Not a Bestseller

Judge a Book By Its Cover

Time is an interesting phenomenon. It flies when you're dreading something, just like it does when you're having fun. The clock ticks when you want it to stop. Daylight stays put when you want the night to fall. The sun doesn't come up until it's too late. It ticks. Tocks. Until your eardrums bleed. Never enough of it. Always too much.

Kyle had programmed my watch slow. I watched the numbers to make our car ride last a century.

It didn't work.

We pulled to a stop in front of a prison, complete with juvenile delinquents and a state-of-the-art security system. Delcoph High School. Proud bearers of the Delcoph Wolves.

"...You just need to be more patient with him, honey."

I glanced at my mother. She'd been ranting since we left, the voice of a washed-up news reporter defending the love of her life in the only way she knew how. I could've sworn I'd heard the exact same words come out of her mouth when she'd debated with dad after breakfast. And now she'd recycled them for me.

I reached for the car door, but my chest jumped in a meat freezer. My throat held a blizzard as my fingers crawled for the door again. It refused to perform the action.

Mom put her hand on my shoulder. "Did you want me to walk you in, Sweetie?"

"No."

"Are you sure? Do you even know where his classroom is?"

"Yes, Mom."

I resisted a strong urge to roll my eyes.

You know, I never understood the phenomenon of eye-rolling. How does looking at the ceiling and down again signify disrespect and attitude? How have I also fallen into the trap of predetermined actions?

When Mom opened her mouth again, I charged out of the demon car and ran for the brick walls, head on my wrist. My watch read 2:59. I smiled at the prospect of being late. After all, my control over how I responded to time was all I had left. I would make the most of it.

I stepped inside, finding glass doors beneath a pack of wolves.

You've heard the expression, "a sea of people?" This was nothing like that. What I witnessed was a mob, a tsunami of monkeys. Orderly flow remained a foreign concept. Everybody went everywhere. Their eyes pierced through the unfamiliar face in the crowd. Me, the white wolf. I slithered down the hallway and spun around myself like a racetrack. Dead end after dead end of off-trail roads.

I glanced up. The school symbol, red and grey wolves howling in the wind.

I was back where I started.

I saw enough faces in my next blink to cause three strokes.Voices. So. Many. Voices. And teenagers. Elders. Middle age crisis survivors. Teachers. All using those mouths to socialize. Tiny Person grappled to understand the effort at such a tedious task.

Relief washed over at a brown door with a clip to its side. Principal's Office, tagged with some name I didn't read. I pounded my fist against it and slipped inside. A quiet haven that had to belong to a mouse. The mistuned voices of the hallways muffled.

A man looked up from his desk. I didn't bother to study his appearance.

"Can I help you?"

"Uhhhhh." My voice proved more intelligent than my tiny person. "I'm, um, here to see Dr. White?"

"Room 206."

"Oh, thanks."

What a stupid conversation. I shouldn't have made it you read it. My words exchanged with the nameless principal didn't move the plot forward at all.