The Amulet of Kryshar

Chapter 5

"And everyone else: get back to work right this second! You only have a couple of minutes left, thanks to these two troublemakers," Ms Rose announced with an aggravated voice to the class. I noticed that when she became angrier, her voice would sound even more nasal.

I walked over to Melanie and bent down slightly towards her. Her green eyes were looking up at me through a slightly tangled curtain of blond hair. "Did you pick up your pencil yet?" I looked over at Ms Rose. She looked like she was ignoring us, as if she was too disgusted by our presence to even bother looking over.

Melanie grumbled something and reached for her pencil. She was about to wrap her fingers around the wood, when suddenly the pencil slithered across the floor. I stared after it, wide-eyed. Meanwhile, Melanie just sighed and scrambled after it. How did that happen? Did the pencil just move by itself? Maybe Melanie touched it and I just didn't see it. Yeah, it might just be Melanie trying to trick me.

"This isn't funny, Melanie. You pushed the pencil across the floor, didn't you?"

"No, I didn't! Look!" she loudly whispered. With that she held her hand out and slammed her palm down on top of the pencil. Or she would have if the pencil hadn't rolled away a split second before her palm touched it. She repeated this several times, each time she seemed to become more and more desperate. I felt kind of sorry for her again. Melanie looked exhausted for some reason. The shadows under her eyes seemed to have deepened. Her normally straight blond hair was getting kind of frizzy and tangled. It was as if she had a halo of fuzzy blond hair around her head.

Quickly picking up the pencil without a problem, I turned to her. "We should probably get going. Ms Rose would otherwise become even madder when she realizes that we are still in the room." It's true enough: she was sitting at her large desk, which was covered with papers and several flower pots which belonged to another teacher. Ms Rose was leaning back on her chair and had her eyes closed. She might be sleeping or meditating; it was kind of hard to tell the difference.

Melanie grunted in agreement and we both slipped through the door into the darkened hallway. The lightbulbs were off again. Melanie slid down the wall next to the door, pulled her knees up to her chest and buried her head in her arms. "This is horrible, a horrible, horrible day..." I heard her murmur.

I quietly walked over to her and sat down beside her. I stayed quiet, but I knew that she was aware of my presence. Melanie glanced up and gave me a quick look and immediately stared at her sneakers again. Her eyes were slightly red and looked slightly teary. "Thanks, by the way, "she said.

I cocked my head questioningly. She snorted. "You know what I mean..." Melanie took a deep breath and looked unflinchingly into my eyes. "You know... for standing up for me. Saying something against Ms Rose. You didn't have to do that, but you still did. Why?"

I looked up at the ceiling. The lightbulb was flickering. "Because... I don't really know. Honestly. I guess it just made me angry to see Ms Rose act as if she was so much better than us. I actually thought that she was an okay teacher before all of this. Now she is just behaving like the stereotypical mean teachers I always read about in books. And the thing is," I said, shifting my gaze back to Melanie, "I know that you didn't cheat. I saw that you didn't do anything. It was just wrong of her to suddenly become this mad and accuse you of something you didn't do." Even though you kind of deserved it.

Melanie said nothing for a long time and I started getting a little unnerved, when she spoke up again. "I didn't expect you to do that." The corners of her mouth twitched upwards slightly. "Don't get me wrong: you are still a weirdo and you always will be but— "

"Geez, thanks," I muttered and rolled my eyes.

"—but you are at least a nice weirdo. Oh, I want my pencil back. It's still mine after all."