Don't Instruct the Wind

Chapter 5

I shot up from the comfortable, twisted position I was sleeping in and immediately turned to look out the window and glance at the sun.

Before realizing that I am, in fact, not late for my first class, all I could feel was a woeful pit in my stomach. An uncertain and hopeless sensation was all jam-packed inside of me, causing random thoughts to swarm in endless circles around my mind.

I haven't even left bed yet, why do I feel this way?

Each distressing thought sent shivers of nervousness radiating from my head all the way down to my toes. Even after the feeling would melt away after a few seconds, the thoughts still remained and that uneasy feeling would come up again and cut through my body.

Guess I'm going to class feeling this way!

I jumped out of bed and just noticed—like the dense idiot I am—that Rafael and Ernest must not have returned to our room at all. It left me upset, knowing they have yet to see what I did to Rafael's bed.

Grabbing my flute and stepping over broken pieces of wood, I dashed out the room.

After spending a couple of minutes looking for my flute class, I awkwardly pushed the classroom door open and immediately walked to a random unaccompanied desk.

The first thing that caught my attention was the fact that nobody else in here had a flute.

After a few minutes had passed, I started to contemplate any reason for having to be in here. The teacher was teaching everything that I already knew. I've been playing the flute for almost my whole life, lady!

Once again, that unbearable pit in my stomach and the feeling of nervousness began to grow inside of me. This time it was worse due to me being in a compact classroom with no air to breathe.

Why am I feeling this way? This isn't familiar.

My heart ran laps in my chest and my hands all of a sudden wanted to become waterfalls of sweat.

None of the words flowing out of the teacher's mouth resonated. Instead, my thoughts overpowered every sound in the classroom.

"Excuse me, boy in the orange," the teacher interrupted my overthinking. "If you would quit tapping your foot, it would be greatly appreciated. You're being a disturbance."

My leg jittering right where I sat was the least noticeable thing to me in this moment.

Everybody turned around to face me. Guess they were curious about who the "boy in orange" was.

They continued to stare.

"You guys can turn around now!" I angrily chided. "You wanna eat me or something?"

Everybody looked back at the board to continue paying attention to the lesson.

What a bunch of nosey weirdos!

An hour had passed, and I've gathered not a single amount of information but just more of that nervous sensation.

What I hadn't noticed was a spider crawling on the side of my desk.

It reminded me of faint memories when I would uncontrollably shift from a human into a spider back when I was twelve. Although it was random and irritating, shooting webs out of my ass was definitely something I looked forward to. It made me wonder who in my family passed down such strange genes.

Bella and Malia would always make fun of the way my voice would become all innocent and squeaky when I had that "spider shape-shifting" thing going on.

Man, I miss those two.

Now is not the time to think about that either.

The teacher noticed me playing with the spider, allowing it to sit in my hands. "Boy in the orange, mind the spider infestation. You can sit somewhere else if you'd like."