Dance Into My Heart

Ch3

Kai's following two classes felt like they went by slower than the guy who drives the speed limit in the fast lane just to be a dick. She had Calculus with Vince, and when the teacher started this week's topics, they looked at each other and saw the same tired resignation. They went into the classroom with hopeful confidence and left with a withering despair at the 10 questions they were assigned. Each question had at least 4 other questions in it.

Vince was glad he got a little bit of a mental break with his next class. He had Creative Writing. Kai wasn't as lucky. She had Advanced Language and Writing. They walked together to their lockers, which were conveniently near each other. There was a 15-minute break before the next round of classes, so after switching out their books, they tried to compare notes on what they thought the math lesson was about. Vera walked up five minutes later, heard what they were talking about, and cringed. Eventually, Kai and Vince gave up, and the three of them talked about their plans for after school and where they wanted to sit at lunch today. The warning bell rang, interrupting them, so they said their goodbyes, and Kai trudged off to her next class.

When she walked in the door, she almost ran right into Jason, who gave her a nod in acknowledgment. Kai nodded back but was suddenly aware that she had not been paying enough attention since school started because, before that moment, she hadn't noticed him.

The bell rang, shaking her from her thoughts and sending her to her seat just as Ms. Weaver walked in.

"Alright, today I will give you a break. I need to catch up on some grading. Today will be a work day. I encourage you to use this time to work on your Gatsby essays, but you can also work on stuff from other classes if you want to. As long as you remain at a reasonable sound level, you may whisper amongst yourselves. I will take away this privilege if I feel it's being taken for granted. Suppose I feel like you're not getting any work done. In that case, I will assign a 300-word mini-essay to be written from the point of view of a bug on the wall who witnessed one of the significant moments of The Great Gatsby.

A shudder ran through the class. We all knew she was serious.

"You can move around in a few minutes. Let me take attendance first, and I will tell you when I'm done."

Kai had already gotten a decent amount of work done on her essay, so she pulled out her math book, content to stay in her own seat to do her own thing.

"There, all done, you may now move around. Remember my warmings." With that, Ms. Seaver sat at her desk in the corner and put on some instrumental music.

Kai had painfully worked her way through question one and most of question two and its sub-questions when she heard someone pull up a chair beside her. She looked up and was surprised to see Jason looking over her shoulder and wrinkling his nose.

"Your 1C is wrong. An ellipse has two vertices."
"What...?" Kai looked at her problem, and sure enough, she had missed a vertex.
"Thanks. Are you taking Calculus, too?"
"Hmm... oh, no. The principal gave me a choice, so I'm taking pre-calc instead. Don't get me wrong, I know what I'm doin', but I don't need it for the track I'm on, so I took the lesser of the two evils." Jason shrugged and leaned back before waving a hand at her. "I figured we could do some research for the Astronomy project, though. Don't want Luce to bite our heads off."
"That's probably a good idea. I have numbers swimming in my eyes." She slid her math book and calculator into her bag and brought out her computer.
"Alright, so your main thing is gettin' pictures, and I have to find out who discovered it, and we all have to contribute info and descriptions. So why not put our heads together now and do some diggin' for basic knowledge?" Jason was already surfing through websites.
"That sounds good. Do you want to compare what we find at the end or as we go?" Kai opened up her computer and flipped to a fresh page in her notebook.
"As we go would be better. We won't spend time on stuff the other has already found."
She nodded and settled in, "Sounds good."

That was how they passed their time, jotting notes and periodically comparing what they were finding and researching. Meanwhile, Kai tried to ignore the curious and upset gazes being cast in their direction. She could understand; Jason rarely went out of his way to talk to people he didn't hang out with on a regular basis, so like a handful of people, maybe the football guys, a couple people from track, and his brother, Tim. In a school with over 1000 kids, that was a feat.

"Okay, I think that's good for now. After all, there's only a few minutes left."
Kai straightened her back and sighed in relief when she felt it pop, "yeah, you're probably right. Let's get all the information in one spot and share it with the rest."

They created a shared document and sent it to the other three. Jason returned to his seat to pack up, and Kai put away her computer. She had to make a quick stop before her next class. She left the pictures she printed in her locker so they wouldn't get damaged.

"Thank you for behaving today, class. I would've hated to grade all those mini-essays. There's only a few seconds left in class, so enjoy the rest of your day."

The bell rang, and Kai flew out, trying to make it to her locker and then the Photography classroom without being late. Hopefully, there would be no distractions.