Be My Hero

Chapter One

 Just a quick reminder: This work is all rough draft material---let me know what you think; what you like; and what I should do better/more of. **it's under Romance, and it is getting there, these first few chapters are setting up the story. Okay, that's all(:

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Chapter One:

Math is my least favorite subject. I hate trying to figure out which numbers go where and being lectured at when I don’t know the answer. Our teacher is a stout woman with obviously dyed hair, named Thompson. She must be at least sixty. She shrills across the room and chooses students to come to the board that clearly don’t want to be picked on. I am one of her favorites for that particular reason-I usually slump down in my chair when I don’t know how to solve it, and that seemed to be a signal for her to call on me.

“Hero!” she trills at me. “Come to the board and solve for X.” I look up, bewildered at this sudden command. “Don’t be shy now, get up here and work it out with the marker.” I pulled myself up using the desk as leverage and moved slowly to the board. I took the dry erase marker from the woman’s bony fingers and stared hard at the problem.

2x-3x+45/5=x

I rubbed my temple with two fingers and tried to remember what I was to do first. Subtract? I started to go towards the 2x-3x but Mrs. Know-it-all-but-won’t-teach-it-all coughs. I look back at my friend Sean sitting next to my empty seat. He mouths: Divide. I immediately change the problem to 2x-3x+9=x and am even more confused. However, the teacher looks satisfied.

I steal another glance back and he mouths that I should add the negatives next, but Mrs. Thompson catches us.

“Cheating? Sit down Miss. Hero.” She says, snatching the marker from my hand as if it had been a privilege to hold it in the first place.

“They weren’t cheating!” Eric Stable says from across the room and receives calls of affirmation from the other students.

“Settle down! I know a cheat when I see one.”

“Look in the mirror lately?” I mumble, believing it was quiet enough that no one but me and perhaps Sean could hear. I was wrong.

“If you feel so brave Hero, why don’t you just march down to the principal’s office? I may be old, but I can certainly hear an insult when it is uttered.” A rose bloomed across my cheeks. “Go on.” She said, startlingly firm, looking as though she would push me down the aisle and out of the classroom if need be.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I venture, pulling a pencil out and writing the date at the top of a blank sheet of paper, to look like I was about to start note taking.

“I see.” She says over her thick rimmed glasses. Someone lets out a cough that barely covers their own insult of ‘hardly’. Thompson couldn’t make out who it was that had said it and places the blame on top of my other offense. Which was entirely unfair, as she had been staring directly at me, and knew that I had not been the one to move my lips. I shuddered as she crossed the room in her waddling way and picked up the class phone.

“Hello, there is a Hero here that will need an escort down to the…”

“I'm going!” I shout, stuffing my books and pencils into my satchel. I stormed down my row and resisted the strong temptation of shoving her out of my way. “Excuse me.” I say, with such contempt Mrs. Thompson actually looks scared as she hangs up the phone on the receiver. I brush past and walk out, heading not for the principal, but for the stairwell downstairs and outside into the bursting sun.