The Zodiacs

Chapter 2

"When you walk up to a stranger and say hi you will get one out of two reactions. There's the simple 'hey' you get back. They nod their head and then continuing on with their day. THEN, there's the 'what did you just say?' look. After they realize that you've just said hi to them they go on to give you the 'don't talk to me' look. You know that look right Safiya?" Stephen chuckles, and Safiya throws him a look. "There you go. Thank you. So they give you that look that makes you want to run but..."

"Honestly, nobody even cares," Thomas mumbles. Stephen cocks up his head and bursts out of laughter,

"Well look who just rose from the dead. You know, there's a simple solution to this little problem. Stop listening," He challenges. Next thing you know he's out of his seat and slowly making his way over to sit right in front of Thomas.

"Fifty dollars he won't do it," Lenox whispers loudly to guy, with a smirk on his face.

"So now we're betting?" Stephen walks over and pats Lenox on the back, completely forgetting about Thomas.

"Okay. Okay. Let's start. That was the bell. Let's settle down." The teacher begins to say from his desk. Everyone takes out their computers and waits for him to start.

"Okay? So the first thing Europeans do when they come here is smell the air. Then they're surprised because they're like 'woah, it smells really bad. It smells like something died.' This is really just because of the pollution. Because within every block you have ten people around you. Out of those ten people 5 or 6 of them are smokers. This is biology okay? Then you're around there, so all this is getting collected on your body. Interesting right?" asks Mr. Liagond after giving the longest lecture about things that have nothing to do with what the kids have in their textbooks. 'yeah's, 'sure's, and unenthusiastic 'yay's get thrown around the class.

"Yes, interesting," the teacher tries to assure himself, "Okay, so, this is very important. And you can also have inorganic compounds. Water is actually one of them. So is carbon dioxide. Water is actually good, the only thing that's good. What it does is it reloads your body with water, you body is eighty percent water. Meaning that if you don't drink water, you die. That's the truth. What the water does is it removes all the toxins. Making it reasonable to think you're safe. You breathe in all the pollution from smokers and then by drinking high amounts of water you would have... you would have very... very bad problems." A few kids chuckle in the back. "You can see what this effect does if you're drinking soda or eating McDonalds..."

"Ew!" Analise moans from her seat in the second row, "I hate McDonalds."

"You can see the effects of this over time in your body," he continues, "You're in a sense blocking the water from removing the toxins."

"Wait, so do fat people have like more percent of water?" Giselle asks from her seat next to Analise.

"No. Everyone has eighty percent. What they have is a deficiency. Deficiency in their body so what tends to happen is that their body doesn't know where to store the fat. So the fat starts to store on the side, and starts to form the little jellies around the body," he takes a look at the class, "Doctors go over this. They go to medical school and they point at a chart and they say this is what happens. Yeah. It can also form in your cheecks, and eyebrows. And you start to look like flubber." The same set of kids chuckle. Nobody is taking notes, but they all seem to be paying attention.

"But, yeah, these things happen, but people don't know about this because it's scientific. They don't know that this is the result. You don't drink water, you don't eat healthy, this is the problem. A lot of the foods here are injected."

"Yeah," Lenox feeds his rant while unsuccesfully hiding his smile.

"So they go through like 5 or 6 different injections before they get back to your table. Especially in the chicken. So the chicken is cut, the beak, the leg, and everything. Then they dip it into this pink dye thing. They put it out into a freezer. They make it look like a chicken, they give it the coloring. Then you buy it and it says 'fresh meat' that you're going to cook in your house or whatever."

"But how about like pop-eyes? Because when you buy their chicken it looks real, Analise speaks up.

"Oh, pop-eyes is the worst!" Mr. Liagond exclaims.

"Actually, I thought KFC was the worst," Thomas mumbles. His face covered in sweater marks from sleeping on his sleeve.

"But White Castle is really in right now so that's the place to be," Abel pronouces while sitting sideways, acknowledging that the conversation has moved to the class.

"This is the worst, out of all the ones I mentioned this is the worst." Liagond speaks up again.

"What? White Castle?" Abel questions him, disbelief written all over his face.

"All of them. Pop-eyes, KFC. The Chemistry behind them. It's actually not even a chicken. They take a sample of a chicken and then they put it into a pig. Then they take the meat of the pig and they convert this into a chicken."

"But it tastes so good," Thomas complains.

"Ohhh, that sounds bad," Lenox replies.

"Ew!" Giselle exclaims shivering.

"You know what makes it good? It's the skin. The skin is fried, so when you go there the first thing you taste is the skin."

"Alright, stop telling me this stuff because.." Safiya groans.

"So then which one's worse? McDonalds or Burger King?" Stephen asks, "McDonalds right?"

"Burger King has.. I don't even.." Abel starts.

"I think its McDonalds." Safiya talks again.

"They're both bad," Mr. Liagond continues.

"Okay, so where do you get burgers, I don't get it," Stephen whines.

"The easiest thing to do. The cheapest thing to do, is you go to a supermarket. You buy organic beef."

"But that's not the cheapest," Giselle protests.

"It's not cheap," Safiya fights back too.

"Oh no, its not cheap at all. Its called organic beef. You buy the buns which are wheat buns and then you just cook it in your house."

'But my mom doesn't know how to make fried chicken," Now its Thomas who complains.

"Its so easy. You just buy a fry and you just grill it there."

"That's grilled chicken not fried chicken," Abel laughs.

"If you want the fried stuff, then you can't avoid it. You have to go to McDonalds or Pop-eyes. I mean, I go there. It's fine."

BIIIIIIIING. The bell rings and all the students start packing their things to leave.

"You can't possibly believe a word he says," Stephen tells Thomas.

"I mean it makes sense. McDonalds is disgusting," Analise says from behind them.

"I mean. In a way he does. I don't remember what he even said to be honest. I'm still going to eat there though, this doesn't change my mind." Thomas nudges Safiya.

"All I thought as he spoke was 'how did he even get a job here?'" She crunched up her face angrily. "He literally spent half and hour talking about chicken and New York smokers!"

"Don't let it get to you, I heard they're going to fire him anyway." Thomas says, trying to make her feel better.

"Yeah okay, bye." Safiya turns, knowing that the whole point was that she's going to waste so much time on a useless teacher.