Target Down - The Ghost Assassin

As Life Goes On

Sitting in class with my friends, all facing the teacher at the front of the class in silence as he paces back and forth behind his desk and occasionally pointing a finger at what he's scribbled on the chalkboard, my eyes drift around the room, taking everything in except what the teacher is saying.

The tiny little dust particles floating around close to the windows as they catch the sunlight streaming in. Some settling unknowingly to heads of classmates closest to the windows. More dust clinging to the wooden frames holding the glass panes in place. The different colours of beige and white of the papers piled in random stacks ontop of the pigeon-hole shelf lining the wall just below the windows.

A single fly catches my attention and I follow its unplanned adventure around the classroom with my eyes. It darts around a few heads, lands unscrupulously on the end of a pencil which is about to go into a mouth to be chewed on.

The sudden fascination with this fly flying around the room totally unnoticed by everyone but me brings up the thoughts of my dad's flash stick. It's been three days since I reclicked the play button after my mother came home and told me to get sone sleep.

I didn't sleep.

After she left my room and I locked my door, I went back to my laptop and rewatched my fathers introduction...

And carried on watching...

The memory of his video fades into the back of my mind, still playing while my eyes focus once again on the scene in front of me.

"There's an entire world out there that very few know about. Some don't want to know because they think they're safer not knowing, but it is there." My fathers voice whispers into my ears.

Hands going up to answer whatever question the teacher has just asked. My firends, sitting beside me, breaking eye contact with the teacher so that they don't get picked to answer. Some kids just staring into nothing, some doodling haphazardly on the blank page in front of them and that fly still doing it rounds inbetween the spaces of everything, still going unnoticed, totally unperturbed as life goes on around it.

"Skylar?" The teachers voice breaks through the silence of the fly bubble that has enthralled me.

"Uh..." I look up quickly and scan the chalkboard, my eyes landing on the the only unanswered question left on it. "Plasma?" My answer comes out more like a question than a confident response.

Damn fly, why couldn't I be that fly right now.

The teacher narrows his eyes at me, looks behind him at the question written in his own hand and turns back to me. "Correct." He says slowly, confused, probably thinking he was going to catch me out for day dreaming.

Ha! Not this time dude.

I smile back at him as he turns his attention back to the rest of the class.

About five seconds later the bell rings and every kid jumps to their feet, grabbing their books and bags, delighted the lesson is over.

On my way to the door, bag slung over my shoulder, I notice the fly had settled itself on the yellow sticky note pad sitting on the teachers desk and I couldn't help but smile.