Excuse my French

sept. chargé d'affaires

I was sitting in French class, yet again almost dying of boredom since Madame Cartier decided to have another review day (this time of the subjunctive, which I had admittedly failed last year, but I preferred to bury bad memories in my subconscious). The only things that were really keeping me up were the weird side glances that Olivia kept shooting me, as if she thought I was an imposter or something. I couldn't really blame her for that—the barefaced (or rather, glasses-less) version of me was quite frightening to behold.

Finally, she sent me such a horrified look that I stopped drawing mindless circles in the margin of my notebook. "What?" I whispered to her. I also took the opportunity to glance down at her notes to see if I had missed anything essential.

By the looks of it, I had apparently missed the most important lesson in the world, since practically everything was highlighted in her special blue highlighter ink. Now, it looked like the unhighlighted sections of text were more significant as they starkly stood out as they swam in an ocean of blue. At this rate, Olivia was going to have to get herself a new highlighter very, very soon.

She shrugged and highlighted another line, this time in green. That meant that line was especially important. I took extra care to scribble that down in my otherwise blank notebook. "I just can't get used to you not having your glasses," she muttered back to me under her breath.

Madame Cartier turned back abruptly. (And I swore I had a heart attack then.) "Mademoiselle, avez-vous quelque chose à dire à la classe?"

Ah, shit; this was bad. I never understood anything since she always spoke so quickly. Olivia was quickly scribbling something down on her notebook—hopefully a translation for me—but she wouldn't be able to do it quickly enough. Steeling myself to my teacher's beady eyes, I surged on.

"Ah, oui," I said quickly, hoping that I had chosen the right response. All right—so I'd need another three seconds to even process anything she'd said...and then the English. My head was already hurting, and I quailed under Madame Cartier's stare, feeling a little like a deer in headlights.

Olivia hid her face in her hands.

"Continuez?" The evil French teacher raised her eyebrows.

All right, that I could understand. I was sure it meant something like "continue". "Madame, j'ai fait une erreur. Je—uh—veux dire rien."

At least my two and a half years of years of French schooling provided me with that much to say—right?

From next to me, I heard a barely stifled groan from an undeniably amused Olivia.

Sending me one last suspicious look, Madame Cartier turned back to the board and stopped occupying herself with me (and therefore took the rest of the class's attention away from me, which was good since it felt like everyone was staring at me like I was being publicly executed).

Without missing a beat, I looked over to Olivia and exchanged an eye roll with her. "What did I say wrong?" I asked her.

"A, she asked you if you had anything to say to the class." Olivia shook her head as she wrote something down from the board and highlighted it three times. Snorting, I copied what she wrote down, just in case.

Piggy-backing off a conscientious student was always the safe thing to do (in the case of test preparation).

"Oh." And I seriously told her that I did have something to share with the entire class, which was still staring me down like I was some sort of a freak.

I decided to copy down the rest of Olivia's very, very blue notes (without coloring my entire page as well) since I was getting so bored that I was sure I was going to do something desperate (such as texting Lila in class—besides, Lila absolutely sucked at the subjunctive) very soon. Olivia and I didn't say anything to each other since both of us (a huge shock when it came to me) was paying attention. Then, I came to a part in Olivia's notes that I couldn't read, so I poked her arm with the back of my pencil.