly raised my right hand into the air beside my face, feeling slightly embarrassed.
"Sky-luh Mart-e," I pronounced correctly. Everyone in the classroom turned around and stared at me. I tried to keep my face from flushing into a bright red.
The elderly teacher completely ignored my voice, even in the dead silent room.
"Is Sky-ELa here?" She raised her voice, looking up from the papers for once.
I swallowed a gulp of dry air.
"Yes..." I muttered, keeping my arm in the air.
"Sky-ELa..." She repeated, scanning the room. She squinted the entire time, her eyes moving from the right side of the room towards the left. She stopped herself when she spotted my hand in the air, three rows from the right, the very last seat.
"Are you Sky... Sky-ELa?" She said, squinting even more at this point.
I finally rested my arm, laying it on top of my desk.
"Yes," I said without emotion.
"Sky-ELa... Present..." The old woman mumbled to herself. She looked back down at the clipboard she held, and pushed her glasses even further up her nose. Using the blue pen she had in her left hand, she made some sort of mark on the paper before her.
The class remained silent and still.
"Mark Patrick?" She finally spoke again, without any hesitation this time.
"Here," The boy in front of me said, slouching back in his desk. The woman made another mark on her paper, and then moved on to the next person on the list.
"Briana Richards?"
She continued speaking names and writing marks until the rest of the class had been accounted for.
"Alright... n-now..." She started speaking again after a few moments, sifting through the stack of papers on her clipboard. She took a few more moments looking for the information that she needed.
"Students must work in partners on their new projects... The information packets are on my desk... And they may choose partners to work with..." She read directly off the paper, holding it approximately three inches in front of her face.
Everyone else instantly awoke themselves at the idea of a project. Everyone, of course, but me. People started whispering loudly and began skimming the room for someone else to work with, making anything else that the teacher said inaudible to me.
"Okay..." The instructor finally said over everyone else's voices, her face jerking up from her papers. She looked over the classroom a second, realizing that majority of the class had already started 'working'. Once she noticed this, she turned herself around and walked across the front of the room to the small desk placed in the left corner of the room.
People around me were now talking noisily and moving themselves to different areas of the small classroom.
I sat completely still.
I stared directly in front of me, at the blank chalkboard on the opposite side of the room. Every other person in the class was talking energetically now, and I eventually realized that I was the only one still actually sitting in a desk.
