I Never Thought

Chapter 4

It was Monday morning and I briskly headed to my locker to grab my gigantic AP Biology textbook before rushing to class. Somehow, I ended up four minutes late to school, which might not seem like a lot but for my school it was; a perk of being enrolled in a private high school in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Three more days of being tardy and I would be looking at a suspension.

I was typically an immensely punctual person; I usually stressed out over being early or at least on time everywhere I went. I just thought that punctuality says a lot about your character. I always tried to maintain a proper image, mostly because of my parents' desire for us to seem like the perfect family, but also because I enjoyed not being seen as irresponsible and unwise. It was coming down to the time to apply to colleges, after all, I wouldn't want to give my school any reason to not recommend me to colleges I had planned on apply to.

I walked into class right when Mr. Hansen was settling in and gathering his supplies. He nodded to me as I slowly sat in the seat that I sat in every class session; the one by the window on the far left of the room, the one next to my best friend, Sierra. I glanced at her while I pulled out my binder and pens. She was looking at me wide-eyed. She must've been as shocked as I was that I was late. We had my brother to blame though, we carpooled to school every day and were always early because of me. However, that day he decided that it was okay to turn back halfway into the drive to school to go back home because he forgot his IT project. I was irritated at the fact that he was irresponsible enough to leave the project that he and Chase worked so hard on. But despite my pleas to him to pick it up on our lunch break so that we wouldn't be late for school, he still turned back.

"What?" I mouthed then sighed in exasperation.

"Something crazy must've happened this morning," she joked and pulled out her own gigantic text book.

"Why do you think that?" Rolling my eyes, I pulled my hair back out of my face.

"Um, hello? Because Chloe Madden was late for school."

"Don't rub it in, I'm already pissed enough."

With the clearing of his throat, Mr. Hanson began speaking. "Hello everyone, I hope you all had a lovely weekend." A collection of groans was heard from numerous students. I should have groaned too since I had my fair share of unfortunate events over the weekend.

He ignored his student's underwhelming responses and dove right into the lesson. He mentioned that we were done with mitosis and that we were now heading into gene expression. I guess I lost track of the lessons because I didn't even remember having learned about transcription. Then again, the AP biology curriculum was incredibly dense and the fast pace at which he taught didn't help. His excuse being "colleges won't move slowly with their lessons, and you are all receiving good practice from me." Maybe that was just his excuse for his bad teaching skills.

The class felt upsettingly slow and tedious. Gene expression wasn't even a tough subject, I already knew it like the back of my hand from regular Biology, but the way he taught it was potently dragged out. Or maybe not, I think I was just eager to leave his class. Being late caused my day to begin on a sour note, which was an unusual occurrence. I was usually jovial in the mornings, considering that I am a morning person. Many people might disagree with me, but I believe that mornings are wonderful, there is nothing better than waking up to a kiss from the sun beaming through your drapes, as all things around take a deep whiff of a new day. Every morning I woke up hopeful, looking forward to the events to come. That day, however, I knew what was coming, puzzled stares from Sierra. And I was right.

Lunch came around and I couldn't help but grimace at the thought of the lousy slice of toast that I managed to chomp down on while rushing out the house. The cafeteria food wasn't any more appetizing, but I was too hungry to care much about that. Cold spaghetti and meatballs actually didn't sound too bad.