A Sky Without Stars

Part 2- September

"Your homework today is problems 1-56 on page 42, all of them! And if you aren't done tomorrow, I expect you to write ten two-column proofs on topics of my choice. Parallelograms? Parabolas? It could be anything!" Mrs. Zora was smiling as the bell began to ring.

We all groaned. I'd been in class with Mrs. Zora for just over a week and she was already driving me insane. We had so many math problems every night, and once a week, we had these ridiculous tests called Stars. They were supposed to "make sure we knew the basics" or something, but none of us cared. Math was not going to be fun this year.

I raced to my locker and ate lunch with the guys. A new boy was sitting at the table today. I remembered that his name was Rick, and that he was very annoying.

"Hi, Pearl," he said, in his signature, nasally voice. The sound alone made my skin crawl. I gave a weak smile then looked over at Isaac. Even though both of us were smiling politely, our eyes were filled with rage.

Lunch went particularly quickly that day, and Isaac and I walked together to Spanish. Señorita Lopez was smiling when we entered the room.

"Hola, clase," she said. We all chorused "hola" back at various volumes.

Señorita Lopez smiled, and said, "I have great news. We have been granted the opportunity to begin a new Spanish class for those of you that did not make it into honors Spanish, but wish to be. It is a very exciting idea to think that we will have a whole honors class full of freshmen! If you want to take the test, it is tomorrow, before school. Please grab one of the papers on my desk before you leave today if you are interested. Gracias, estudiantes! Now back to colors---rojo is what color?"

A new honors Spanish class? That sounded exciting, especially since the Spanish I was learning so far was stuff I'd learned back in first and second grade. But I already was taking two honors classes. Besides, my schedule would have to be flipped around, and I didn't really want that. I supposed that staying in this class was the best option I had.

Still...the idea stayed with me for the rest of the day. After school, when I was in the car with my mom, I decided it would simply be best to stay quiet about the whole matter.

"Hi, honey, how was school?" she asked, as usual.

I sighed.  "It was great mom. Why wouldn't it be?"

We rode the rest of the way home without speaking. The only thing that could be heard was the car radio, softly playing "Tainted Love" by  Soft Cell. It was one of my favorites, so I hummed along quietly.

The car had barely pulled into the garage when I opened the door and raced inside. I dropped my lunchbox on the counter with a few stray papers and ran off to do my homework. I had 56 math problems to do, among other things. Biology homework only took about fifteen minutes, and our English assignment was a research worksheet. I could do that later.

I went to grab for my math book, figuring that I should get started on all of those problems. There was just one, small issue.

The book wasn't there.

My heart began to pound. I didn't want to have to do proofs, whatever those were, for Mrs. Zora. And I didn't have the phone number of anyone from my math class...this was going to be a disaster.

I pulled out my phone miserably and looked at my contacts. I only had six contacts. One of them was my mom, and one of them was my grandma. Obviously, Leah was one of them, and the others were three of my friends from Our Lady of Charity. One of them was Hannah.

Although, friends was a strong word, at least when I was speaking about my friends from grade school. I had been a part of a very small friendship circle. Aside from me and Hannah, there were two other girls. One of them, Alexa, was a lot like me. Quiet, shy, and often misunderstood. But she hadn't texted me since school got out. The reason was unknown to me, but it almost felt like she was ignoring me.