last resort

f o u r

AFTER BREAK, I HAVE ENGLISH IN a class close to Dorame's class.

The classroom is a lot neater than his class, and has fresh, crisp atmosphere. There's an entire bookcase dedicated solely to English dictionaries. A cold breeze pushes into the room through the windows, chilling my nude arms. I hang around in front of the class for a bit, checking each face stumbling into the refrigerator, not recognizing any face. Each student stumbling in reveals a different emotion or complexion.

I'm just glad I don't have class with Ashlynn. I am really cross with her for saying that what I do is lame and that I should scratch interest somewhere else. It's not as if I like shoveling up synthetic bones. Photography is exciting.

I find myself a seat at the back of the class, behind a blonde with hair so bright I might mistaken it as a sun. I wince timely at her hair, her neon pink tank top not helping my eyesight in any way.

Her thick rimmed glasses rest on the bridge of her nose, although she looks like she just woke up from her nap in the library after she fell asleep with her nose in a physics textbook. That's what I gathered from her when I walked past her to take my seat. But the morbid glare I got from her dead, brown eyes hadn't made me felt this abhorred since I accidentally spilled paint all over a girly-girl.

The Hawaiian iris boy [I baptized Casey as the Hawaiian iris boy] is in this class. He sits on the desk to my left, already dozing off this early in class. His head rests on his bracelet covered arms, and that can not possibly make a comfy surface to rest your face on. He was at the magazine meeting as well. One of the main brains in the magazine, I suppose.

But his name is Casey, and Mr. Dorame mentioned a Sinister pen name. I didn't picture him as a junior. He seems more aged than a junior, more stressed out. From the healthy distance we are sitting, his breathing did nothing but scare my blood down to freezing point. His whole pulmonary system is distressed and obstructed, and it's all but relaxing. Definitely not some kind of hearing-therapy, unless you want a heart attack. He doesn't seemed to mind the fact that he sounds as if he's suffocated by his own bronchi.

The English teacher walks into the classroom with a mug in her hands and a pile of paper tucked in under her arm. It's common for teachers around here to take everything out of their classes and come back with it dramatically. She's short and pear shaped, clothes in white and a splash of cream topping a cappuccino, just in cardigan shape. She pushes up her thin rimmed glasses before gazing up at the class in utter relaxation.

She was in the class before, but she had to do something, if collecting coffee is more important than keeping a group of hormonally operated teenagers alone with no adult supervision, leaving us on the suspending silence for the other students to go through their speeches for the last time. I don't have to, I'll have to do it after school one day to receive my mark. Lucky duck.

"Casey, my desk is not a pillow, sit up," she demands sternly first. The boy next to me jerks up, just to plop his head down on his palm. "Alright juniors," she announces, putting the cup down on her desk. The papers fly off next, scattering over her desk like autumn leaves. "Who's my first victim?" She grimaces, rubbing her hands together evilly, her voice booming the short distance to the back of the class as loud as the sound barrier breaking.

Ciarah's hand erects up first as quick as a tempered cobra, her metal bangles shuddering together. She's nicer than Ashlynn, but her confidence level is more naive, while Ashlynn's is Braxton-ridden. Or that's how it appears.

"Nice to see I don't have to hunt one down," Mrs Hall snorts, slumping down into her oversized desk chair. "No deodorant spray in the class," she growls, looking up straight at a varsity jacket sitting on the other side of the class. The jacket shrugs, passing the bottle of spray to another jacket, whom pockets it in his backpack.