MEMPHIS WALKED WITH me back to school, hand in hand. His touch was comforting right now, so I did my best to overlook the fact that I felt his hand was limp in my own. I think the photoshoot had drained us both more than we were willing to admit, even to ourselves as we would have both understood it; admitting such a ‘simple’ thing was so tiring would have been rude to Daerius who had spent so much time organising it.
Memphis had his own ideas of keeping us in high spirits after the shoot, but it wasn’t working on me. I couldn’t help but keep thinking back to what had happened outside. As we walked, our black backpacks slung over our shoulders, he slipped his hand out from mine to place it on my waist, something I acknowledged at first until it went to below my hip. This was generally fairly normal behaviour between us, but since we were heading to school, I pulled away from him. “You know I like that, but people will see, darling,” I murmured, and I did not think that would be the fine example Daerius wanted us to set.
“You worry too much!” he teased, and his voice sounded disappointed. He listened however and took his hand away, for which I was grateful. “But if you insist.” He glanced at the wristwatch his mother had given him for his seventeenth birthday last year. “It’s ten to twelve. You better head to your science class.”
I nodded and quickly kissed him goodbye in a fleeting manner before we both went our different ways. I glanced back as he walked; he was as lithe and graceful as a feather in the wind, and despite my being late to class I had to just look at him as he went away. It was one thing to look at him for what he meant to me – a nice boy in my life who I adored and who I hoped adored me in return, but it was another thing to look at him just for aesthetic pleasure. However, I couldn’t entirely be faulted as I knew I was hardly the only girl – the only person – to do so.
I couldn’t help it; my mind kept flying back to the situation outside. Who were they? Were they petitioning for some amendment? That wasn’t unlikely, but usually it was Daerius who gave those changes first. The people didn’t suggest it but the government took a long look at what had to happen, and went from there. I couldn’t recall a situation where the government hadn’t realised the problem and taken initiative. I told myself I would call Daerius about it in the evening.
I walked down the glass halls towards the science labs, where a grey door with a small window awaited me. I peeked inside, just to check that, yes, this was my class and it hadn’t been cancelled, and I saw my teacher, Mr. Qualls, striding up and down the front of the classroom, dressed simply in a white business shirt and black pants. It was almost as if he had a fifth sense, as he turned towards me at the door – or perhaps that was because several of the students already inside were staring – and beckoned me in with a graceful twitch of his index finger. I smiled my apology as I went in, but before I could say a word, “Welcome back, Miss Dylan.”
“Thank you, sir.” I took my seat, a table that sat two people which I shared with another student from my class, and put my backpack down. I reached in to grab my glass tablet, and placed it on the plastic stand that was waiting for me. Once I tapped it to turn it on, I raised my hand. “Mr. Qualls? Could you please?”
My teacher nodded his assent and tapped on the wall display glass, which contained the lesson for today. I tapped on my own screen, and pressed ‘Import from’ and then ‘Science Wall 3’. Upon hearing the familiar bing sound that came with my tablet being ready, Mr. Qualls slid his finger quickly, like a pushing motion, across the wall as if in my direction, and soon enough, the same screen I was looking at on the wall was on my tablet. “Thanks!”
“All right, now then,” he began, clearing his throat as he did multiple taps on the board. Whatever the class had been looking at before I came in changed, and we were now looking at a page that read ‘Genetics and Reasoning’, with various texts and photos. “As from last week, we were talking about the various types one can be in this modern day and age. Can anyone tell me what was said?” Anyone could hear the sound of a pin drop. “Oh come on. It was last week, Friday! You can’t surely expect me to believe you all forgot everything over the weekend?”
