Book

Untitled Part 2

École secondaire Axmith Avenue was a small, French school. From grades seven to ten, there were only twenty seven students. There were three students in Emily's grade, grade eleven. Herself and two other girls. Neverless, since her classes were all mixed, she had more students than that in each class. They were all noisy and spoke endlessly about subjects Emily didn't know about or care about, such as politics, their jobs, and money. On the other hand Emily never had anything to say.That was probably why she had no friends.She wished that there would be more people around who would talk to her first so that she could listen and speak when necessary. Unfortunately, that was unlikely to happen. Her only friend lived far away.

As usual, Emily's bus had dropped her off after the first bell had rung, so she had to hurry to arrive in time for her first class, Math. She plopped herself onto her chair at her desk at the front of the classroom. She always preferred to sit at the front, where she could easily hear the teacher teaching and read the writing on the board. Despite her somewhat thick glasses, she still struggled to read small letters from the distance.

Emily removed her Math binder from her school bag and hastily got to work on the Trigonometry problems she had avoided doing the night before. She would see if she could finish them before they took them up together. Then her teacher wouldn't lecture her about being late. Emily tended to try to avoid confrontations.

Emily continued to work through announcements. She knew she was supposed to listen to announcements in case they announced a student council meeting or something of the sort, but on that day, her homework was a priority. The school principal probably wasn't saying anything that applied to her at any rate. If he was, she would most likely find out later.

The national anthem, O Canada, started just as Emily was finishing up her last question. Emily stood up and silently waited for it to end. That year at their school, the national anthem was a recording made by the school band the year before. Most students at her French high school, École secondaire Axmith Avenue, were very skilled at music, but Emily was one of the rare few who couldn't play an instrument or carry a tune while singing. She still appreciated hearing the other students play their music, but she had to admit it would be a lot more fun if she was part of it. But since she was good at Language and they were good at Music, she would have to settle for writing stories and poems during her free time instead. Being part of their musical group did look like it would be fun, though.

Once the class was seated again, the teacher, Mme Jambonbrûlé began to speak. She asked the class if they had finished their homework. Everyone had. Emily wrote down her final answer and also said yes. Mme Jambonbrûlé asked Emily if she had the right answers. Emily flipped through her Math textbook and verified that she did indeed have the correct answers. In fact, she had gotten all the questions rights. Emily smiled to herself, feeling proud.

Mme Jambonbrûlé proceeded to give the class another lesson. Emily copied notes and listened intently, wanting to avoid not understanding the lesson and falling behind. Despite this, she was still completely lost five minutes into the lesson. From what she could tell, they had just learned a new formula, but Emily had no idea what it was for or what her teacher was trying to do. She would have to ask once the lesson was over. Hopefully she would understand then.

Once the lesson was over, Mme Jambonbrûlé assigned them all the questions on page 393, 394, and 395. Emily took one glance at the section was impressed by how many questions that could fit on one page. She knew it would take a while to complete them all. She would be stuck with homework without any doubt. The worst part was the large amount of word problems. Those were the hardest.