A Crack Away from Destiny

Louise

"Gabby Smith, Maxine Brown, Louise Melon-" The entire class erupted in a chorus of laughter.

"Uh, it's actually pronounced Louise Melón. With the accented 'o' emphasized!" Louise corrected the substitute, yelling over the laughter. The substitute gave an exasperated sigh and quickly wrote down a note beside Louise's name on the attendance, reminding herself of the tricky pronunciation. Though this happened with every substitute, Louise hadn't the faintest idea how mispronouncing one's name to "melon" was considered hilarious. Or it could have been that the students of Breachwood High School needed a good laugh, every now and then from all the stressing work that was thrust upon them. After a minute or so, the laughter died down to silence, and the substitute resumed the task of checking attendance, once again. Louise snuck out a pencil from her pencil case and began twirling it around her fingers, like she'd seen a few of her classmates do. It helped pass time and it was somewhat entertaining to watch. She twirled the pencil from her pointer finger to her middle. From the middle, she would twirl it towards the ring finger, and finally to the pinky. Then she would reverse the process and twirl it from the pinky to the ring finger, repeating these steps until the substitute finished the attendance. The substitute made her way, over to the teacher's desk and let herself slump in the swivel chair, lazily. Louise glanced towards the back of the room, to see if her friend was looking in her direction. To her great fortune, she was. Her friend, Elizabeth Winters waved and she returned the wave. Lizzy pointed to her iPhone. Louise nodded. She hastily took out her Samsung Galaxy and unlocked her screen, immediately accessing the texting application. A text appeared on her screen.

Lizzy: "Hi, bored."

Louise: "Well, wut do u think schools r for?"

Lizzy: "To torture innocent people's minds."

Louise: "True. The bell's gonna ring in a min."

Lizzy: "K, byes."

Louise: "Byes," she texted and hastily shoved her phone into her backpack as the bell rang overhead, signaling the end of homeroom and the beginning to first period. Louise gathered her belongings, stood up, and followed the crowd of students out the door. Lizzy ran up alongside her as they entered the hallway.

"Hey, what's up?" Louise asked. Lizzy shifted her backpack uncomfortably on her right shoulder.

"Well, there's the ceiling, the roof, the clouds, the troposphere, the stratosphere, the thermosphere, the mesosphere-"

"Okay, okay, got it!"

"But I still have fifteen more to go!" she whined. Louise shrugged her shoulders, not wanting Lizzy to continue her list, for if she did, it would enter into the next century before she was done. Instead, Louise mentioned the math test they were to take that following Friday. Apparently Lizzy was already studying profusely, not wanting anything lower than a 95. Secretly, Louise wanted at least an 80. Even a passing grade would do.

"I got to go to art, talk to you later."

"Yeah, see ya," Louise replied. She turned right in the first hallway. She spotted and entered the girl's locker room. The pungent odor of perfume hit her nose as she entered. Trying not to breathe, she made her way around the already occupied lockers and searched for her only friend in gym class. She finally spotted her, talked with her a bit, and dressed into her gym clothes. As they entered the main gym, her friend went to sit in her squad spot and talk with whomever was closest to her. Louise took a shortcut into the second gym, which was much smaller than the main gym, but it had a more cozy feel to it. She sat in her squad spot, waiting patiently for instructions. The teachers checked attendance and announced that they would be doing laps around the school. Her stomach did what felt like somersault. It wasn't that Louise wasn't athletic, it was just that running was not her thing. The class dawdled outside, most sluggishly due to the lack of sleep.