Quiet Enlightenment

Part 1, Chapter 1 - Introduction of the Four

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

"Good morning! Good morning!" Mr. Baltimore cried out as the class filed into the room. As one could expect, the "better" students filled up the front seats as the slackers made their way to the back.

A young man in his final year of middle school, Kenton Hayes, found himself shuffling into a seat in one of the middle rows. While he was not the best in the class at solving equations and finding congruence between two objects, he never gave any less than his best. After all, he was the son of the former elementary school secretary and always had the burden of grand expectations laid upon him.

As the time for the tardy bell trickled closer, the remaining seats in the class started to fill up one-by-one. About thirty-seconds before the cutoff, a boy who typically sat front-row-center came in to find his usual seat occupied. The youth, a "prodigy" named Elias Connor, conceded to taking the closest seat in the row right behind Kenton.

Despite a slight difference in height between the two boys, there were no problems since poor Kenton found himself starting to doze off at his desk and beginning to slip into a sleep too deep for the loud bell to awaken him.

Mr. Baltimore, a teacher who after dealing with this group of children for almost three years, knew the routine all too well as he plucked his teacher's edition of the math book up from his desk and let it fall onto the lectern with a loud bang that could wake up anyone sleeping in the room. Sure enough, Kenton snapped awake and flopped his book open.

"Good morning! Good morning! Turn in your books to page 294." The teacher cried out as a chorus of flops of pages overtook the ambient noise. Mr. Baltimore glanced down at his book as he reached for a whiteboard marker before turning to the board.

"Yesterday, we left off with his equation: y = mx + b" He said as he wrote the expression on the board. "Think fast! What does m stand for? KENTON!"

The boy's eyes widened as he went from being asleep to being put on the spot in the span of ninety seconds. "Uh... Uh..." He fumbled as he heard a couple mumbles from his classmates.

"Uh..."

"Time's up! Elias, help Kenton out here."

Kenton sighed in defeat as Elias gave the answer. Of course, Kenton couldn't hear the vital information being said out loud, instead finding himself focused on the snickering of several people around him.

"Good morning! Elias has saved the day! The m represents slope, or rather the rate of change in the equation!" Mr. Baltimore said as he wrote "slope" with an arrow pointing to the variable.

The rest of the day continued with Kenton feeling only three inches tall due to his embarrassment. When lunch time arrived, the mumbles and the snickers faded away, but the resentment that he felt towards his peers did not.

Being one of the first ones at the lunchroom, Kenton grabbed his tray and headed for the table that was mostly occupied by the seventh graders instead of his typical table of choice. As he started to eat, the table started to become occupied. A few of the younger kids wondered about his presence among themselves, but everybody kept to themselves until two girls approached the table.

The two girls, named Olivia and Mia, stopped their conversation as there wasn't enough room for the two of them to sit down comfortably. Kenton stopped eating and looked up at them.

"Oh, I'm sorry, this isn't my usual table. I'll move to another one..." Kenton said as he got ready to pick up his tray to move to another table.

"Don't worry about it. Just scoot over a bit and there'll be plenty of room for the two of us." Mia said as Kenton nodded. It only took a couple of inches before the two girls wedged themselves at the table with Olivia quietly squeezed between Kenton and Mia.