Rejected 22 Times

Chapter 25

Chapter 25

"What is the limit of a function?", I read off of my paper. Strumming my fingers on my desk in my room, I tried my best to stay focused on my work, but that task proved to be very difficult.

I still had quite a bit of homework left to do, and it was getting late. "C'mon! Finish!", I motivated myself. "What is the limit of a function?", I repeated, now tapping the end of my pencil on the Calculus book.

I wonder if Liam finished this already; he usually does his homework pretty fast, and he's better at math than I am.

Maybe I could call him?

Or is that a bad idea?

Would it be too awkward?

Especially after what happened today at lunch...

Yeah, never mind.

I would just have to finish this on my own, but I kept getting distracted. "The limit of a function", I read once again. My eyes darted over to the corner of my room; the wallpaper had begun to peel off. The unusual heat that we had been experiencing lately probably wasn't helping that.

It wasn't until this very moment that I realized how the wallpaper had small flowers on them. I wonder how many there were.

One. Two. Three. Four.. "Damn it, Sophia! Focus!", I scolded myself as soon as I realized that I had become distracted again.

No matter how hard I tried to concentrate on my work, my mind kept flickering back to thoughts of Liam at school today. Was he really moving on? Did he really like Millie? What's going to happen at the dance tomorrow?

Similar questions began to invade my mind. Do I still love him? Better yet, does he still love me?

Without realizing it right away, I had snapped my pencil in half. Sighing in frustration, aggravation, and lack of motivation, I disposed of the broken pencil and sharpened a new one.

Pressing the tip of the pencil to the paper, I wrote, "The limit of a function is". "The limit of a function is...", I repeated out loud for the tenth time. "The limit of a function is... Liam", I spoke aloud as I wrote his name on my paper.

"Ugh", I heaved as I tried to erase his name. Like I said to him earlier, Liam consumes my thoughts, and now I guess he controls my writing as well. As I tried to erase his name, a little too aggressively I might add, I accidentally ripped a hole in the paper.

You know what? Forget math. Tossing the Calculus assignment aside, I grabbed my agenda from my stack of books and read off the subjects that I still had homework in.

Physics. History. Literature.

Wait. What did I have in Literature? Scribbled underneath the subject name I read in chicken scratch "Sonnet due Friday". And today is.. crap. Today's Thursday.

Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap on me.

This sonnet is supposed to be our first major grade of the year, and I haven't even started it! How could I have forgotten to do it? I've known about it for about a week, and I suddenly remember it now? Well, at least I remembered it now and not tomorrow morning.

I don't even know what I'm going to write about. How long does a sonnet have to be again? Fourteen lines? I think. Yeah, that sounds right. Okay, now, inspiration.... What the heck am I going to write about? Maybe we were given clearer directions in our notes.

Checking my notes, I had found the section labeled "Sonnets". Written at the end it said simply, "Make a sonnet. Due Friday."

Well isn't that specific?