Stranded in Thoughts

Chapter 4 - The Troublemaker

"Okay, class, you're dismissed."

I went straight to the faculty office to drop off my instructional materials and joined my gang at the cafeteria. Around the table were Ritchelle, Vhina, and Alyssa. Every lunchtime, Ritchelle would get our reserved food ahead of time because she was the first to dismiss her class. She had her classes only in the morning.

A month had already passed since then.

"Hey, why is the you so late to sits here by the us?" Ritchelle asked just seconds before I settled on my seat.

"Me is the stressed by the students, but I scolded them, which make me the stresser," I replied, following with the flow of the joke.

"Wow, I'm impressed that both of you can understand that kind of English," Alyssa commented as she professionally sliced off the egg white of her sunny-side-up, to be given to Veruca later who notably liked it. Our conversation low-key annoyed her because she was an English teacher.

"Join we. We is the teaches you how to says we is the language," Ritchelle offered.

"Also, you is the one who tolds us that there's no wrong English because of world Englishes, remembers?" I added. "Even 'Vi' cans the surely is recall."

"You know what? Your type of English is the only one that is not acceptable. And please, stop that. It's making me cringe."

"Guys, listen first. I have something to tell you," Vhina said. "And, Elly, as I've told you, my name has an 'h', so it's vuh-hiiii. Pronounce it correctly because it makes a lot of difference!"

"As if it does."

Vhina ignored me and just told us her story about her hard-headed student who kept on shaming her indirectly through side comments and whispers to his seatmates. She didn't care about this because, for her, it was only a "small thing". But when small things were amassed, then surely it would turn to something alarming, and would eventually affect someone's emotional state. She added that time came she had had a mental breakdown and just hid it from us; well, not from me. Her pride just could not stand it when others pitied her.

We talked about lots of things afterward and kept on laughing here and there. Sometimes getting angry about how inconsiderate and insensitive our students were with their teachers. Sometimes about our funny experiences.

Josh was at the adjacent table all alone. He was sitting in an unlikely manner and was eating his food lazily with his earphones on. He dozed off for a moment, and I caught him in the act. His hair was still as unkempt as usual, and he was still wearing an unironed uniform. What I couldn't take off my mind was the way he was purposefully playing with his thick lips by flicking them with his fingers, looking like an idiotic, lazy bum. What was he even doing?

I remembered something.

"Hey, I almost forgot. You all know Finlay, right?" I whispered.

"Yes, why? Did he do something big again?" Ritchelle murmured, emphasizing the word big by intentionally pouting her lips in pronouncing the word.

"Not just big, but something really interesting. During my discussion, he kept on insisting that lightning was the sound, while thunder was the flash. I kept on telling him he had gotten them interchanged. However, he didn't believe me, and he stood and went in front of the class to explain his point. You know how good he is in arguing, right? But what to argue about lightning and thunder? I mean, it's a fact!

"I just let him be, though. He kept on explaining until he got tired and eventually went back to his seat. I was about to laugh at that time, but his arrogance is greater than my being about to laugh, so I scolded him and called her mom to come to school to discuss his behavior. And seems like he's still not convinced about thunder and lightning, which is kind of hard for me to keep a straight face whenever he's around," I stifled a laugh.