Mentality.

Chapter 7 - Playing with Fire.

"Upstairs!" Zonnique demanded as Chresanto covered his ears from her blowing the whistle obnoxiously in her ear.

"Alright. Damn!" Chresanto groaned as he made his way upstairs. "Geez!"

Chresanto walked upstairs and seen everyone sitting at a school desk inside of the workout room. He looked at everyone in shock, then made his way out of the door when Zonnique stepped in front of him, then shut the door. He looked back, and seen Mrs. Miner and Mrs. Lacey sitting on the side of the room, away from everyone else. Abby was in the responsibility room for misbehaving.

"Zonnique, what the hell is going on?" Chresanto whispered at her.

"Come on. Teacher!" Zonnique cheered as she grabbed his arm, and walked him into the middle of the room. "Mrs. Lacey and Mrs. Miner, mind telling Chresanto what he's going to be doing!"

"Yes." Mrs. Miner smiled as she stood up. "Chresanto, you're going to be teaching the class so that this excercise can help channel your anger."

"What?" Chresanto shouted.

"Wow. He talks!" Craig scoffed.

"Mrs. Miner, I can't teach this class. I'm gonna wind up-"

"That's why we're here to help you, Chresanto." Mrs. Miner. "What we're going to do is flash some math problems up on the board for everyone to do, and we will judge you based on how patient you are. The more patient you are, we'll allow you to spend some time outside of your room. Understand?"

Chresanto looked at everyone, then sighed as he covered his eyes.

"Alright..." Chresanto groaned.

"Okay. Starting with the first problem, 8 + x = 20." Mrs. Lacey cheered.

"I don't get it!" Babydoll squealed.

"That's why Chresanto's going to explain it, Babydoll." Mrs. Miner chuckled. "Anyway, go ahead."

"Alright." Chresanto sighed. "Okay. So we have this equation, right? What we have to do, is find out what number fits this equation. So how do we figure it out?"

"We multiply!" Rayan cheered.

"No, Rayan." Chresanto groaned. "We have to-"

"But there's an X right there." Rayan gasped. "Doesn't that stand for multiply?"

"It could mean a diagnol plus sign!" Jacob nodded.

"No!" Chresanto shouted in anger. "I just said that you had to add! What did I just-"

"Chresanto." Mrs. Miner said as she gave him a stern look. He looked over at her, then closed his eyes.

"In order to figure out what the letter is, what do we have to do?" Chresanto said in a calm, but irritated tone.

"Add 20 + 8?" Kiloni asked.

"No. The opposite or that, Kiloni!" Chresanto said, getting excited.

"Subtract!" Bahja shouted in excitement.

"Right! So if you subtract 8 from 20, what do you get?" Chresanto asked.

"12!" Everyone cheered.

"Good. Very good." Chresanto nodded as he wrote the answer down. "You guys got it."

"Okay, so let's try this next equation." Mrs. Lacey smiled as she fast forwarded the tape. "X - 8 = -32."

"Oh god." Chresanto thought. "Okay, class. So we all know how to do negatives, right?"