zach woke up the next morning, earlier than before so that he could join katelyn's spanish class. he remembers taking a couple of spanish classes during high school when he thought he was going to go to college. but as soon as he went on his first tour, the foreign language slipped his mind. now he tried to remember it again as he opened his computer and entered in the zoom code. he was excited to see katelyn again. he was having fun talking to her and getting to know her, even under the short time and circumstances.
zach enjoyed seeing a smile appear on katelyn's face every time he looked at her. he liked her smile. the way her teeth shown when she was delighted and the way her eyes lit up too. perhaps you could say that zach's heart grew warm when he thought of the girl, even though they were still strangers.
when the class started, katelyn waited to see zach's face. when she saw it, that smile that zach started to love discreetly crept onto her face. the teacher started the class, speaking in spanish and asking questions to break the awkward silence between the students. the teacher mostly spoke the whole time while all his students caused trouble behind their muted mics. when the teacher caught this, he yelled at the class, begging them to stop. they did momentarily but then they continued again. when the teacher stopped class again, it was an unfortunate moment when zach was showing his face on screen to katelyn. katelyn thought it was cute but her teacher saw a stranger inappropriately intruding his class. everyone's attention was then on zach as the teacher yelled at him and accused him of inappropriate things. zach quickly left the video call in fear.
katelyn was astonished. she didn't think this fun little game would turn into her spanish teacher yelling at zach that he was a child predator. in the back of her mind, katelyn knew that she should have seen this coming and stopped it immediately. since she couldn't physically leave the class to run after him and it would seem suspicious to her classmates if she left the meeting to follow the "child predator", she turned off her camera and picked up her phone to dm zach.
she first asked him if he was okay. she made sure his mental state hadn't plummeted since being called such nasty things. he responded and confirmed that he was alright. a little frightened, but alright. katelyn didn't think zach would want to talk to her again after the incident so she put her phone down. but a few seconds later, zach was dm'ing her again and accompanying her virtually so that she wouldn't have to suffer through that class alone, now that he knew how nasty her teacher was.
they dm'd back and forth the whole class. she didn't even notice when the teacher started to say his goodbyes to the class. she thought it was still the same moment that zach left the call. it was like time stopped. and for katelyn, it would feel that way for a long time.